Earlier this year, reports emerged of a new international basketball league that was seeking to raise billions of dollars and take on the NBA for global supremacy. LeBron James’s business partner Maverick Carter was advising the league behind the scenes.
That league is currently calling itself “Project B.” It plans to launch next fall with men’s and women’s 5-on-5 basketball. Maverick Carter is no longer attached, a spokesperson for Carter told Front Office Sports. The league has announced a handful of women’s stars, but no men yet, and will not share how much money it has raised.
The women’s players it has signed so far are big names getting big salaries that could shake up women’s basketball across the globe. (The league’s planned November-to-April schedule conflicts with Unrivaled and European leagues, but not the WNBA.)
Project B is luring players with what FOS reported were annual salaries over $2 million. The WNBA supermax last year paid under $300,000, and the league has still not offered players a max salary over $1 million in its ongoing—and contentious—labor negotiations. The players are also receiving equity in the new league, as is increasingly common in emerging leagues.
The nine players Project B has announced so far are:
- Nneka Ogwumike
- Alyssa Thomas
- Jonquel Jones
- Jewell Loyd
- Sophie Cunningham
- Kamilla Cardoso
- Li Meng
- Janelle Salaun
- Kelsey Mitchell
Ogwumike, Thomas, Jones, and Mitchell are blue-chip WNBA stars.
Ogwumike is the president of the players union and a perpetual MVP candidate. She won the MVP with the Sparks in 2016 and has finished in the top seven in MVP voting in each of the last three years. Thomas led the Mercury to a surprise Finals run this fall and finished third in MVP voting, while Jones won an MVP with the Sun in 2021 and led the Liberty to their first league title last year, winning Finals MVP.
The league announced Mitchell on Nov. 24. She broke out in 2025, leading the Fever on a long playoff run despite an injury to Caitlin Clark. She finished fifth in MVP voting.
Loyd won a title in her first year with the Aces after averaging 16 points per game in a decade-long stint with the Seattle Storm.
Cunningham tore her MCL in August in her first season with the Indiana Fever and is, like most WNBA veterans, a free agent.
Jones is from the Bahamas; Cardoso is from Brazil; Meng is from China; and Salaun is from France. Cardoso and Salaun played in the WNBA last year, while Meng’s lone WNBA season was with the Mystics in 2023. She now plays in China.
Onlookers have observed that Project B followed players on social media shortly before announcing they’d committed to join. The league follows European stars and Liberty players Leonie Fiebich and Marine Johannes; it also follows retired WNBA players Diana Taurasi and Chiney Ogwumike, Nneka’s younger sister.
There has been speculation over how much money Project B has raised and where it’s coming from. When the league’s existence was first reported earlier this year, the sovereign wealth funds of Singapore and Saudi Arabia confirmed they were involved. However, Project B founder Grady Burnett told FOS the league’s funding “doesn’t include any dollars from Saudi Arabia.”
The company does have a deal with Sela, the Saudi events company, but the deal involves Project B paying Sela, not the other way around.
The league’s investors include several names from sports, tech, and venture capital.
Known investors:
- Grady Burnett
- Geoff Prentice
- Quiet Capital
- Mangrove Capital
- Sequence Capital
- Steve Young
- Barry Eggers
- Gaby Sulzberger
- Sloane Stephens
- Candace Parker
- Novak Djokovic
- Ime Archibong
- Niklas Zennstrom
- Merline Saintil
- Josh Childress
- John Chambers
This post will be updated as Project B announces more players and investors.
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