Azzi Fudd joins Project B, signaling WNBA players can keep global brands without leaving home

For years, the “smart” path for WNBA players meant going overseas. Off-season international leagues helped supplement comparatively low WNBA salaries, but the trade-off was always the same: more travel, year-round physical load, and less time to build personal brands and land U.S.-based sponsorships. Azzi Fudd is now part of a different equation, and Fortune reports she has joined Project B.

Fudd, the 2026 No. 1 draft pick (now starring for the Dallas Wings), is the latest player to sign onto Project B, which has not started play yet but plans to debut in January with Formula 1-inspired “grand prix-style” basketball across men’s and women’s competitions in six cities, including Tokyo and Valencia, Spain. The key point is not just where she will play, but why this model is arriving at the right moment: it is built to be an asset-light global sports platform, and it offers players equity in the business. That combo changes the incentives that used to keep WNBA schedules anchored to a U.S. offseason sprint.

To understand why this is a big deal, you have to zoom out to the economics of basketball visibility. The international-market strategy historically demanded that players act like nomads, competing abroad while also trying to be recognizable enough back home to keep sponsorship momentum alive. Fortune’s source lays out a shift: the need to compete year-round used to be viewed as a downside that limited brand growth in the U.S. Today, Fudd is not just “going to travel.” She is joining a league trying to create a global stage that pays for itself by leaning on local arenas. Project B’s cofounder Grady Burnett says the league’s model is that underutilized arenas will pay Project B to bring international stars to their cities, letting the league build an asset-light business.

Project B also comes with an ambition that sounds almost comically large until you look at the soccer playbook. In early 2025, Bloomberg reported Project B was seeking to raise as much as $5 billion as it works to make basketball the top global sport ahead of soccer. Burnett says that number was “a little high” and that the league has completed its capital raise, though he declined to confirm how much funding it has raised. That capital position is strategically important. Raising and deploying billions is how leagues move from novelty to infrastructure: global broadcast narratives, star contracts, sponsorship frameworks, and the kind of continuity that makes “international basketball” feel like a product, not a detour.

The roster angle reinforces the “athlete as stakeholder” pitch. Like the domestic 3-on-3 league Unrivaled, Project B offers players equity. Fortune reports other players who have signed on include Nneka Ogwumike, Alyssa Thomas, Kelsey Mitchell, and Jewell Loyd. For Fudd, the appeal is partly experiential. The 23-year-old told Fortune she has spent most of her life training stateside and wants to broaden her experience and go outside of just America. Her background matters too: her dad, Tim Fudd, played basketball abroad, and she grew up hearing stories about other countries and what the experience can unlock.

But the business logic behind her choice is sharper than “travel more.” Fortune notes that Fudd is a post-NIL player with major sponsorships in the U.S., including a deal with hair color brand Madison Reed, and a combined social following of more than 800,000 on Instagram plus a similar following on TikTok before her professional career. That changes the brand building timeline. Instead of having to build a U.S. personal brand from scratch in her first year, she can treat international markets as a way to grow fandom abroad. Fortune includes her view that what is “incredible now is that players have that option. They can go if they want. They don't have to, they can stay if they want. It's not forced.” For a league, that’s a crucial adoption signal: the product is not just for athletes who must chase money overseas. It’s for athletes who want additional brand upside without surrendering control.

Project B’s timing also benefits from basketball’s own international momentum. Fortune points out that the WNBA, buoyed by higher salaries after its new collective-bargaining agreement, is attracting more players from outside the U.S. In the NBA, an international player has won MVP for the past eight seasons. Burnett frames Project B’s goal as building a competitive landscape that mirrors soccer’s revenue structure, and he sees an opportunity to elevate basketball globally.

Still, this kind of global expansion comes with political and financial scrutiny. Project B faced controversy due to reports it was funded by Saudi money, a hot-button issue in sports. Burnett says the league accepted no Saudi capital. He says it worked with the Saudi Public Investment Fund-owned entertainment vendor Sela, but that partnership is no longer active. Whether you view that controversy as resolved or not, it matters because global leagues are judged not only by talent and scheduling, but by the perceived sources of capital and the reputational risk boards and sponsors face.

One more strategic implication: the men’s league may be even more disruptive. Fortune notes that Project B hasn’t announced any men’s players yet, and that the men’s league is poised to be more disruptive to the NBA, where the off-season is short and the league would conflict. Burnett has framed its strategy as “extending the careers of established players” from the NBA. That is a direct pitch into an NBA boardroom dilemma: protect rest and talent pipelines, or risk seeing veteran minutes and off-season brand activity shift to a competitor’s global calendar.

For executives watching this, the headline takeaway is simple but consequential. Fudd is not just joining a league, she is validating a new model where off-season basketball can be both global and monetizable through equity, local arena partnerships, and international fan growth. If Project B pulls it off in January, the downstream effect could be a redefinition of how women’s basketball, and potentially the broader basketball economy, thinks about offseason competition, athlete incentives, and where sponsorship dollars decide to live.