In the high-stakes world of professional sports, a new fault line has just ripped through the foundation of women’s basketball. It’s a story of dizzying paychecks, alleged deception, and a crisis of conscience that pits a league’s hard-won “activist” identity against the undeniable allure of an eight-figure payday. At the center of this firestorm is a new upstart, “Project B,” and a bombshell announcement that has left fans and insiders reeling: the league has signed Nneka Ogwumike, the celebrated president of the WNBA Players Association (WNBPA).
This signing should have been a simple coup, a signal of a new league’s legitimacy. Instead, it has ignited a brutal public relations war, exposing a “messy” conflict of interest and forcing a league that was happy to be known as “Saudi-backed” to suddenly, and clumsily, deny its own funding.
The controversy has escalated with a new report from Front Office Sports, which has become the smoking gun in this unraveling drama. According to the article, Project B’s co-founder, Grady Bernett, has gone on the record with a startling claim: the league’s fundraising “doesn’t include any dollars from Saudi Arabia.” This statement is a direct contradiction to months of reporting and the entire public understanding of the league. The initial buzz, the reason Project B was taken so seriously, was precisely because its rumored backing by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) promised a financial windfall—with salaries starting at $2 million—that could finally rival the WNBA.
This sudden denial, this complete 180-degree turn, did not happen in a vacuum. It came after the league signed Ogwumike, and the predictable backlash began. Fans immediately cried foul, flooding social media with accusations of hypocrisy. How could the WNBA, the self-proclaimed “activist league” that champions human rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial equality, have its own PA president sign with a league funded by a regime with a starkly contrasting human rights record?
The backlash, it seems, was too much. And so began the damage control. But the attempt to whitewash the money trail was, at best, amateur. In the very same interview where Bernett denied Saudi funding, he offered a critical, and seemingly contradictory, admission. As reported by Front Office Sports, Bernett conceded that Sela, a company that is a “subsidiary of the Saudi public investment fund,” is an “event partner of the league.”
Let’s be clear: Sela is not some third-party events company. It is owned and operated by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. The distinction Bernett is trying to make—between “funding” and “event partnership”—is a transparent game of semantics. It’s a shell game. Whether the check is signed by the PIF directly or by a PIF-owned subsidiary for “event partnership,” the source is the same. As commentator Rachel DeMita, whose analysis of the situation has gone viral, put it bluntly: “Clearly it is backed by Saudi money.”
This clumsy attempt at deception is perhaps more insulting to fans than the original sin of taking the money. It’s this lack of transparency that has analysts like DeMita so frustrated. “My biggest thing in all of this is just stand on it,” she declared in a recent video. “If you’re taking the money, if you sign the contract… stand 10 toes down. Be like, ‘I’m taking the paycheck, I don’t care if it’s coming from Saudi Arabia.’”
Her point is devastatingly sharp. The WNBA and its players have never been “scared to stand on their principles” before. They have been loud, vocal, and unified on a host of social justice issues. “They’ve championed themselves as being this advocacy league,” DeMita notes. “So like, why not stand on this? Like, why are we backtracking now?”
The answer, it seems, is that the principles of activism are crashing headlong into the realities of capitalism. The “Saudi-funded” label was fine, even desirable, when it was an abstract concept promising millions. But the moment that money became attached to a real person—Nneka Ogwumike—the public relations cost became all too real. The league’s pivot makes them “look weak,” as if they are ashamed of their own business dealings. And if they are ashamed, fans are left to “speculate as to what is actually going on.”
The hypocrisy extends beyond just the league’s founders. The WNBPA itself posted the announcement of Ogwumike joining Project B on its official Instagram story. This is, without question, a staggering conflict of interest. Ogwumike, as president, is in the middle of heated Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations with the WNBA. Her entire mandate is to represent the best interests of all players in the WNBA.
How can she effectively negotiate with the WNBA on behalf of its players while simultaneously being the poster child for a rival league that is actively poaching WNBA talent with offers of $2 million salaries? How can the WNBPA, the union representing WNBA players, celebrate this move without sending a message of complete disdain to its own league and partners? It’s a “messy” scenario that erodes trust on all fronts.
This entire debacle has cornered the WNBA, a league that has set a “very high bar” for itself by wrapping its brand in the flag of social justice. For nearly three decades, as one league source noted, “players, executives, and coaches have used their platform to advocate for social justice issues.” Now, that very platform is being used to question how those same figures can “align in any way with Saudi Arabia.”
This is the ultimate “principle or paycheck” dilemma. The money is, for the first time, truly life-changing. But accepting it, especially while trying to hide its source, threatens to undo decades of brand-building. It risks turning off the very fans who were drawn to the WNBA precisely because it stood for something more than just basketball.
Project B and its new star, Nneka Ogwumike, wanted to have it both ways: the Saudi money without the Saudi association. The public, however, is not so easily fooled. The backtracking, the semantic games, and the blatant conflicts of interest have only poured gasoline on the fire. The league demanded honesty. It demanded that players and institutions “stand on” their choices. By choosing to hide, Project B, and by association the WNBPA, has signaled that some paychecks are, perhaps, indefensible.
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