Women’s basketball just ran a half‑court set in New York, and the numbers on the whiteboard say as much about the future of sports investment as anything happening on the court.

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Over two days in Manhattan, a select group of WNBA players traded practice gear for notebooks as Fanatics and Kevin Durant’s Boardroom put them through a business immersion program designed to treat athletes less like endorsers and more like future dealmakers. The agenda reads like a modern MBA for the creator‑athlete: social media and content strategy, AI tools for brand building, and personal finance and investment sessions, all wrapped inside Fanatics’ sprawling commerce ecosystem and Boardroom’s storytelling engine.

This is not a one‑off “feel good” workshop. Fanatics has been running its Athlete Immersion Program since 2023, bringing WNBA, MLB and NFL players into its offices for modules on brand strategy, marketing, business foundations, media and leadership, now formalised under the Chapter: Next banner with Boardroom and USC as curriculum partners.

What makes this moment different is that for WNBA players, the business classroom is opening just as the underlying economics of their sport are poised for a step‑change. In the league’s latest CBA proposal, the team salary cap would reportedly jump from about 1.5 million dollars in 2025 to around 5 million dollars in the first year of a new deal, with future caps tied directly to league revenue rather than a flat escalator.

On an individual level, the proposal projects a minimum salary north of roughly $225,000, an average salary above $500,000, and a guaranteed maximum base of about $1 million for top players, with revenue‑sharing upside that could push those max deals beyond $1.2 million. That is a different universe from the current structure, where the minimum sits near the mid $60,000 range and the supermax is just under a quarter of a million dollars, and where prior revenue‑sharing triggers have not meaningfully paid out under existing CBA language.

The sticking point, and where this becomes a pure business‑of‑sport story, is how the WNBA defines and shares the pie that is suddenly getting much larger. League and union negotiators are aligned on the headline idea, players should share in the upside of growing media rights, sponsorship and expansion revenue, but remain apart on what counts as revenue, what percentage flows to players, and how transparent those calculations will be over the life of the deal.

For players, the frustration is clear: they are seeing packed arenas, surging viewership and a commercial narrative that finally matches the on‑court product, but feel the proposed economics still lag their central role as the asset driving that value.

Drop that CBA backdrop into the Fanatics x Boardroom classroom and the strategy comes into focus. If the minimum salary triples and the average jumps north of half a million dollars, every WNBA rotation player suddenly has more investable capital, more sponsor leverage and more time‑sensitive decisions to make about equity, content IP and long‑term wealth creation. Fanatics brings the operating system: a global commerce and licensing platform where athletes can learn how SKU decisions, margins and data translate into real revenue, plus access to categories like trading cards, memorabilia and digital collectibles. Boardroom layers on media, narrative and network, teaching players how to turn that new economic power into shows, podcasts, production companies and cap‑table positions, supported by ongoing access through its member community and curated networking at tentpole events.

Zoom out, and this New York immersion is part of a broader re‑rating of women’s sports as an investable asset class. Private equity, growth funds and strategic operators are already circling the WNBA and NWSL as under‑monetised leagues with structurally favourable demographics; now the athletes themselves are being systematically trained to sit on the other side of the table as co‑investors, advisors and content rights holders. For the WNBA, that creates an interesting flywheel.