Caitlin Clark will miss the WNBA All-Star Game and three-point contest with an ongoing groin injury, she said Thursday morning.

Clark’s injury is a major blow to the weekend’s festivities in her home market of Indianapolis. Last year, the All-Star Game between Team USA and Team WNBA drew 3.44 million viewers, more than double the previous high and still the largest audience for a WNBA game in the Clark era. This season, the Indiana Fever’s games have continued to be the most-watched on TV, with matchups against Angel Reese’s Chicago Sky always performing well. Her participation in the three-point contest would have been her first in the WNBA.

The Fever’s second-year star has struggled with a recurring groin injury all summer and left Indiana’s win over the Connecticut Sun on Tuesday night with 30 seconds left after re-aggravating the injury.

“I am incredibly sad and disappointed to say I can’t participate in the 3-Point Contest or the All-Star Game,” Clark said in a team statement Thursday morning. “I have to rest my body.” Clark is the captain of one of the All-Star teams, and she said she would still attend the game Saturday. “I will still be at Gainbridge Fieldhouse for all the action and I’m looking forward to helping Sandy [Brondello] coach our team to a win,” she said.

On Friday morning, the league announced Clark’s teammate Lexie Hull will replace her in the 3-point contest later in the day.

Clark’s news follows a Wednesday announcement from the Phoenix Mercury’s Satou Sabally, who said she will not compete in the All-Star Game as she continues rehab for an ankle injury. Sabally was selected as a starter and drafted by Clark.

“I’m disappointed, naturally, but I want to ensure I’m doing everything I can to be healthy after the break and give … my organization and the X-Factor everything I can as we compete to accomplish our team goals,” Sabally said on her Instagram Story.

The first player to drop out with an injury was the Atlanta Dream’s Rhyne Howard, who the league announced Tuesday will be replaced with the Minnesota Lynx’ Kayla McBride. Howard, an All-Star reserve drafted to captain Napheesa Collier’s team, injured her knee in a game last week and will be out the rest of the month.

The list of potential dropouts is also concerning for the league. Reese missed the Sky’s final game before the break to rest her leg injury, while Jackie Young hurt her hip in the final quarter of the Las Vegas Aces’ game Wednesday.

Reese was drafted as a reserve to Collier’s squad, and Young is on Clark’s bench.

The WNBA announced two replacements Thursday afternoon: Washington Mystics guard Brittney Sykes (for Clark) and Dream forward Brionna Jones (for Sabally). Who will replace Clark and Sabally in the starting lineups remains to be determined.

Sabally said she will still be in Indianapolis to attend “the most important part of the weekend,” the pivotal meeting between the WNBA and its players’ union amid ongoing collective bargaining agreement negotiations. As reported by Front Office Sports, the two sides remain far apart and a work stoppage is a real possibility, but players said they are hopeful Thursday’s meeting will be productive. Sabally is not part of official WNBPA leadership, but players outside of the core bargaining committee are expected to attend the meeting.

Clark herself will be there as well. “The meetings that are going to happen in Indianapolis are going to be really important,” Clark had said before her absence from the actual game was announced. “I’m certainly looking forward to those meetings and being in them, and I think everybody in our league is to help these CBA talks continue to move forward.” 

MLB missed its intended deadline of reworking its national media rights by the All-Star Game. Nonetheless, major decisions are soon arriving for the league, with the package being forfeited by ESPN expected to be broken up into multiple parts involving some of the biggest networks in the media business. 

Commissioner Rob Manfred said to CNBC that Apple, ESPN, and NBC Sports are the three known bidders for the Sunday Night Baseball rights, a key portion of the current ESPN package. That comment confirmed prior expectations around the industry, with Apple potentially expanding upon its current Friday night rights, NBC perhaps reviving a historic relationship with the league, and ESPN looking to preserve its own MLB tie after a bitter divorce in February, albeit in a fundamentally different structure. 

