Unrivaled women’s basketball league debuts Friday

Unrivaled, a new 3-on-3 women’s professional basketball league, launches Friday, presenting both a major test and opportunity for women’s sports to boost its growing profile in the United States.

The league, co-founded by WNBA superstars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, has already announced deals with a dozen sponsors and raised $35 million in funding. Collier told CNBC that the league has already shown it has “immense” potential and opportunity.

“When you invest into the players and invest into women’s sports, I think we’re seeing the return already,” she said. “This is just the beginning for us. It’s year one and we’ve already been able to do this, so we’re really excited for the future.”

Games will air on Warner Bros. Discovery-owned TNT Sports platforms in a multiyear media rights deal. TV ratings will matter not just in terms of total viewership, but also demographics, said Lee Berke, president and CEO of sports consulting firm LHB Sports, Entertainment & Media.

“You’re looking for audiences that skew younger, men and women watching, you’re looking for the size of the audience,” Berke told CNBC. “There’s obviously a lot of hype going into day one. You want to see that audience expand and grow over the course of the season.”

Here’s what to know about Unrivaled ahead of its inaugural tip-off:

Games are played in a 3-on-3 format and take place on a smaller court compared to WNBA courts. They last one hour and are broadcast on TNT on Fridays and Mondays and on TruTV on Saturdays. Games are also available to stream on WBD’s Max.

All games are played at the Mediapro US venue in Medley, Florida, a suburb of Miami. The season takes place during the WNBA offseason and is intended to provide an alternative to playing overseas.

Many WNBA players spend their offseason playing for teams in Russia, China and other countries to supplement their income. However, the WNBA collective bargaining agreement signed in 2020 now suspends players without pay for the season if they don’t return from their overseas teams in time for training camp. WNBA training camp starts on April 27.

“It’s trying to fill a gap in the calendar for these players. It’s extending the runway of professional basketball,” Alex Bazzell, Unrivaled president and Collier’s husband, previously told CNBC.

Unrivaled will also pay many players a higher salary than the WNBA does. The total salary pool is over $8 million, Bazzell told SB Nation, which averages out to about $242,000 per player this season. Players will also receive equity and revenue shares from the league, which has said it is offering the highest average salary in women’s professional sports league history.

At a press conference Friday, Bazzell said the league doesn’t have a minimum or maximum salary, but that pay is partly based on what competitors and other women’s sports leagues pay.

“We are being extremely aggressive when you look at the entire landscape and ecosystem,” Bazzell said. “We try to look at numerous things: What are you making overseas, potentially? What are you making in the WNBA? How do we beat those numbers, candidly, to make it worth their while?”

WNBA yearly salaries currently range from the minimum $66,079 to the core player maximum of $249,244. Only one player per WNBA team can be designated as a core player and earn that amount.

The league has 36 participants for its first season, all of whom played in the WNBA last year. There are 15 2024 WNBA All Stars on the rosters, headlined by All-WNBA first-team honorees Collier, Stewart and Alyssa Thomas. Other notable players include Sabrina Ionescu, Brittney Griner and Angel Reese.

Unrivaled has raised $35 million from its seed and Series A rounds from a host of high-profile investors. Its backers include basketball stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Carmelo Anthony as well as Olympians like Alex Morgan and Michael Phelps. Tennis great Coco Gauff was announced as its newest investor on Jan. 6.

Collier said while everyone else is now catching on to the rise of women’s sports, sports figures were early to recognize the value of the industry.

“I think the people in sport have known this for a long time,” Collier said. “To see the support of other athletes is really encouraging. They believe in us so much, so that’s been really nice to see.”

Unrivaled’s corporate partners, Collier added, align with their vision of growing the sport.

“We said for a long time, this is not a charity. This is a great business opportunity, and those brands recognize that, too,” Collier said. “They’re not just doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they do believe in the growth of women’s sports. But they’re also doing it because they know that is something that has a lot of potential to be profitable.”

About a dozen companies have inked sponsorship deals with Unrivaled, including Sephora, State Farm, Wilson, Ally Financial and Samsung. Most recently, Unrivaled named Sprite as its presenting partner for the 1-on-1 tournament and Bodyarmor as its official sports drink.

“It’s tremendously impressive, both in terms of the number of sponsors, the quality of the sponsors and the fact that these are nontraditional sports sponsors,” Berke said.

TNT Sports’ crew of announcers and studio hosts for Unrivaled coverage includes Basketball Hall of Famer Lisa Leslie and two-time WNBA MVP Candace Parker.

Unrivaled’s debut comes amid a spike in national interest in women’s sports — particularly basketball.

The WNBA in particular enjoyed a surge, as former college stars Caitlin Clark, Cameron Brink and Reese led an attention-grabbing rookie class. The league said it broke an all-time record with over 54 million unique viewers during the season and saw its best in-person attendance numbers in 22 years.

Last year’s WNBA Finals, in which the New York Liberty defeated the Minnesota Lynx in five games, was the league’s most-viewed championship series in 25 years, according to ESPN.

The WNBA is expanding the Finals from a best-of-five format to a best-of-seven series starting next year. It is also debuting a 13th franchise, the Golden State Valkyries, next season and will add teams in Toronto and Portland, Oregon, in 2026.

Both the WNBA and its players are poised to cash in on the momentum.

The league can reevaluate its current 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal after 2028, CNBC previously reported, and the WNBA players union opted out of its current collective bargaining agreement in October. A new agreement, which would take effect after next season, could provide players with higher wages and more benefits, and the growing spotlight on WNBA athletes gives them greater leverage at the negotiating table.

Unrivaled will have a big impact on the business of women’s basketball, Collier told CNBC.

“We’re already seeing it expand the landscape. Overseas contracts are going up, other domestic league contracts are going up,” Collier said. “We’re trying to expand what the normal thinking around the business of women’s sports is, and you’re definitely going to see us push for those same things in the CBA.”

— CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo, Jake Piazza and Alex Sherman contributed to this report.