MEDLEY, Fla. — With just one game on her Unrivaled resume, Paige Bueckers has already become one of the biggest advocates for the Miami-based 3-on-3 women’s basketball league that opened its second season Monday at Sephora Arena.
Bueckers, the 2025 WNBA Rookie of the Year, signed a three-year deal with the upstart, founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, before the Dallas Wings selected her No. 1 overall in last year’s draft. But she’s had ties to Unrivaled since her UConn days, when she inked an NIL deal that included equity in the league.
One of the faces of women’s basketball, Bueckers scored a game-high 24 points in her Unrivaled debut with Breeze BC on Monday night. Her Wings teammates Arike Ogunbowale, Maddy Siegrist, Li Yueru, Aziaha James and Haley Jones are also participating in the eight-week Unrivaled season.
This year, Unrivaled added two new teams and a development pool and upgraded its facilities in an industrial area about seven miles from Miami International Airport. The league has become something of an offseason haven for a select group of WNBA stars, who in a previous era would have left the States to play overseas to supplement their low league salaries.
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But Bueckers and her contemporaries are looking to usher in a new age of women’s basketball as momentum builds around the sport.
“This is just the beginning,” Bueckers said in her postgame news conference Monday. “This is not a secondary league.”
Still, Unrivaled might not be sustainable long term. It’s centralized in one work-in-progress facility, in one city, with only select players participating (in a non-traditional format at that). But if anything, the league could be leverage for players who are asking more of the WNBA, which has seen historic growth thanks to rising stars such as Bueckers, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.
Helping Unrivaled’s case is its ability to attract investors, whose commitment boosted the average league salary last season to more than $220,000 per player for its eight-week season, dwarfing the WNBA’s figure, which in 2025 hovered around $150,000 with a supermaximum of about $250,000. The WNBA runs from May to October.
Bueckers, one of the high-profile investors in the league, will reportedly earn more during the Unrivaled season than she will over the duration of her four-year WNBA rookie contract, worth about $348,000.
Unrivaled’s second season tipped off four days before the collective bargaining agreement between the WNBA and its player’s union expires for a third time. After the two sides did not come to terms by the initial Oct. 31 deadline, they extended negotiations until Nov. 30. No agreement was reached, so the new deadline became Jan. 9. A strike could be on the table if the agreement doesn’t meet players’ expectations.
“This league is providing great things, and we need this in the W,” Ogunbowale, in her second season with Unrivaled, told The Dallas Morning News.
Is Unrivaled’s model sustainable?
Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell, Collier’s husband, likened the league to the NBA’s offseason events, which include combines and pro-ams.
“We’re just doing that on television, and the players are being paid for that,” Bazzell said.
Games are shown on TNT, truTV and HBOMax. Unrivaled averaged 221,000 viewers on TNT and truTV during its regular season, and its two-day postseason and reached 11.9 million total viewers, according to the league. Every game was sold out, with ticket and merchandise sales surpassing seven figures. Roughly $30 million in revenue was double what was projected, and the league expects to turn a profit in its second season.
Unrivaled has adopted a player-owned model and is largely funded by investors. In December 2024, the league announced $28 million in funding from big names such as Michael Phelps and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Ahead of the 2026 season, Unrivaled increased its valuation to $340 million after completing an oversubscribed Series B investment round. Despite being a young league, and still getting settled into its home in Miami, Unrivaled has partnered with more than 20 brands, including Sephora, Samsung, Xfinity and Maker’s Mark.
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“It’s no secret that women’s basketball is booming,” Matt Drew, chief revenue officer for Unrivaled, told The News. “With that brings a lot of broadcast interest and brand interest, and it brings revenue. With our model, we’re really proud of the fact that [it] opens up the capacity to share a lot of that revenue with the players.”
Unrivaled is a much smaller operation than the WNBA in terms of scale, with just eight clubs all based at the facility in Miami. A total of 54 players are participating this season, and the main arena seats around 1,000 fans. Bazzell said it’s more likely the league would increase roster spots rather than the number of clubs.
The WNBA expanded to 13 teams in 2025, with the addition of the Golden State Valkyries. This year, the league will expand to Canada with the Toronto Tempo and is set to have 16 teams by 2028.
Unrivaled had six teams and 36 players in its inaugural 14-game regular season.
“We’ll have 16 teams, over 190 players we need to take care of,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert said at last year’s draft. “I know it’s a lot easier to do [36] in one spot. We obviously travel the world and the U.S.”
While Unrivaled will make a tour stop to Philadelphia on Jan. 30, the league lacks strong regional ties and relies more on player-driven fandom. In-person tickets are harder for fans to come by and half of the opening day games were played Monday afternoon, when most fans are at school or work.
The league also has to compete with the NBA and college basketball seasons.
Unrivaled boasts three practice courts, a main arena for games, a large weight room, locker rooms for each of its eight clubs and essentially everything a modern women’s basketball player could need. But it’s all consolidated into one area, and the players don’t travel for games.
Leaders are optimistic about the league’s long-term future despite not turning a profit in the first season.
“The market response has been amazing,” Lawler said. “Every stakeholder is a very active participant in the success of this league. … We’re really forming a family that wants this to succeed.”
Bazzell said Unrivaled is an attempt to grow the women’s basketball ecosystem.
“I love where we’re at right now,” he said. “What we want to build this into is a champions league [for] women’s basketball. That’s not a competition toward the WNBA, it’s just where we feel like we can position ourselves in the market.”
Unrivaled as leverage
Unrivaled is essentially a prototype of what WNBA players want clubs in the league to provide.
The grounds feature a salon sponsored by Sephora, a child care room, a rest and recovery lounge sponsored by Samsung, two hyperbaric oxygen chambers and an in-house aesthetician. Housing is also provided to players and staff. So are meals.
Of course, the pay is nice, too.
“I think this is special and shows people we should earn more,” Yueru, who was traded to the Wings in June, told The News.
What Unrivaled offers has attracted young talent, and 75% of players, including Bueckers, are committed through 2028. Unrivaled has also established a pipeline at the college level, where the WNBA funnels most of its talent.
The fact that Bueckers, one of the drivers of the women’s basketball boom, and other young stars are involved in Unrivaled is a big win for the league and sends a message to the WNBA about what marquee players expect in the next collective bargaining agreement.
“Paige is a superstar, and Paige is someone that raises the level of everyone else,” Bazzell said. “It’s not an individual sport, but individuals do set tones and culture, and she’s one of the culture-setters for us and women’s basketball as a whole.”
Unrivaled gives fans more access to WNBA stars like Dallas Wings phenom Paige BueckersUnrivaled facility a work in progress, but offers glimpse into Wings’ future in Dallas