The WNBA has spent years building a reputation as a league that puts inclusivity and community at the center of its identity. This month, that reputation earned it a first: the WNBA is now the first professional sports league to host major events at the Obama Presidential Center.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
“We are thrilled to welcome the WNBA as our first professional sports league hosted at the Obama Presidential Center,” said Valerie Jarrett, CEO of The Obama Foundation. “At the Center, we believe sports have the power to bring people together and create meaningful opportunities to build the next generation of leaders” (via Boardroom).
That distinction is tied directly to this year’s All-Star Weekend, running July 24-25 in Chicago. Several of the league’s signature events, including All-Star Media Day and practice, Jr. WNBA Day, the Shooting Stars competition, and the third annual Changemaker Day, will take place on the Center’s campus. The practice session alone carries its own weight: the league says it marks the first time an All-Star practice has ever been held at a venue like this one.
That kind of programming doesn’t happen without partners, and the WNBA brought plenty. The league’s Changemakers group, including Ally, AT&T, AWS, CarMax, Deloitte, Google, and Nike, will help plan and run the day’s activities alongside the Chicago Sky, Chicago Public Schools, and the Girls Opportunity Alliance, an initiative of the Obama Foundation.
Jr. WNBA Day, sponsored by AT&T, is built around that same idea of reaching the next generation directly. The day includes a basketball fundamentals clinic, panel discussions, a vision-board workshop, and STEM activities, all aimed at using basketball as a way into leadership and learning for young girls.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert framed the partnership as an extension of what the league has been trying to build all along.
“Hosting AT&T WNBA All-Star events at the Obama Presidential Center is a true honor and reflects our commitment to creating connection through basketball and engaging communities in meaningful ways,” Engelbert said. “We’re excited to bring together the WNBA family and the greater Chicago community to create memorable experiences at this historic new venue.”
Most of that programming will happen inside Home Court, the Center’s 60,000-square-foot athletic building, which includes a WNBA-regulation basketball court built specifically for this kind of use. Not every event is moving there, though. The bigger, ticketed pieces of the weekend still need bigger venues: the 3-Point Contest and Shooting Stars competition on July 24 stay at Wintrust Arena, and the All-Star Game itself tips off July 25 at United Center.
That split, intimate community programming at the Obama Center, marquee competition at the city’s biggest arenas, mirrors something Obama himself has done with women’s basketball for years.
President Obama Remains A Crucial Supporter of Women’s Basketball
Obama’s connection to the sport didn’t start with this announcement. His annual March Madness bracket picks, a tradition the Obama Foundation still runs every year, have always included the women’s tournament alongside the men’s, giving it the same public attention most administrations reserved for the men’s side alone.
That same instinct showed up throughout his presidency in a more direct way. WNBA champions visited the Obama White House in six of his eight years in office, from the 2008 Detroit Shock through the 2014 Phoenix Mercury, a stretch unmatched by any other administration.
It’s continued well past his time in the White House, too. In 2025, with a Liberty championship visit looking unlikely, Obama and Michelle Obama met the team in person instead, a moment forward Breanna Stewart later called more intimate than an actual White House visit. Hosting All-Star Weekend programming now is less a new gesture from Obama than a continuation of one he’s kept up for close to two decades.
For the WNBA, the timing lines up well. All-Star Weekend is just around the corner, and this year, it comes with a venue that fits the story the league has been telling about itself all along.