Read in Browser [[link removed]]

Morning Edition

November 7, 2025

POWERED BY

Last week, Project B—a new global basketball league—announced it signed Seattle Storm star Nneka Ogwumike as its first player. Other WNBA players have also signed deals to play in the league, sources told Front Office Sports, adding that multiple stars are being offered seven-figure salaries starting at $2 million a year.

— Annie Costabile [[link removed]] and Eric Fisher [[link removed]]

Project B Is Offering WNBA Stars Multimillion-Dollar Salaries [[link removed]]

Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images

Women’s basketball has largely been ruled by two leagues for the past three decades.

Beginning in 1997, the WNBA had control of the summer and EuroLeague dominated the rest of the calendar. In recent years the landscape has become more crowded with two new U.S. leagues—Athletes Unlimited in 2022 and Unrivaled last year.

Now, a fourth major player is joining the fall, winter, and spring competition window. Project B— a new global basketball league [[link removed]]—officially announced its plans in October to host tournaments across Asia, Europe, and Latin America beginning in November 2026 and running through April 2027.

On Friday the league, founded by former Facebook executive Grady Burnett and Skype cofounder Geoff Prentice, announced that it had signed Seattle Storm star—and WNBPA president—Nneka Ogwumike as its first player.

Other WNBA players have already signed deals to play in Project B, multiple sources told Front Office Sports.

Those same sources said multiple stars are being offered seven-figure salaries starting at $2 million annually, with their earnings for multiyear deals reaching eight figures. In addition, players will receive equity in the league, similar to Unrivaled.

The questions everyone is asking in women’s basketball right now: How big of a threat is Project B? And to whom?

A number of WNBA executives told FOS the immediate reaction to the new 5-on-5 league, which will feature six teams of 11 players, is one of curiosity. While the season doesn’t come in direct competition with the WNBA calendar, multiple sources 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.

It’s not unheard of: Diana Taurasi skipped the 2015 WNBA season to rest after playing for a Russian team in the offseason. UMMC Ekaterinburg paid her more than her $107,000 WNBA salary to sit out in 2015. Taurasi made $1.5 million playing for the Russian behemoth at the time.

In recent years, players like Emma Meesseman and Gabby Williams have missed time in the WNBA due to the league’s strict prioritization rules. Meesseman notably missed 2023 and 2024 while playing for the Belgian national team and Turkish club Fenerbahçe.

Multiple WNBA executives viewed the Ogwumike announcement—again, she is the WNBPA president—as an intentional move to exert pressure on labor negotiations. There was a similar feeling last year when union leaders Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart cofounded Unrivaled. At the time, both players acknowledged [[link removed]] the start-up 3-on-3 league—complete with lucrative salaries and player amenities that were superior to those offered by several WNBA teams—came at a perfect time as negotiations for a new CBA were just beginning.

The WNBA and the union entered into a 30-day extension [[link removed]] last week, making Nov. 30 the updated deadline for a new CBA. The WNBA had no comment when asked about Project B’s potential impact on the league.

The most immediate threat Project B poses is to Unrivaled and foreign leagues that play in the WNBA offseason, as their seasons directly conflict.

Nearly 30 players in Unrivaled are signed to multiyear contracts. The league has exclusivity during its months of play, which could make them unavailable to sign with Project B, depending on the new 5-on-5 league’s allowances. EuroLeague, for example, has multiple clubs with players who are currently under contract but will leave to play in Unrivaled beginning in January.

It’s unclear whether Project B would make the same concession for its players.

“We’re confident with what we’ve built in collaboration with our athletes, partners, and investors,” Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell said in a statement to FOS. “We remain consistent in our approach to pay players competitively, provide a meaningful stake in the business, and keep them home year-round. We continue to be a player-first league that’s additive to the overall women’s basketball ecosystem and WNBA, and we look forward to building on the success from season one this upcoming January.”

A’ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, Jonquel Jones, and DeWanna Bonner are among the biggest WNBA stars not currently signed to Unrivaled contracts. Other players like Sabrina Ionescu, Jewell Loyd, and Angel Reese played in Unrivaled’s inaugural season, but they are not on rosters for this winter.