For ESPN in particular, that reworked package could include local rights, something that chairman Jimmy Pitaro has been keenly interested in, as it prepares to debut its direct-to-consumer service later this year. In Atlanta, during this week’s MLB All-Star Game events, several ESPN sources conveyed hope to Front Office Sports that a new deal could be struck and cheered an 11% bump this season in SNB viewership, but they cautioned that the negotiating process remains fluid.

“I’m still eternally optimistic until I’m told otherwise,” SNB broadcaster Karl Ravech said late last week in response to a FOS question. “I go back to what I said before. To me, it’s like the ark leaving with the animals. Baseball would want to be on the ark with all the sports animals, and we would want baseball on that ark. Nothing has changed for me, other than I know our [DTC] platform is coming. Our ratings success is wonderful. It’s a great story, so I remain optimistic.”

Fox, meanwhile, also has eyes on expanding its baseball presence. The network saw a slight viewership dip for Tuesday’s All-Star Game, but has also registered growth this year in its regular-season package. Fox is particularly interested in obtaining the MLB Home Run Derby rights, currently held by ESPN, if possible, and praised the audience bump for that event on Monday.

“We’ll see what MLB pulls out of its hat,” a Fox source tells FOS.

Decisions are now expected within the next several weeks, with Manfred working on the matter while attending the recent Sun Valley Conference in Idaho, which drew many top media executives. That timing would still allow the winning suitors sufficient time to prepare for next season, such as hiring additional talent and solidifying broadcast production logistics. 

In any outcome, the forthcoming rights deals are expected to be a three-year bridge to 2028, when the rest of MLB’s national-rights deals expire, and Manfred is looking to fundamentally reconstruct the sport’s media rights.

One of the most fraught times of the year for many baseball operations executives has arrived, as the MLB trade deadline is now two weeks away and teams will need to determine whether they are buyers or sellers. 

As the July 31 deadline approaches, all but three American League teams are currently within five games of a playoff spot, and all but five in the National League are within 5.5 games. The creation of a sixth playoff spot in each league in 2022 once again has left many teams just one moderate hot or cold streak from being in or out of the playoff picture.

That, in turn, has complicated potential dealmaking, but it has also raised the stakes significantly for the initial game schedule coming out of this week’s All-Star Game break.

“It’s hard to ignore, for sure, I try to stay off my phone as much as possible,” said Orioles All-Star Ryan O’Hearn, who is a potential trade piece given the team’s disappointing seasons and upcoming free agency this offseason. “The Orioles right now are my team. In my mind, we’re trying to make a miraculous comeback. And if a trade happens, when it gets close to the trade deadline or whatever it may be, that’s the nature of the business.”

Market Moves

For many of the sport’s established powers—namely the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees—the upcoming deadline is expected to provide a clearer window to add talent. Those three clubs, representing baseball’s three largest luxury-tax payrolls, have each undergone midseason swoons and are looking for additional help. 

Fox Sports broadcaster Derek Jeter notably pointed to his former boss, Yankees GM Brian Cashman, as a likely buyer. 

“Cashman basically said he’s all in,” Jeter said in the network’s postgame coverage at Tuesday’s All-Star Game. “So I expect the Yankees to do something at the trade deadline.”

Boston, meanwhile, also suddenly looks like a buyer at the deadline. The team lost 7 of the first 10 games after trading Rafael Devers to the Giants last month, but it ripped off a 10-game winning streak before the break, a run that remains active, and holds the AL’s second wild-card position. 

Among the potential sellers, the Diamondbacks are frequently eyed as a top candidate, as the club has regressed since a 2023 run to the World Series and was eliminated on the last day of the regular season last year. Top Arizona stars such as infielder Eugenio Suárez and Zac Gallen have been frequently mentioned as possible trade pieces.

The Braves, meanwhile, are not expected to begin a fire sale, despite a 42–53 record that is far below expectations. Atlanta still has much of its core locked up on more team-friendly contracts.