WNBA All-Star Nneka Ogwumike has signed with Project B, becoming the first player publicly attached to the latest women’s professional basketball league. But it may be just the beginning for the league.
Alana Beard, the chief basketball officer for Project B, told The Athletic that the women’s basketball league has signed other players too. Beard said that the league has signed “multiple current All-WNBA players who have received those honors, young superstars who are on the rise, and players from four different continents.”
Those players, like Ogwumike, will receive equity in the league and a salary that Beard said cannot be matched elsewhere in the sport.
“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,” Beard said in a phone interview. “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.”
Ogwumike, a 10-time WNBA All-Star and former WNBA MVP, announced Wednesday that she is joining the startup league founded by former Facebook executive Grady Burnett and Skype co-founder Geoff Prentice.
Project B is expected to launch in 2026 and play its debut season from November 2026 through April 2027, which would be during the WNBA offseason. There will be six teams of 11 players competing in seven two-week tournaments across Asia, Europe and the Americas.
It will also launch a men’s league at the same time, Beard said. The league had previously not confirmed that it would. Beard declined to answer when asked if they have signed any players for the men’s league already.
Project B, still unnamed at that point, first attracted intrigue this year when it was working with Maverick Carter to build the league. Carter is the longtime friend and business partner of Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James. He and James raised eyebrows this summer when Miško Ražnatović, a powerful Europe-based NBA agent, appeared in his Instagram post together from a yacht in the South of France and hinted at plans in the fall of 2026. Burnett said that the meeting was to discuss Project B. Carter is no longer working with Project B, though he had taken meetings for it as late as last month, a source said.
Beard said every player will have a pay-plus-equity compensation package, not unlike Unrivaled.
“We want you to be a partner, we want you to be an owner, we want you to have a role in that value that you’re creating because of that work you’re putting in,” she said.
Ogwumike and Beard have a close relationship, Beard said. She considers Ogwumike to be a “sister,” and they have known one another since Ogwumike’s first year in the WNBA, when they were teammates on the Los Angeles Sparks, including the 2016 title-winning team.
Candace Parker, the finals MVP for that squad, is one of the league’s investors, a group that also includes Novak Djokovic, Sloane Stephens and Steve Young. One of the league’s future partners, Sela, is owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Like Unrivaled, another professional women’s basketball startup that debuted in 2025, Project B is offering higher salaries than what the WNBA currently pays, along with equity stakes in the league.
“For there to be an entry level of equity across the board was eye-catching,” Ogwumike told the Associated Press “It’s something that I stand for, obviously.”
Ogwumike’s agreement with Project B comes at a critical time for the WNBA. Ogwumike is the president of the WNBPA as the players’ union negotiates a new collective bargaining agreement with the league. The core issues of the new deal are player compensation and revenue sharing, with the two sides proposing different structures for how the players should participate in the financial growth of the league. The current CBA was set to expire on Oct. 31, but the parties agreed to a 30-day extension last week.
That Project B and Unrivaled are both offering increased salaries and a stake in the business is not an accident, as they seek to provide a new compensation model for female athletes. Now, as they go through the negotiating process, the president of the WNBPA and three of its vice presidents (Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier and Kelsey Plum) are involved with rival leagues of the WNBA that suggest a different path forward.
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