Project B’s investor group includes a collection of WNBA champions in Candace Parker, Alana Beard, and Lauren Jackson, as well as tennis stars Novak Djokovic and Sloane Stephens.

Beard, whose longstanding relationship with Ogwumike includes eight seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks, is also the league’s chief basketball officer. The league sought to raise $5 billion in funding, according to a Bloomberg report [[link removed]] at the beginning of the year, but it declined to share how much it actually raised when asked by FOS in October [[link removed]]. Maverick Carter, longtime business partner of LeBron James, was advising the group at one point but has since cut ties with the international league.

“We’re paying multiples higher than is available right now in the world of women’s sports,” Burnett told FOS last month. “We are paying the highest salaries and equity packages in women’s team sports, and this will be some of the best players in the world. We want this to be incredible basketball.”

Unrivaled paid its players an average salary of $220,000 in its inaugural season, but Bazzell said those numbers have increased without sharing specifics.

The WNBA’s current supermax salary is $249,244, with the lowest-paid players earning under $80,000 this past season. An October proposal from the league included a supermax closer to $850,000 and a veteran minimum around $300,000 [[link removed]]. The league and union have since exchanged proposals, meaning those numbers have likely changed.

SPONSORED BY ARENA CLUB

Collect Graded Cards, High-Value Pulls

Arena Club’s Slab Packs [[link removed]] make collecting graded basketball, baseball, football, and Pokémon cards easy and exciting. Each pack gives you a chance to pull high-value cards, with options starting at just $25.

Today only, explore our special GOAT Packs, featuring only graded cards from the greatest of all time.

Use promo code SPORTS20 [[link removed]] at checkout for 20% off your first Slab Pack.

With complete transparency, you can see all cards in each pack before you buy, enjoy no hidden fees, and get a 90% buyback guarantee on every card.

It’s the most fun and trusted way to collect.

Paul DePodesta Leaving Browns to Take Over MLB’s Worst Team [[link removed]]

Ken Blaze-Imagn Images

After nearly breaking [[link removed]] the modern-day Major League Baseball record for losses in a season, the Rockies are moving in a radical and unexpected direction with their baseball operations, according to industry sources and multiple reports.

The club has hired Paul DePodesta, an early advocate in the adoption of advanced analytics, as its new president of baseball operations. DePodesta has an extensive prior background in baseball, having spent time in senior positions with the Dodgers, where he was GM, as well as Cleveland, the A’s, the Padres, and the Mets. Over nearly two decades with those clubs, he won division titles with each of them.

None of that, however, is recent, as he has spent the last 10 seasons with the NFL’s Browns as the team’s chief strategy officer.

There, DePodesta has not had much success. The team is 56-99-1 since he was hired, and though not directly responsible for personnel decisions, he was part of a senior leadership team that implemented the Deshaun Watson trade with the Texans that now ranks as one of the worst in NFL history. Even team owner Jimmy Haslam described the move [[link removed]] earlier this year as “a big swing and miss.”

The Browns still owe Watson $46 million each of the next two seasons, and he remains out with a torn Achilles tendon. The team surrendered three first-round picks for him, and he has played just 19 games in Cleveland since the deal.

The Rockies’ hire of DePodesta, however, shows a particular urgency for change from the Monfort family who owns the club.

The team has lost at least 100 games each of the three years, has just two winning seasons since 2011, and long has been regarded as one of the most insular organizations in baseball. Before the DePodesta hire, the club hadn’t hired an executive to lead its baseball operations from outside the organization since 1999.

The Rockies have not yet made a formal announcement of DePodesta’s hire, but one is expected soon. The process to get to DePodesta was also difficult, as top candidates such as Diamondbacks assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye and Guardians assistant GM Matt Forman had issues with the GM job and the multiyear rebuild that will be necessary in Colorado.

DePodesta, meanwhile, was depicted in the 2011 film Moneyball by actor Jonah Hill, though under the character name of Peter Brand after DePodesta requested his name not be used. With the Rockies, he will succeed Bill Schmidt, who stepped down last month shortly after the conclusion of a 43–119 campaign in 2025.

Colts, Falcons Head to Berlin As NFL Touts Global Plans [[link removed]]

Barry Reeger-Imagn Images

Amid the National Football League’s fast-growing international ambitions, the league will return this weekend to what is, on many fronts, its top overall global market.

