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Project B has announced it’s first player, and it’s a significant one.
Seattle Storm star Nneka Ogwumike has signed a contract with the unofficially-named international 5×5 women’s professional basketball league that will debut in the fall of 2026. The league, which claims Alana Beard as a co-founder and Candace Parker and Lauren Jackson as investors, will feature six 11-player teams that will play seven two-week tournaments in major cities in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Project B seeks to attract the interest of some of the sport’s most talented players by offering generous salaries, in addition to an equity stake in the league. While the details of Ogwumike’s contract have not been disclosed, she told the Associated Press that the compensation was a significant factor in her decision. “It’s not something that’s usually offered to us, and by us, I mean women athletes,” Ogwumike said. “So, for there to be an entry level of equity across the board was eye-catching. It’s something that I stand for, obviously.”
According to Front Office Sports, Project B player salaries begin at $2 million annually, with the potential for multi-year contracts of more than $10 million. Those numbers, certainly, outpace the $850,000 maximum player salary reportedly proposed by the WNBA in negotiations for a new CBA. The annual salaries are also believed to be greater than those of Unrivaled.
On Project B’s compensation, Beard said to The Athletic:
I’m not going to get into the numbers on any of this stuff, but I can say this deal surpasses anything in the market today. It’s consistent with the trajectory and the explosion of what we’re seeing in women’s basketball. … Nothing comes close to what we are offering these players. It’s not to be arrogant, it’s to basically position these women to receive what they absolutely deserve for the value they have created and create on a daily basis.
FOS reports that Project B has already signed other WNBA players. Beard also told the AP and The Athletic that other WNBA players had signed, sharing with The Athletic that Project B’s other signees include “multiple current All-WNBA players who have received those honors, young superstars who are on the rise, and players from four different continents.”
However, that Ogwumike, the president of the WNBPA, is the first player to publicly announce her agreement with Project B is all the more interesting.
Per the reporting of FOS, WNBA executives interpreted the announcement of Ogwumike’s deal “as an intentional move to exert pressure on labor negotiations,” which is how many associated with the league also viewed Unrivaled, which was co-founded by Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier. The WNBA league office offered FOS no comment when asked how the new league could impact the WNBA, but sources that spoke to FOS about Project B expressed “curiosity,” while some “questioned whether the league could be an indirect threat to the WNBA in time, and suggested that some WNBA players could consider forgoing the season if CBA negotiations continue to go poorly.”
Speaking to the AP, Ogwumike talked about Project B in ways similar to how Stewart and Collier haven spoken about Unrivaled, emphasizing the importance of providing players with more opportunities to maximize their financial value as elite women’s basketball players. Ogwumike said:
There’s so many different opportunities for players outside of (the WNBA) and that’s always been the case. This is just another one of those opportunities and I know that a lot of players are doing what they can to ensure that they can maximize on the short time that they have in their playing careers. This is my chance to be able to do that.
As noted by both The Athletic and FOS, Ogwumike has a close relationship with Beard, as they were teammates for eight seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks. Ogwumike also was a member of the Sparks with Parker.
Still, Ogwumike’s commitment to Project B has raised eyebrows, and not only due to her status as the president of the WNBPA. While the league is promoting its high-profile athlete investors, which, in addition to the aforementioned women’s basketball legends, includes tennis champions Novak Djokovic and Sloane Stephens, there are questions about the degree of financial involvement from Saudi Arabia and whether or not Project B is a sportswashing initiative, allowing Mohammed bin Salman, the ruler of Saudi Arabia, to use sports to distract from human rights abuses.
As the AP’s Doug Feinberg shared on Twitter/X, “My understanding in talking to people at project B is there is no money coming from Saudi Arabia investors. They are using an event group that is Saudi Arabia based.”
However, as multiple skeptics have pointed out, the event group, Sela, is owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF). Project B further clarified to Feinberg that “Sela is involved in putting on the games potentially,” but Sela, and, in turn, the PIF, is not a direct investor.
That seems like a lot of semantic gymnastics to evade accusations of participating in sportswashing.
Of course, the US government and American companies and corporations, including that have invested in sports and athletes, are also far from beacons of morality. Sports are a reflection of society, and in a world overflowing with corruption, sports likewise swims in specious waters. Women athletes can choose to jump in those waters, attempt to chart a different course or, like most of us, muddle through uncomfortably and inconsistently.
With Ogwumike onboard and additional WNBA stars seemingly poised to follow, Project B, at minimum, introduces another complicating variable in the effort to determine the present and future of women’s professional basketball.
