AI Summary
5 min readDiary of a WNBA negotiator
Alicia Clark, a 38-year-old forward for the Dallas Wings and three-time WNBA champion, has a reputation for winning. "I just want to win at all costs," she says. But recently she took part in a competition with higher stakes than any game she's played. Instead of running drills, she was studying contracts and labor law—sitting down with a 300-page collective bargaining agreement, Googling terms she didn't understand, and rereading sections until they made sense. She was doing this because for the first time in her life, she would be negotiating the contract for every player in the WNBA. What was not normal was how potentially historic this new contract could be. The league had seen astronomical growth since the last deal six years ago, and the players believed this was their moment to demand their fair share.
The rookie contract that shaped a negotiator
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Planet Money
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 Diary of a WNBA Negotiator — Navigation Outline
- 2 (00:00) **Meet Alicia Clark, WNBA Champion Turned Negotiator** - Introduction to a three-time WNBA champion who took on a very different kind of competition
- 3 (02:56) **The Historic Opportunity** - Why this negotiation was a once-in-a-generation moment for women's basketball
- 4 (05:34) **Alicia's Journey from Rookie to Negotiator** - Her personal experience shaped what she wanted to change
- 5 (08:29) **The League Transforms** - How women's basketball exploded in popularity and revenue
- 6 (10:01) **Building the Case: The Nobel Laureate on Their Side** - How Claudia Goldin helped the players make their economic argument
- 7 (13:15) **The Core Fight: Revenue Share vs. Fixed Rate** - The central economic battle of the negotiations
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Alysha is the oldest player in the league – and when she started she was making a yearly salary of about $36,400. The players flew economy, the rookies in middle seats. They doubled up in hotel rooms. The league was just starting out, wasn’t bringing in money, and, as Alysha says, “That's just what you got.”
Jump forward to 2025 and fans are crowding into stadiums, games are on primetime TV, and the WNBA has a 3.1 billion dollar media rights deal.
So when the players’ contract came up for renewal, they had a once in a generation opportunity to change the future for all of women’s basketball. Maybe all of women's sports. Today on the show, we hear Alysha’s minute by minute account of what it’s like to be a rookie doing high-stakes bargaining. It came right down to the buzzer.
Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life is in stores now.
Subscribe to Planet Money+
Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.
Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.
This episode was produced by Emma Peaslee and Willa Rubin. It was edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Vito Emanuel and engineered by Jimmy Keeley and James Willets. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.
Music: NPR Source Audio - "Nights Like This," "Funk Dive," and "Tropical Heat"
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
More from this podcast
Planet Money →