Caitlin Clark calls out WNBA for schedule amid offer from rival league and possible player lockout
Clark is reportedly going to get an aggressive offer from another league
Caitlin Clark is one season into her WNBA career, but already feels comfortable enough to air her complaints on the league. She’s made these feelings known just in time for a re-negotiation of the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the union, and the rise of a potential competitor league.
During a video interview that involved WNBA legend Sue Bird at an event for Nike on Monday, Clark complained about the WNBA schedule taking place in the summer. The rookie phenom said the schedule interrupts her ability to play women’s golf.
“The only downside about the WNBA is [that it’s] during the summer. That’s when you golf,” Clark continued with a smile. “So I’ve had my golf take a back seat to basketball.”
Clark has recently leaned into her passion for golf after the end of her rookie WNBA season, when the Indiana Fever lost to the Connecticut Sun in the playoffs.
Clark is going to The Annika in November, the penultimate tournament on the LPGA Tour schedule hosted by Annika Sorenstam, to play in the pro-am and be a panelist at the Women’s Leadership Summit at Pelican Golf Club.
Clark, the WNBA rookie of the year, said last month when the Indiana Fever was eliminated that she planned to play golf until it got too cold in Indiana, adding with a smile, “Become a professional golfer.”
“I love golf so the opportunity to play in the pro-am for a tournament with a legend like Annika Sorenstam’s name on it is so exciting,” Clark said. “I’m looking forward to seeing all the LPGA players on the driving range, being part of the Women’s Leadership Summit, and, of course, teeing it up in the pro-am with Annika.”
Now, Clark’s passion for golf and the WNBA’s interruption of it is prompting a complaint from Clark at a time when the league should be trying to make her as happy as possible.
The Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) voted to opt out of the current CBA with the league on Monday. The union and the league had until Nov. 1 to opt out of the current deal, which was first agreed to ahead of the 2020 season. Now the union and the league will have to come to an agreement on a new deal, as the players will look to get more of the revenue share and potentially get other perks from the WNBA like more time off.
The decision to opt out came after a record year for the WNBA in both viewership and attendance. The playoffs saw a viewership increase of more than 140% before the WNBA Finals even started, which marked the highest viewership since the league’s inaugural season in 1997.
Clark played the biggest part in this explosion in popularity. One of her playoff games generated 2.5 million viewers alone and the 15 most-watched games of the regular season this year all included Clark. Clark also helped the league break the single-game attendance record and challenge NFL games for viewers on multiple occasions.
The WNBA also announced a new media rights partnership with TNT Sports that will see more than 45 primetime regular-season games broadcast on TNT and truTV, with all games streamed on Max. Clark is the biggest single driver of TV ratings that women’s basketball has ever seen. CBS, ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2, ION and NBA TV all set records for the most-watched WNBA game on their respective platforms this season, and all of those games involved Clark.
She is the sport’s most transcendent superstar and the WNBA’s biggest asset in trying to achieve profitability, which it never has.
But Clark has options now, well beyond the WNBA,
Outside of leagues in Europe, Clark now has the option of joining a new professional women’s basketball league based right in her home country too.
“Unrivaled,” the new 3-on-3 basketball league spearheaded by Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, is planning a “full-court press” to recruit Clark, according to Front Office Sports.
“It’s just so crazy because the growth that Caitlin has brought to the game, the sheer amount of money that she’s making these teams, people are having to move their venues for when she comes to play,” Collier said. “And she’s getting paid like $75,000 a year… She should be one of the [top-paid] players in the world just for the sheer numbers she’s bringing.”
Clark also isn’t the first WNBA superstar to voice grievances with the WNBA schedule ahead of this new negotiation with the league.
Stewart spoke out about the lack of time off for the players who represented the U.S. in Paris and brought home gold for the eighth consecutive Olympics, in August.
“I think that even in a non-Olympic year, you think about All-Star, it’s like, everybody needs some time after All-Star break, or it’s not a break. So trying to kind of push that into the CBA, I think would be really important,” Stewart told The Associated Press. “Especially following the Olympics, because we’ve never had an Olympics in a 40-game season, except this season.”
This year’s WNBA MVP and Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson, who won Olympics MVP in Paris, said the lack of time off after the Olympics could lead the players to bring the issue “to the table.”
“I think if it is a chance for us to go to the table and say, ‘Hey, we should get more rest time,’ even if it’s… just a couple of days. It’s crazy to see players play fresh off of a plane in a sense. So yeah, I don’t mind asking for that,” Wilson told The Associated Press.
