Caitlin Clark won’t have a vote in the WNBA’s next commissioner search, but her connection to the company leading it has raised some uncomfortable questions. The WNBA’s search for Cathy Engelbert’s successor has taken an interesting turn after the NBA brought in Excel Search & Advisory to help identify the league’s next commissioner.
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Excel’s connection to the WNBA, however, extends well beyond executive search. Its parent company, Excel Sports Management, represents some prominent basketball players, including Caitlin Clark and Napheesa Collier. That overlap has prompted former ESPN host Linda Cohn to question how the two sides of Excel’s business will be separated during one of the most consequential leadership searches in the league’s history.
“Caitlin Clark isn’t just another client,” Cohn said in a video she posted on her YouTube channel. “We are talking about a player whose arrival helped accelerate an extraordinary period of attention and business growth around this league. And now an arm of the company that represents her is helping identify the next commissioner of that league.”
“And by the way, Excel’s connection to the WNBA doesn’t end with Caitlin Clark. The company represents other basketball players as well, like Napheesa Collier, just to name another one. So I think there’s a completely fair question to ask here. How separate are these operations? What safeguards are in place?”
“Who inside Excel Search and Advisory has access to information about these candidates, and who doesn’t, for that matter? Is there a firewall between the executive search business and the agents representing WNBA players? … These are questions that need answers,” Cohn added.
Outside of representing individual WNBA superstars, Excel Sports Management actually has deep, multi-layered business roots across both the NBA and WNBA. The agency operates across talent representation, corporate sponsorships, executive search and advisory, and commercial partnerships.
They have assisted professional sports organizations with C-suite and front-office hiring over the years. In fact, they have spent 20 years identifying and placing senior executives across 37 sports and 29 countries, with their track record including roles such as chief executive officer, commissioner, chief revenue officer and other senior leadership positions.
Excel’s Properties division is also a powerhouse in securing lucrative corporate sponsorships, specifically major jersey patch partnerships. Notably, Excel helped facilitate the historic, eight-figure, multi-year jersey patch deal between personal finance app Albert and the Los Angeles Sparks. It also negotiated Albert jersey patch sponsorships for the Dallas Wings and Atlanta Dream.
So, it is quite clear just how established Excel already is within the sports business landscape, which to a large extent positions the company to appear well-equipped to carry out this new assignment. In fact, when prominent sports journalist and Caitlin Clark’s biographer Christine Brennan initially made the announcement, it ignited a mix of excitement from fans who hope a new commissioner will focus more on player safety and officiating consistency, areas they believe were lacking under Cathy Engelbert’s leadership.
A fraction of those who found the development exciting are also critics of Cathy Engelbert who have long felt that her office sometimes minimized or mismanaged the explosive cultural and financial impact of Caitlin Clark’s rookie arrival. And so, the NBA’s choice of Excel hints that the NBA wants a leader who intimately understands the modern sports landscape, one heavily driven by Clark’s star power.
However, there has also been skepticism from others regarding potential conflicts of interest, given the agency’s high-profile client roster, especially as it includes Clark. And, of course, the skepticism and now the questions Cohn raised are quite valid points for the league to address.
But ultimately, the decision over who will eventually become the WNBA’s next commissioner still rests with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and the WNBA Board of Governors. Excel’s role is to handle the scouting, vetting and sourcing of candidates.