The Colts and Falcons will play Sunday at Berlin’s Olympiastadion, the sixth of seven NFL international games this season [[link removed]]. While the league is increasingly looking at new frontiers such as the Middle East [[link removed]], and it plays more games overall in the United Kingdom, Germany forms a key core of the NFL’s worldwide plans.

Among the key indicators:

Eleven of 32 teams have rights to Germany in the NFL’s Global Markets Program [[link removed]], including the Colts and Falcons, and a figure higher than any other country. Germany will be a fixture of the rotation of international games in upcoming seasons, with games coming back to Berlin in 2027 and 2029 and going elsewhere in the country in 2026 and 2028. Until Rio de Janeiro next year becomes the second Brazilian city to host an NFL game, Germany is the only country outside of the U.S. to have league contests in multiple cities. The league claims to have more than 20 million fans in Germany, representing one of its top international markets, both in raw fan count and penetration relative to population. Several NFL teams have marketing relationships with Bundesliga clubs, with the pacts looking to further leverage the crossover between football and soccer fandom.

“Berlin is going to be something special given the last time we were there was 35 years ago,” said NFL SVP Gerrit Meier at the recent NFL fall meeting, referencing a 1990 preseason game there between the Rams and Chiefs amid the end of the Cold War and the pending reunification of Germany.

The league’s activities in the country, home of the world’s third-largest economy, have been fruitful in recent years as it now reaches the German capital with a regular-season game. After starting with the first regular-season contest there in Munich in 2022, Frankfurt hosted two more in 2023, and then the league went back to Munich last year.

Like other international trips for the NFL, the Berlin visit this weekend will be supplemented by a series of fan and flag football events, player meet-and-greets, and other community functions.

The Berlin game, meanwhile, is expected to be the Indianapolis debut of Colts cornerback Sauce Gardner, acquired this week in a trade with the Jets. Gardner cleared the NFL concussion protocol Thursday.

FOS SURVEY

Win a $250 Gift Card and FOS Merch

At FOS, we’re always looking for new ways to improve, and we’d love to hear from those who matter most—you.

Help us improve by taking a few minutes to complete this survey [[link removed]]. It won’t take long, and as a thank you, we’re offering a chance to win a $250 Amazon gift card and an item from the new Front Office Sports merch collection. Your responses will be anonymous, and no personal data will be shared.

Take the survey [[link removed]] today.

Conversation Starters BYU fans rallied the college football world around Ivan Ortiz’s fundraiser, set up after his wife, Maddie, was in a car crash. The GoFundMe for Texas Tech’s football team’s barber and his family has now crossed $150,000 [[link removed]]. His goal was $25,000. Tom Brady revealed that his dog, Junie, is actually a clone of the dog [[link removed]] he and his ex-wife, Gisele Bündchen, once shared. Alexis Ohanian sat down with FOS [[link removed]] to break down how athletes like Flau’jae Johnson are cashing in on college athletics. Editors’ Picks Is College Basketball About to Raid the G League? [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]Two G Leaguers have gone back to college. More could follow. Mavericks Plummet, Lakers Rise in Wake of Shock Dončić Trade [[link removed]]by Colin Salao [[link removed]]Luka Dončić is averaging 40 points to start the season. NWSL Teams, Players Blast Angel City Player’s Op-Ed on Gender Rules [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]Elizabeth Eddy urged the NWSL to make clear gender eligibility rules. Question of the Day

Do you plan to watch Falcons-Colts in Berlin on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. ET?

YES [[link removed]] NO [[link removed]]

Thursday’s result: 20% of respondents think it helps when ESPN personalities speak out about the YouTube TV blackout.

Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Events [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Show [[link removed]] Written by Annie Costabile [[link removed]], Eric Fisher [[link removed]] Edited by Lisa Scherzer [[link removed]], Dennis Young [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]

If this email was forwarded to you, you can subscribe here [[link removed]].

Update your preferences [link removed] / Unsubscribe [link removed]

Copyright © 2025 Front Office Sports. All rights reserved.

460 Park Avenue South, 7th Floor, New York NY, 10016