{"id":340802,"date":"2025-12-10T10:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T10:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/340802\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T10:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T10:18:10","slug":"paige-bueckers-teams-up-with-chris-paul-snack-brand-pushes-for-pay-equity-amid-cba-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/340802\/","title":{"rendered":"Paige Bueckers teams up with Chris Paul snack brand, pushes for pay equity amid CBA talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paige Bueckers<\/a>\u2019 strong business acumen might rival her high basketball IQ.<\/p>\n

The Dallas Wings<\/a> star and 2025 WNBA Rookie of the Year has been busy this offseason, traveling around, announcing new partnerships and signing on to upcoming projects. Bueckers has also made history.<\/p>\n

Good Eat\u2019n, a snack brand founded by 12-time NBA All-Star Chris Paul, announced Tuesday that Bueckers has joined the company as an equity partner. She has co-developed her own snack, Ragerz.<\/p>\n

Bueckers\u2019 involvement with Good Eat\u2019n represents the first time a WNBA player has taken an equity stake in an NBA player\u2019s food company.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTo be the first means you\u2019re the start of something, which means there will be seconds, thirds and so many opportunities after that,\u201d Bueckers told The Dallas Morning News. \u201cIt\u2019s really awesome just to be a part of this movement and just women\u2019s sports in general. Of women getting more of those opportunities to be a part of amazing things like this. And I think it\u2019s really only the beginning to kind of build on what the generation before us had paved the way for us to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

A major player in the rise of women\u2019s basketball, Bueckers is already one of the faces of the WNBA. She belongs to a new generation of women\u2019s hoopers who have an unprecedented amount of marketing power and are also on the frontlines fighting for pay equity. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do things off the court. We can bring more visibility and eyes,\u201d Bueckers said. \u201c[We\u2019re in] the national media, on commercials [and] do large sponsorship deals with brands like Nike and Gatorade and stuff that has national, and even global, visibility. We\u2019re more than just WNBA players and I think we want to get compensated as such.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bueckers will make about $348,000 over her four-year WNBA rookie contract. But her offcourt endeavors are much more lucrative. Most players in the league don\u2019t have those opportunities to fall back on, and that\u2019s part of why they\u2019re asking for more.<\/p>\n

The WNBA and the players\u2019 union have been long negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement, with the expiration date for the CBA having been extended twice since the initial Oct. 31 deadline. When both sides couldn\u2019t come to an agreement by the new Nov. 30 deadline, it was pushed to Jan. 9.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s things, as WNBA players and the WNBPA, that we\u2019re standing firm on. I think that\u2019s why the extensions are happening and the conversations are continuing to keep going past the deadlines,\u201d Bueckers said. \u201cThese deadlines will probably continue to keep getting extended.\u201d<\/p>\n

Players are asking the league to invest in them in the same way brands have invested in Bueckers.<\/p>\n

Bueckers\u2019 long list of sponsors includes Nike, Gatorade, Verizon and Door Dash. This offseason, she\u2019s made appearances in commercials for Ally and Dick\u2019s Sporting Goods. Bueckers has also announced partnerships with Carmax and Reese\u2019s, with the latter being in collaboration with fellow WNBA star Angel Reese.<\/p>\n

When Bueckers left UConn in April after winning a national title, her NIL valuation \u2014 a measure sports media site On3 uses to estimate an athlete\u2019s value and marketability \u2014 was $1.5 million. And before the Wings drafted her No. 1 overall, Bueckers signed a three-year deal with 3-on-3 women\u2019s basketball league Unrivaled.<\/p>\n

She will play in the league starting in January, but Bueckers has been connected to Unrivaled since her UConn days, when she signed an NIL deal that included equity in the league. Her first-year Unrivaled salary will reportedly exceed what she\u2019ll make over her rookie contract.<\/p>\n

After the league\u2019s growth over the last few years, bolstered by stars such as Bueckers, Reese and Caitlin Clark, players are asking for the league to acknowledge their part in the boom. Big brands and names have already bought in.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be in rooms with legends like Chris Paul, just to build more connections and build more visibility is only going to help in drawing more fans and people,\u201d Bueckers said. \u201cThose opportunities are great for the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

City releases designs for Memorial Auditorium arena, where Dallas Wings are set to play<\/a>Dallas Wings\u2019 Paige Bueckers named to Forbes\u2019 30 under 30 list for 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Find more Wings coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paige Bueckers\u2019 strong business acumen might rival her high basketball IQ. The Dallas Wings star and 2025 WNBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[2834,2833,99,13469,434],"class_list":["post-340802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-dallas-wings","tag-paige-bueckers","tag-sports","tag-wings","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}