WNBA: Way Not-Basketball, Actually

The WNBA’s political-financial operating system

(Footnotes in comments)

Calling the WNBA a basketball league may be a mischaracterization of astronomical disproportion.

The league calls itself a “bold, progressive entertainment and media property” that “advocates for social justice.”

Its Changemakers program does more than sell ads: corporate partners provide “financial investment,” “marketing amplification,” and “close strategic collaboration.”[1]

Owners and sponsors supply capital; banks, foundations and donor-advised funds provide financial plumbing; nonprofits supply causes and campaigns; players and broadcasts provide trusted messengers; political-data firms support the wider voter-contact ecosystem.

Influence can be coordinated through incentives, contracts and shared personnel without a single, central command room.

The agenda is as wide open as Caitlin Clark

In 2020 the WNBA and players’ union created a Social Justice Council whose announced subjects included race, voting rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and gun control, backed by a plan to “educate, amplify and mobilize for action.”

Advisors included Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza and Rock the Vote president Carolyn DeWitt. [2] Black Lives Matter was accused in 2022 of impropriety, including claims of using the group as a "personal piggybank."

When the league closed a $75 million capital raise in 2022, it said the money would fund marketing, globalization and digital growth while advancing that progressive identity. Nike was both an inaugural Changemaker and a direct equity investor; Joe and Clara Tsai, Ted Leonsis, Micky and Nick Arison and other wealthy owners joined the investor group. [3]

Politicians use the WNBA for power

Rock the Vote’s 2022 annual report says the WNBA, WNBPA and nine teams promoted a Week of Action, player PSAs, “Vote” shirts, broadcast appeals and arena-jumbotron links to voting tools.

A WNBA Commissioner’s Cup town hall was carried on league channels and featured Nsé Ufot, then executive director of the New Georgia Project. [4]

My prior reporting identified Ufot’s place on Catalist’s Board of Managers and shows how State Voices offers Catalist voter files and VAN access through state organizing tables. [5] Ufot's involvement may seem out of place for a women's sports league to a casual fan, but I digress.

RISE, Benson and the DSA

RISE to WIN supplies the clearest personnel bridge between professional sports and public political leadership.

Its 2023 report listed Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and NBA commissioner Adam Silver—with NBA executive Kathy Behrens as his designee—on the same board; founder Stephen Ross sat emeritus. My previous 2023 reporting pointed out how Benson's husband narrowly escaped a Detroit City Council scandal, only to be placed as an executive with Stephen M. Ross' firm, Related Companies.

The NBA appeared in RISE’s $50,000-plus donor tier. At WNBA All-Star, RISE and PepsiCo’s Starry staged a “Critical Conversation” featuring A’ja Wilson. During Benson’s CEO tenure, the Liberty worked with RISE on its 2017 Unity Game; in 2020 the Lynx announced a multiyear RISE program including a RISE to Vote event. [6]

Benson had left the Wayne State law deanship in 2016 to become RISE’s chief executive and an adviser on Ross’s philanthropic investments. [7]

I reported in 2023—and an Internet Archive copy of the local newsletter confirms—that Benson was advertised to address a November 2006 Greater Detroit Democratic Socialists of America meeting on voter protection. [8]

The record establishes an advertised appearance, not attendance, DSA membership or organizational control.

Separately, Jewish Communal Fund annual reports show four donor-advised-fund grants totaling $149,429 to DSA Fund, DSA’s legally distinct 501(c)(3) sister organization, from FY2017 through FY2021. [9]

These are distinct institutional contacts, not a demonstrated funding chain to RISE or the WNBA.

Banks and donor-advised funds

The banks are not scenery. Ally is the WNBA’s official banking partner and a Changemaker. Amalgamated Bank calls itself the WNBPA’s “Official Social Responsibility partner”; the bank’s partnership page separately says Amalgamated Foundation established the WNBPA Social Impact Fund. [10] Bank of America appears elsewhere as trustee, private-bank adviser and DAF administrator.

The Women’s Sports Foundation’s donor roll places the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation—“Bank of America, N.A. Trustee”—in its $1 million-plus tier, alongside WNBA-linked donors and sponsors. That designation shows a fiduciary role, not necessarily a Bank of America corporate gift. [11]

From 2020 through 2024, Tides reported $10,243,833 to six organizations independently associated with the WNBA, WNBPA or a team: $6,208,833 to Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, $1.7 million to Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, $1.42 million to African American Policy Forum, $450,000 to Women’s Sports Foundation, $330,000 to Rock the Vote and $135,000 to Black Women’s Health Imperative. [12]

The filings however do not earmark the $6.21 million for the WNBPA fund, and no reviewed Tides filing disclosed a grant to the WNBA, WNBPA, a franchise or a Changemaker.

Bank of America advertises that DAF clients may recommend grants, select investment objectives and request anonymity for their grants. [13] JCF likewise appears as the legal grantor while the recommending account may remain undisclosed.

N.C. Governor Josh Stein's family's Chestnut Fund transferred $9.105 million during 2021–2024 to the Lupine Fund at Fidelity Charitable, where the foundation or a disqualified person retained advisory privileges.

America Votes’ return reported $1,057,232 to NGP VAN (the political-software vendor, not New Georgia Project), $506,226 to Catalist and $401,281 to Elias Law Group; State Voices separately paid Catalist $884,720 and granted Blueprint NC $318,823. [14] This does not make them WNBA dollars.

It shows why pooled charities, DAFs, fiscal sponsors, political committees and data vendors make donor-to-use reconstruction so difficult.

Foreign capital mixing with politics

In 2023 the Qatar Investment Authority—the state’s sovereign wealth fund—became a minority investor in Monumental Sports & Entertainment, owner of the Washington Mystics, and increased its stake in 2025. [15]

An entity owned by Joe Tsai’s family purchased the New York Liberty in 2019; the WNBA identified Tsai as an Alibaba founder and Alibaba as China-based. Joe and Clara Tsai also invested directly in the league’s 2022 raise. In 2025 the Liberty announced that Alibaba founder Jack Ma and several U.S. financiers had agreed to invest, subject to WNBA approval. [16]

U.A.E's NBA agreement placed its patch on WNBA referee jerseys beginning in 2025, while Emirates Group identifies the Investment Corporation of Dubai—the government’s principal investment arm—as its owner. [17]

Saudi Arabia is only one step removed

The Women’s Sports Foundation donor roll lists LIV Golf in its $25,000–$49,999 tier; LIV’s own release identified Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as the majority shareholder of LIV Golf Investments. [18]

Press reports also placed PIF-owned event company Sela around the proposed global Project B basketball circuit; a founder later denied Saudi investment while acknowledging Sela as an event partner. Project B recruited WNBA players, beginning with WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike, but it is a rival venture, not WNBA equity. [19]

Wrapping up

The WNBA openly functions as a progressive media-and-mobilization platform financed by corporate equity, banks, billionaire owners and—through at least one franchise parent—foreign sovereign wealth.

Around it sits a nonprofit layer whose DAF and fiscal-sponsorship structures may leave public filings without the original donor’s identity or a project-level restriction.

The resulting agenda need not be secretly imposed: sponsors buy strategic collaboration, advocacy groups supply campaigns, and the league supplies cultural authority.

So the next time you see a woman get slammed to the hardwood, just remember: The foreign oligarchs sure are loving to watch their bread and circus tear apart their chief rival on the global political stage from the inside out.

Race-bait us harder.

It's not working on most of us anymore.