[Fox Business] Nike to sign Caitlin Clark to deal as hotly contested sweepstakes comes to end: report

The Caitlin Clark shoe deal sweepstakes reportedly came to an end Sunday with Nike being the one to ink the Indiana Fever rookie to a deal over the likes of Adidas, Under Armour and Puma.

Clark is expected to sign an eight-year deal worth up to $28 million, The Wall Street Journal reported. Nike signed Clark in 2022 before she became the talk of the sports world with her masterful performance in the 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament and her record-breaking season in 2023-24 where she set the all-time scoring marks in the game.

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Nike’s deal with Clark was set to expire in 2024, opening her up to free agency.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Clark commanded an average salary of $3 million per year. Nike not only made the offer of $3.5 million annually, but bet that Clark’s potential wouldn’t just transcend women’s sports in the U.S. They reportedly looked toward her being a major part in the Olympics in 2028 in Los Angeles and 2032 in Brisbane, Australia.

Nike’s offer also included a signature shoe for Clark, according to the report.

Under Armour reportedly came the closest to courting Clark. The Athletic reported Stephen Curry was involved in the pitch and The Journal reported the offer was a four-year deal worth $16 million.

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The Fever made Clark the No. 1 overall pick in last Monday’s. draft. Nike congratulated her in a post on X.

Clark heads into her WNBA rookie season with millions of fans already in tow after she mesmerized the sports world to the point where South Carolina legendary head coach Dawn Staley already dubbed her one of the greatest of all time in women’s basketball.

Clark averaged 28.4 points over her four seasons with the Hawkeyes, including 31.6 points per game with 8.9 assists and 7.4 rebounds during her incredible 2023-2024 senior season.

She broke LSU men’s basketball legend Pete Maravich’s NCAA all-time scoring record this past season, among many other accolades, which included NCAA Tournament records on the way to a national championship run. Iowa ended up losing to undefeated South Carolina in the end.

Clark finished her career with a total of 3,951 points, including 548 three-pointers made on 1,452 attempts for a 37.7% mark from beyond the arc.

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The national title game drew 18.7 million viewers to ABC’s coverage with a peak of 24 million viewers during the game, per ESPN. That’s 89% higher than last season and 285% higher than the 2022 national championship game.

Fox News’ Scott Thompson contributed to this report.

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[Fox Business] Bitcoin holds steady after completing fourth-ever halving

Bitcoin on Friday completed its fourth-ever “halving” with prices for the world’s largest cryptocurrency remaining relatively stable through the weekend in the aftermath of the event.

Bitcoin prices, which recently hit an all-time high of $73,803 in mid-March, were at about $64,036 prior to the halving that occurred after 8 p.m. ET on Friday. Prices fell by 0.47% to $63,747 immediately after the halving, then rose over the weekend to around $65,000 on Sunday.

The halving changes the rate at which new bitcoins are created and was included in bitcoin’s code at its inception by the cryptocurrency’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, who capped the overall supply of bitcoin at 21 million tokens.

When the halving occurs, the rewards received by cryptocurrency miners for creating new tokens are cut in half, which makes it more expensive for them to put new bitcoins into circulation.

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Halvings happen about every four years, with previous halvings occurring in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Some crypto fans point to price rallies that followed the halvings as a sign that its price will rise following the latest halving – though analysts are skeptical.

“We do not expect bitcoin price increases post halving as it has already been priced in,” JP Morgan analysts wrote this week. They said they anticipate bitcoin’s price falling after the halving because it’s been “overbought” and venture capital investment in the crypto industry has been “subdued” this year.

Bitcoin’s rise to an all-time high last month came after the cryptocurrency spent much of 2023 recovering from a dramatic plunge in 2022, when crypto markets were roiled by the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Bitcoin reached a then-record high of $67,802 in November 2021 before sliding to below $17,000 for much of November and December in 2022.

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Financial regulators have long warned that bitcoin is a high-risk asset that has limited real-world uses, although more regulatory bodies have approved bitcoin-linked trading products.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved a number of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January that expanded investors’ access to the cryptocurrency without requiring them to buy tokens through a crypto exchange. 

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Spot bitcoin ETFs allow investors to efficiently track the price of the cryptocurrency and invest in the asset by buying ETFs through their brokerage account.

Among the bitcoin ETFs that have been approved are those from ARK/21Shares (ticker symbol ARKB), Bitwise (BITB), BlackRock (IBIT), Fidelity (FBTC), Franklin Templeton (EZBC), Grayscale (GBTC), Invesco/Galaxy Digital (BTCO), Valkyrie (BRRR), VanEck (HODL) and WisdomTree (BTCW).

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Bitcoin prices have been relatively flat in recent weeks since hitting a new record high in March amid elevated geopolitical tensions and expectations that central banks will keep interest rates higher for longer amid persistent inflation.

FOX Business’ Suzanne O’Halloran and Reuters contributed to this report.

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