Women’s basketball players have long journeyed to foreign countries to earn a living as professional athletes. As we approach the 30th season of the WNBA, not much has changed since its inception.
Players still compete in overseas competitions, where the payout for most is significantly more lucrative than what the WNBA offers through most pay ranges. For example, future Hall of Famer Diana Taurasi sat out the 2015 season at the request of her offseason team, Russian club UMMC Ekaterinburg. She netted close to $1.5 million that season in Russia, while making under the WNBA league maximum of $107,000 in the previous season.
The world of basketball outside of the United States will remain attractive to those who wish to earn top dollar in an environment ripened by active investment. In years past, there was little to no pushback on where the capital flowed from or where players went overseas. The lack of opportunities for higher earnings in the league itself or stateside in general provided sufficient clearance for that to be the case. We live in an age where everything under the sun is on the internet and at our fingertips in seconds. It enables the last two generations of media members and fans alike to see it all and, in turn, be politically and culturally aware, unlike any other. In the WNBA, several issues arose this season alone.
However, no instance has caused a ripple effect like that of former WNBA MVP Nneka Ogwumike announcing her signing on to Project B, a global women’s basketball startup that aims to disrupt the sport’s ecosystem in a way never seen before.
Ogwumike is the first player to publicly announce their commitment to the new venture, which is expected to start in Europe, Asia, and both American continents in late 2026. Founded by former Skype co-founder Geoff Prentice and former Facebook executive Grady Burnett, Project B aims to offer equity stakes to 66 players across six teams, in addition to salaries that will reach seven figures and start at $2 million annually, according to Front Office Sports.
If you aren’t immersed in the world of business, names like Geoff Prentice and Grady Burnett might not sound familiar, but ones like Candace Parker, Steve Young, and Novak Djokovic might ring a bell. That’s because these are household names in sports around the world. What flew under the radar for most was that Project B has an active partnership with Sela, an entertainment and hospitality company based in Saudi Arabia. Sela is owned by the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is throwing its hat in the ring of women’s sports feels like a bad joke that’s rooted in fact, but it was bound to happen. After making sizable investments in the WWE, Formula One, soccer, golf, and tennis, the next best thing to aid the Public Investment Fund’s multifaceted effort to clean its country’s image via sportswashing on the international stage was to get in on the explosion of women’s basketball. With visible superstars in a heavily queer and politically aware workforce dominated by Black women, pinkwashing with WNBA players and legends was too good to pass up.
Ogwumike is only the first reported player to have signed with Project B, and others will follow. With generational wealth being offered on a silver platter, it would seem foolish for many not to, especially when the league is expected to operate outside of the WNBA’s window. But those other players aren’t the WNBPA president like Ogwumike, who is a key figure in CBA (collective bargaining agreement) negotiations with the WNBA. During the last bargaining window in 2019, the WNBA and WNBPA agreed to a 60-day extension of the CBA at the time before ultimately ratifying a new deal in January 2020. After both parties had dueled in public with statements recently about how neither could negotiate in good faith, we have yet another distraction in the way of the 2026 WNBA season.
At face value, as the WNBPA president, this is a conflict of interest at a time when the union is actively negotiating for a deal in an effort to ensure that the 2026 season commences without delay. It’s even more so to celebrate the announcement on the WNBPA’s Instagram page. Over the last several months, we’ve heard how Unrivaled, the upstart 3-on-3 league founded by WNBPA vice presidents Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, presents as a conflict of interest. The key difference between Unrivaled and Project B is that Stewart and Collier never aimed to rival the WNBA.
The pair of All-Stars even sought a partnership with their main employer before a ball ever bounced in Miami. In coordination with the WNBPA, Unrivaled, and OneTeam, an NIL company for most major professional sports leagues, struck a deal on player licensing rights that only the WNBPA held previously. This agreement allowed Unrivaled to profit from player products, such as jerseys and team merchandise.
From the very start, the messaging around Project B, a 5-on-5 league, has been to uproot the basketball space as we know it.
There’s also the humanitarian angle of Project B, which fans made clear how they felt when Ogwumike’s announcement hit the internet. According to Doug Feinberg of the Associated Press, funds for the new league aren’t coming directly from Saudi Arabian investors, but from an event group that is based in Saudi Arabia. That event group is Sela, which was previously stated as being owned by The Public Investment Fund.
Women’s rights in Saudi Arabia have improved at a pace over the past decade under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but the nation still dwells near the bottom of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Index, coming in 132nd out of 148 countries in the 2025 report.
In 2018, Saudi women were permitted to drive for the first time. A year later, restrictions on traveling outside of the kingdom were lifted slightly, giving women over the age of 21 to apply for a passport and leave without the permission of a male guardian. Since 2021, women have been allowed to go to Mecca to perform Hajj without a male relative, as long as they travel with other women. Progress is progress, but it hasn’t arrived without its fair share of censure. Human rights groups have brought awareness to instances of targeted travel bans, with Amnesty International reporting that women activists have been affected.
Education has seen significant change in recent decades, powered by the state of the times and the government’s initiatives, such as Vision 2030. As recently as 2018, girls and women couldn’t watch sports in stadiums or participate in school. The Saudi Women’s Premier League has 10 teams, with players free to choose whether or not to wear a hijab on the pitch.
Many have asked what the difference is in competing in the WNBA, a league that is attempting to shortchange Connecticut Sun ownership, the Mohegan Tribe, which is the first Native American tribe to own a professional sports team. ESPN recently reported that the league restricted the tribe from accepting a $325 million offer from Boston Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca to move the team to Hartford, with a $100 million practice facility to be constructed.
The WNBA’s counteroffer to the tribe was to buy the Connecticut Sun for $75 million at $250 million to sell it to current Houston Rockets owner Tillman Fertitta and move the team to Houston. It’s important to mention that Fertitta donated to Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns and was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Italy. The only thing is that no one has actually mentioned this instance among many that illustrate how the league truly operates while flying under the guise of an “activist league”.
For the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, carving a lane in the meteoric rise of women’s sports and basketball in particular is a no-brainer. Investment sends a message to its population and the rest of the world that leaders are attempting to showcase what a region on the rise has to offer. In the same breath, it often assists in the cleansing of unimpeded abuse of the human rights of women in the country. What these celebrity investors/advisors, Ogwumike, and future players to be announced will understand in time is that fans are aware of who and what Project B involves. Generational wealth isn’t easily obtainable for most women athletes, but this opportunity comes with considerable disadvantages that affect the core of what their fans stand for.
Hello again readers. Before I begin, I just wanted to thank you all again for your understanding regarding my last article. Football is life, but there is more to life […]
