Every offseason, fans notice the same thing: some of the biggest names in the W show up on rosters in Russia, Turkey, China, Australia, and elsewhere. It's not because they're leaving the league — it's because, for a long time, that's where a big chunk of a player's yearly income actually came from.
For most of the league's history, WNBA salaries lagged far behind what top overseas clubs were willing to pay for the same talent. A star could often multiply her domestic salary several times over by signing with a well-funded EuroLeague or Russian club for the winter. For players without a shoe deal or other outside income, that overseas paycheck wasn't a bonus — it was the majority of their basketball income for the year.
The WNBA offseason (roughly October through April) also happens to line up with when most of those overseas leagues play their season, which made the arrangement logistically possible: play in the W all summer, then play again abroad all winter, with barely a break in between.
Playing basketball essentially year-round takes a physical toll, and it became a real point of tension between players, teams, and the league — teams were paying players who arrived to training camp already worn down from a full second season overseas. The 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement addressed this directly with "prioritization" rules: players who have been in the league long enough are required to report to their WNBA team on time, which functionally discourages staying overseas for a full extended season the way players once did.
As the league's domestic earning potential has grown — through higher salaries, richer max-contract tiers, expansion into new markets, and bigger media-rights deals — the financial case for grinding through a second season overseas has gotten weaker for a lot of players. Some still go, especially earlier-career players still building savings or players from the country they're playing in. But it's no longer the default path it once was for the league's stars.