A new women's basketball investment vehicle called Project B has closed on a fund structure that grants board seats and ownership equity to Black women executives, marking the first known professional women's sports consortium built on governance participation rather than pure sponsorship dollars. The consortium did not disclose fund size, but three people familiar with the formation said it exceeds $15 million in committed capital, with anchor commitments from family offices that previously allocated to WNBA team stakes.
The timing follows a three-year valuation surge across women's professional sports. WNBA expansion fees have climbed from $50 million in 2020 to a reported $115 million for the Golden State franchise awarded in October 2024. National Women's Soccer League teams traded hands at $53 million in 2023; advisors now quote ask prices north of $100 million. The 2023 NCAA women's basketball championship delivered 9.9 million viewers, a 92% increase over 2022, and the highest non-football college audience on ESPN in three years. Media buyers watching those numbers see arbitrage: women's sports rights still price at a 40-60% discount to men's equivalents when normalized for audience delivery.
Project B's structure separates it from capital pools following the standard playbook. Instead of taking passive equity in a single team or league, the consortium is underwriting player compensation funds, building international tournament infrastructure, and seeding a broadcast rights acquisition vehicle. Board governance is split among investors, former players, and operational executives, with binding minority protections that prevent dilution below 25% collective control for the Black women's leadership bloc. One board member described the model as "asset creation, not asset rental." Another person close to the fund said three WNBA players have already signed advisory agreements, each with low-six-figure annual retainers plus carry on future exits.
The capital rotation is legible to allocators who missed the WNBA's last cycle. When private equity firms began buying team stakes in 2021-2022, they paid $10-15 million for clubs losing money on paper. Two years later, secondary bids for those same franchises are reaching $75-90 million, according to a sports banker who recently ran a process for a West Coast seller. The gap between cost basis and exit value has institutional LPs asking why they were late. Project B's pitch is that the next asymmetry is infrastructure: player leagues, tournaments, and rights packages that don't yet exist but will need to be built as audience growth outpaces league supply.
Worth noting: Project B is not alone. At least two other women's basketball funds are in market, and a London-based allocator told *Sports Edge* his firm is raising a $200 million vehicle for women's sports IP across basketball, soccer, and tennis. The phrase used in four separate calls this month was "too obvious." One family office CIO put it plainly: "If you can buy growing audiences at a 40% discount to comparables, and the only friction is legacy perception, that's not risk. That's beta."
What matters next is whether Project B or similar vehicles can deploy capital at a pace that justifies governance complexity. The WNBA's next expansion decision is expected in Q2 2025, with Portland and Toronto both assembling ownership groups. NWSL's media rights renew in 2027; broadcast executives expect at least a 3x increase over the current $60 million annual average. Project B's board meets quarterly, and at least one member is reportedly already in early-stage talks with a Pac-12 athletic director about a women's basketball tournament that would run opposite the men's NIT.
The fund's closing coincides with Caitlin Clark's WNBA rookie season generating 2.3 million average viewers for Iowa broadcasts, nearly triple the prior record. Clark signed with Nike for a reported $28 million over eight years. Three WNBA teams are now valued above $100 million on paper, per a December valuation update from an investment bank that tracks franchise comps. None of that is speculation. It is clearing price, and clearing price is the only governance signal that matters to allocators who rotate capital for a living.
The takeaway
Project B's equity-plus-governance model reflects institutional recognition that women's sports infrastructure is underbuilt relative to audience growth, creating deployment windows for non-sponsorship capital.
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