Ice Cube Won’t Let Brands Set Table for Caitlin Clark With Paper Plates

Heading into Monday’s WNBA Draft, Ice Cube’s offer to Caitlin Clark to play in his Big3 league still stands at $5 million for eight games.

For Ice Cube and Big3 partner Jeff Kwatinetz—founder and CEO of production company/record label/management agency The Firm—the lucrative offer to join the Big3 next season isn’t a marketing move. Much like drawing Procter & Gamble, Merck and Capital One as sponsors for the upcoming Big3 season, the offer to Clark is a business decision based on rare opportunity.

“It’s really about being a fan: Being a fan of the game, being a fan of my heroes, like Dr. J, Iceman, Rick Barry and Gary Payton,” Ice Cube told ADWEEK. “And making sure if you’re gonna invite them to dinner, you better not have no fucking paper plates. Pull out the good stuff.”

And Clark requires the good stuff.

Clark sets the bar

The numbers around Clark speak for themselves.

ESPN’s record-breaking viewership during Clark’s March Madness run with Iowa averaged 18.9 million during the NCAA championship game and peaked at nearly 25 million—an average audience larger than any non-NFL sports broadcast beyond the Ohio State-Michigan football matchup.

Showcasing Clark’s star power, the WNBA recently released its schedule of games across broadcast and streaming partners ESPN, CBS Television Network/Paramount+, CBS Sports Network, ION, NBA TV and Prime Video—which just signed a multi-year rights extension with the league. Those broadcasts include 36 of the 40 scheduled games of Clark’s presumptive team, the Indiana Fever.

In fact, the E.W. Scripps Company’s upfront pitch deck already touts the fact that the company’s ION channel will air more Caitlin Clark Fever matchups (8) than any other outlet.

“With the energy and excitement already generated by what we anticipate will be a star-studded rookie class, and on the heels of a 2023 season that featured one of the greatest MVP races in WNBA history and our most-watched regular season in over two decades, the WNBA’s broadcast and streaming partners are offering a huge national platform,” said WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert.

In addition, Clark is bringing a host of sponsors with her, including Gainbridge, Panini, Nike, Gatorade and State Farm—which is buying up Times Square for her on draft day. 

Leading up to the WNBA Draft, State Farm is dedicating a two-screen 3D installation to her at Duffy Square in Times Square—highlighting her records and congratulating her once she’s picked. During draft day, State Farm is also sending its Jake from State Farm character to the event with Turner Networks/Thursday Night Football/Bleacher Report journalist Taylor Rooks to congratulate Clark in person.

“For us, we couldn’t be more excited to see Caitlin going into the draft,” said Patty Morris, marketing executive at State Farm. “Next week is going to be a watershed moment in women’s sports as this draft class comes through.”

In an increasingly fragmented marketplace, that type of viewership and brand pull—or the Caitlin Clark Effect—makes a difference.

Ice-ing the competition

With the potential addition of Clark, the Big3’s 3-on-3 league would look to build on the 515,000 viewers it averaged for CBS last year, which topped same-day audiences for the NBA summer league and Major League Baseball, as well as Premier League Soccer and the WNBA.

Though it may seem a stretch for Clark to join Big3 for the uninitiated, the league is also no stranger to stars, serving as a home for former NBA players such as Cuttino Mobley, Jason Richardson, Joe Johnson and Nick Young. It also has a history of going after elite women’s players.

For instance, Kwatinetz noted that the Big3 reached out to former University of Connecticut and Minnesota Lynx standout Maya Moore after she took a hiatus from the WNBA to pursue criminal justice reform and, eventually, secure her now-husband Jonathan Irons’ release from prison and exoneration. Of course, Moore retired from basketball altogether.

In addition to players, the league values star coaches, with a roster including Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers George “Iceman” Gervin, “Dr. J” Julius Erving (whose eight-year tenure there is just shy of the 11 he spent with the Philadelphia 76ers) and Lisa Leslie.

Nancy Lieberman, another of the Big3’s star coaches, provides some of the most valuable insight into Clark’s potential double duty in the WNBA and Big3.

Split decisions

Fans have already seen the connection between Clark and Lieberman.

During each of her last three seasons at Iowa, Clark received the Nancy Lieberman award as the nation’s best point guard in women’s college basketball, a trophy that’s been handed to legends in the game, including recently retired WNBA player and Deep Blue agency partner Sue Bird, Phoenix Mercury and Team USA veteran Diana Taurasi and Nike ambassador and NBA All-Star three-point challenger Sabrina Ionescu.

Beyond the namesake hardware, Lieberman also split time among leagues during her career.

After winning multiple national championships during her collegiate career at Old Dominion, Lieberman played in the now-defunct Women’s Pro Basketball League (WBL) and Women’s American Basketball Association (WABA) before brief stints with the WNBA.

However, she also joined the Los Angeles Lakers summer league team under coach Pat Riley in 1980. (“I was his first point guard, not Magic [Johnson],” Lieberman noted.) She’s played several seasons in the men’s United States Basketball League (USBL) and played for coach Frank Layden on the Utah Jazz’s summer league team.

Named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996, Lieberman came to Big3 with the promise that she’d make the same amount as contemporaries like Dr. J and Gervin—and receive the same Hall of Fame treatment.

“[Ice Cube] knows what that next level is, and the expectation,” Lieberman said. “We’re not eating off paper plates. Every time we walk out there, we’re at a five-star restaurant … these are former NBA athletes who gave their lives to give their families generational wealth, and it’s important that they’re treated in this next step of their career with the same respect that they had.”

Now an announcer for both the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder and New Orleans Pelicans—also recently coaching in the NCAA’s first women’s all-star game—Lieberman sees the $5 million offer to Clark as an illustration of how the Big3 values women at the top levels of its sport. She noted that, in business, leaders typically want to know if a prospect can make their company better, increase its impact on people and make everyone more money along the way. 

Why can’t Dawn Staley get the [University of] Kentucky coaching job that’s open now that [John Calipari] left? This is the difference between the Big3 and a lot of other people: They are receptive to greatness.

Nancy Lieberman

She’d like to see the same standard applied in basketball, where NCAA coaches Dawn Staley and Kim Mulkey, NBA G League Coach of the Year Lindsey Harding and former NBA assistant and two-time WNBA champion coach Becky Hammon still aren’t considered for the sport’s top jobs. 

“Why can’t Dawn Staley get the [University of] Kentucky coaching job that’s open now that [John Calipari] left?” Lieberman said. “This is the difference between the Big3 and a lot of other people: They are receptive to greatness … I am celebrated, not tolerated in the Big3, and that’s why I’m riding and dying with this group.”

No paper products allowed

Ice Cube told ADWEEK that Caitlin Clark is “a once-in-a-lifetime player” whose specific effects on Big3 would be “undeniable.”

Meanwhile, his colleagues in the Big3 said the league’s offer to her is consistent with how the mogul has pursued talent since the league formed in 2017, and that’s why the $5 million contract offer isn’t going anywhere.

“It didn’t matter to him necessarily if there was a woman or a man: He wanted the Hall of Fame recognition, but he wanted people that he knew could win,” said Nikki Ambrifi, the Big3’s vp of sales strategy. “He just wants the best coaches and the best players to play for his league.”