Park Ji-hyun Joins Project B League as Women’s Basketball Evolves

South Korean star Park Ji-hyun is stepping into a different kind of spotlight. The Los Angeles Sparks forward has signed on with Project B, a new international basketball league aiming to redraw the map of the women’s game.

Her move, confirmed on Tuesday and reported by the Korea Herald, comes with a symbolic twist: the league’s first major training camp will be held in Seoul, on Park’s home turf.

Seoul Becomes Launchpad

From January 6 to 12, 2027, Project B will run a training camp at the Park Hyatt Seoul in the Gangnam district. Players, coaches and league officials are expected to gather there as the startup competition begins to take shape.

It’s an unusual setting for a basketball camp — a luxury hotel in one of Asia’s most high-profile districts — but it matches the ambition. Project B is not trying to blend in with the existing calendar. It’s trying to stand apart.

The league, founded by Jeff Prentice and former Google and Facebook executive Grady Burnett, plans separate women’s and men’s competitions. Each side will feature six teams, with 11 players per roster. A compact field, built for concentration of talent and, if the founders get their way, concentrated attention.

A New Calendar, New Money, New Power

The first Project B season is slated to run from January through April 2027. That timing is no accident. It sits cleanly outside the WNBA window, which stretches from May to October, opening the door for top WNBA players to double up without overlap.

Tournaments are expected across three continents: Asia, Europe and Latin America. Valencia in Spain and Tokyo in Japan are already locked in as host cities, with more to come.

The selling point is not just geography or timing. Project B has made a direct play at the sport’s economic fault line, stating it plans to pay female players more than the WNBA and offer them an ownership stake in the league. In an era when athletes increasingly want a piece of the business, not just a contract, that promise hits a nerve.

The pitch is working. Alongside Park, other established names have already committed, including her Sparks teammate Nneka Ogwumike and Phoenix Mercury standout Alyssa Thomas. When leaders of that stature sign up, the rest of the locker room tends to listen.

Park’s Rising Profile

For Park, this is the next step in a career that has already broken barriers at home.

She became only the third South Korean player ever to reach the WNBA. Before that, she went first overall in the Women’s Korean Basketball League draft and immediately justified the hype, earning Rookie of the Year honors in the 2018–2019 season. She then helped Asan Woori Bank to three championship titles, establishing herself as one of the dominant forces in the domestic game.

Her résumé stretches well beyond Korea. Park has logged professional minutes in Australia, New Zealand and Spain, building a game that travels and a reputation that now carries global weight.

Now she becomes one of the faces of a league that wants to reshape the international calendar and test how far the women’s game can push its economic ceiling.

The question is no longer whether players like Park Ji-hyun can thrive on the world stage. It’s whether ventures like Project B can match their ambition.