Unrivaled offers Caitlin Clark significant equity in league, salary over $1M

Unrivaled —co-founded by the WNBA’s Napheesa Collier, Collier’s husband Alex Bazzell and Breanna Stewart —has gained significant momentum in recent weeks by striking an exclusive media rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery worth approximately $100M, according to sources. The average player salary is expected to be in the $250,000 range, with Clark being offered “a seven figure deal over a million,” according to a source.

Those sources said talks have been “pretty positive,” but the league is not being presumptuous on the outcome. “Ultimately, they’re not applying pressure and just building the league, and hopefully she joins, because if she does, it would have a dramatic impact in a positive way,” one source close to the league said. “But they don’t even have a timetable on when that decision is coming. It’s like recruiting someone. It’s a decision that can go either way. There’s only two answers. I think one way or another, any player that doesn’t play this year, I think once they see it, it’s just going to be hard not to want to join.”

The Fever are aware of Unrivaled’s pursuit of Clark, and the franchise “will not tell her don’t go, you can’t go,” according to sources.

“They recognize that if it’s a Lionel Messi type offer, you’re not going to tell her don’t,” one source familiar with the Fever said. “But they hope she doesn’t. They want to provide her with an environment [in Indiana] where there’d be no reason to do anything else. That’s the focus. That’s their hope. But do they think [Unrivaled] is going to throw her some [exorbitant] offer? Of course they do. Because what else are they [Unrivaled] going to do?”

The league originally had planned to have six teams with five-person rosters for a total of 30 players, but today Collier and Stewart announced that Unrivaled is expanding to six teams of six players for a total of 36 —something that had been in the works for weeks.

“We were able to do this because we outperformed our financial projections, and so now we get to do something that we wanted to do in the future, which is give more people spots in Unrivaled,” Collier said in a video statement today. “This is such an amazing time in women’s sports, and we’re so thankful to all the positive people who have come out and supported us.”

Each of Unrivaled’s six teams — Laces Basketball Club, Mist Basketball Club, Phantom Basketball Club, Lunar Owls Basketball Club, Rose Basketball Club and Vinyl Basketball Club —are owned by the league, although sources said a future option could be to sell the franchises to individual owners.