Photo courtesy of Unrivaled
After historic tour stops in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, the women’s 3×3 basketball league, Unrivaled, crowned the Breanna Stewart-led Mist as its second-ever league championship.
Amid uncertainty about the 2026 WNBA season due to ongoing CBA negotiations, this season of Unrivaled made it clear that there’s still a growing appetite for competitive women’s basketball.
Last week, Unrivaled made its second-ever tour stop at Barclays Center for the semifinal playoff games, selling $1 million in tickets. The game was sold out with 18,761 viewers, while the Mist and Phantom punched their ticket to the finals.
“It’s so exciting to see. It’s so reassuring, so validating,” said Micky Lawler, Commissioner of Unrivaled. “We’re always surprised, but we’re not surprised. It’s very obvious that the voice economy is very strong in women’s basketball.”
The league is based in Miami in a venue with a roughly 1,000-seat capacity, so the tour stops this season made seeing Unrivaled talent more accessible for fans. It helped their TV numbers too — viewership grew 35% after Unrivaled’s stop in Philadelphia.
One of the challenges the league will face moving forward is sustaining engagement as the initial novelty of a new league wears off. Overall playoff viewership was down 9% from last season.
Touring is something the league will explore more in the future, said Alex Bazzell, CEO of Unrivaled. He said that the four teams that didn’t go to Philadelphia to play were “kind of jealous.”
Photo courtesy of Unrivaled
But the league will have to strike a balance — one of the initial positives of Unrivaled for players was that they would be able to spend a largely uninterrupted few months in Miami, rather than having to hit the road often, as in the WNBA.
Stewart, who is also one of the co-founders of Unrivaled, said after the Mist’s semifinal win that the league was contemplating hosting the finals in Brooklyn too, but ultimately did not.
“There’s a thing to going and winning a championship in the place that we built,” Steward said. “So while it is a smaller arena and venue, that’s where the banner is raised.”
While TV numbers were down, revenue was close to $45 million this season, up significantly from $27 million last year, Lawler said. In addition, merchandise sales have doubled, likely helped by the fact that fans could buy it in person at the tour stops.
Some see Unrivaled as a competitor league to the WNBA, though they play in different months. Players get paid more in Unrivaled for less of a time commitment — the average salary of an Unrivaled athlete is $220,000, while the average salary of a WNBA athlete is around $130,000 a season.
A significant salary increase is a major component of what the players are bargaining for, along with a revenue-sharing structure. The WNBA and the players’ union are still negotiating a deal ahead of a March 10 soft deadline set by the league. If a deal isn’t reached by then, WNBA leadership said the season would likely start late.
Unrivaled doesn’t have any plans to host events if the season is postponed, Bazzell said, adding that he hopes a CBA gets done.
“Where we’re at right now is we only like to focus on what’s long term for the business, you know, because as quickly as games may not happen, they could start. So for us to even worry or think about that, it’s not a long-term strategy for us,” he said last week.
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