The league, now in its second season, aims to offer more opportunities for WNBA players to compete \u2014 and earn money \u2014 during the fall-winter off-season, when many players travel abroad to play. Unrivaled has previously played in Miami only. Philadelphia will be the first stop on its first tour on January 30, 2026.<\/p>\n
The tournament is part of growing efforts \u2014 championed by Sykes and her wife, Alexandra, who live in Delaware County \u2014 to bring more opportunities for professional women\u2019s sports to Philly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s meaningful when you have such buy-in from a group that wants you there,\u201d Bazzell said a few days before the announcement. \u201cWe want to continue to try to grow the game and go to markets that don\u2019t have a WNBA team just yet. I know they\u2019ve announced Philly as a new city, which is great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tickets for Unrivaled\u2019s Philly tournament are on sale now<\/a> for $20 to $50.<\/p>\n Napheesa Collier of the Minnesota Lynx and Breanna Stewart of the New York Liberty founded Unrivaled in 2023 to help decrease that vast gap between WNBA (women) and NBA (men) players, where the average salary is 80 times higher.<\/a> WNBA pays its players between $60,000<\/a> to $250,000 per season, with the majority in the lower range. In Europe and other countries, an WNBA player can earn more than twice her salary in the U.S.<\/p>\n Unrivaled\u2019s salaries are competitive \u2014 at more than $200,000<\/a> for their inaugural 10-week season, their players were the highest paid U.S. women\u2019s athletes in 2024. Unlike in the WNBA, Unrivaled\u2019s six teams aren\u2019t city-based (no travel) and they play 3-on-3, (vs. 5-on-5), but still full court.<\/p>\n Collier and Stewart recruited all 36 players, who played 48 games from mid-January to mid-March. It reached almost 12 million total viewers in its inaugural season. Earlier this year, investments from Serena Williams\u2019s firm, Serena Ventures, plus existing investors Warner Bros. Discovery and USNWT star Alex Morgan\u2019s Trybe Ventures helped bring the company\u2019s valuation to $340 million.<\/a><\/p>\n With this level of interest, Unrivaled\u2019s co-founders decided to expand and tour in their second season, rather than waiting until their third.<\/p>\n That\u2019s where Wanda and Alex Sykes come in. The Philly women\u2019s sports boosters have campaigned for years to get a professional women\u2019s sports team through The Philadelphia Sisters,<\/a> (Philly Sisters) the organization they founded in 2019. The group, which includes former federal prosecutor and congressional candidate Ashley Lunkenheimer and business woman Starla Crandall alongside the Sykeses, has rallied the NBA, the WNBA, city and state officials and local investors and sponsors to bring a WNBA team to the City. They remember meeting with then-City Councilmember Cherelle Parker in 2020 over Zoom.<\/p>\n Philly Sisters had no plans to stop there, however. They wanted to create even more opportunities to watch and play women\u2019s sports in our city. The Sykeses, who were initial investors in Unrivaled, attended a game during the inaugural season in Miami earlier this year and were chatting with the League\u2019s commissioner, Micky Lawler, about her plans to grow the league.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were looking at tour stops and she mentioned New York and D.C. \u2014 the obvious cities,\u201d Alex Sykes says. \u201cWe were like, well, how about Philadelphia?\u201d<\/p>\n The couple, who are raising teenage twins, long ago adopted Philly as their hometown. Alex, who grew up in France, has so fallen in love with Philly\u2019s sports culture that she\u2019s sported Eagles t-shirts on trips to Paris (and been greeted with \u201cGo Birds!\u201d as a result). Wanda, whose acting career makes her officially bicoastal, recently went on Kylie Kelce\u2019s Not Gonna Lie podcast to beg North Philadelphian and very winning University of South Carolina women\u2019s basketball coach Dawn Staley to get involved in Philly\u2019s WNBA franchise.<\/p>\n \u201cI want Philadelphia to be the capital of women\u2019s sports in the next five years. I hope one day we\u2019ll have five men\u2019s mascots and five women\u2019s mascots.\u201d \u2014 Alex Sykes<\/p>\n But they\u2019re not just down with the WNBA. They also made an official pitch to Unrivaled\u2019s leadership, inviting them to Philly to check out Xfinity Mobile Arena, run the Rocky steps, meet with potential sponsors and see why Philly sports fans are, frankly, the best sports fans. It poured rain the whole day of their visit, but by the end, Unrivaled\u2019s leadership was enamoured.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were just blown away,\u201d Sykes says. \u201cThey were like, okay, we get it. Philadelphia is going to show up.\u201d<\/p>\n Bazzell says the league was impressed \u2014 and mentioned Unrivaled players Natasha Cloud and Kahleah Copper are from Philly \u2014 and that Dawn Staley was an early investor in Unrivaled.<\/p>\n And make no mistake: Unrivaled\u2019s choice to play in South Philly is a big deal. \u201cThey are taking a risk in choosing us. We\u2019re the only tour stop. We\u2019re the only city,\u201d Lunkenheimer says. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to go to a place where there\u2019s already a fan base and we don\u2019t have any women\u2019s sports teams, so we don\u2019t have that set list. Everything has to be built.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not just showing up and playing a basketball game,\u201d Bazzell says. \u201cWe have such an obligation for it being our first time outside of Miami that we want to do it correctly, because we do have incredible fans, and we want to show just a different experience.\u201d<\/p>\n That experience will consist of four TBA teams playing two back-to-back, action-packed games on January 30. (One ticket admits you to both games.)<\/p>\n If you\u2019re familiar with a WNBA or NBA game, well, Unrivaled\u2019s format is quite a bit different. Whereas the WNBA plays four 10-minute quarters (plus 5-minute periods in overtime), Unrivaled games have three 7-minute quarters plus an untimed fourth quarter played to a winning score (the leading team\u2019s end-of-third-quarter score, plus 11), which prevents overtime and helps create a faster pace. The 3-on-3 versus traditional 5-on-5 setup exposes players\u2019 strengths and weaknesses. You can\u2019t be out there if you can\u2019t play offense, defense, and everything in-between. As a result, some of the WNBA\u2019s biggest stars joined the league.<\/p>\n WNBA superstar Sabrina Ionescu has called the league \u201cthe best of both worlds\u201d \u2014 a chance to train, earn, and \u201csurround yourself with the best players.\u201d In this way, every Unrivaled game is its very own All-Star game.<\/p>\n No wonder Lunkenheimer says local college and university teams have called, wanting to bring players. The league also plans to work with groups like Watch Party PHL<\/a>, which hosts inclusive meet-ups to watch women\u2019s sports, to promote the event.<\/p>\n Unrivaled\u2019s players won\u2019t just be competing in Philly. They\u2019ll be giving back, partnering with the nonprofit Philadelphia Youth Basketball<\/a> (PYB) to host a youth health and wellness event on January 29.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were like, if you come to Philadelphia, you have to do something in the community,\u201d Lunkenheimer says. \u201cAnd they [the Unrivaled team] were like, of course we wouldn\u2019t want to come to a community and not do something in the community. That shared value is very authentic to them and it\u2019s very important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019re still working out the details, but the event could include conversations about healthy eating and physical activity, interaction with players and potentially health screenings. PYB provides basketball training, mentorship, leadership development, health and wellness, and academic programming for kids aged 7-18. Last year, their programs reached more than 700 kids from 74 different Philly zip codes.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cSports is so tied to health and wellness,\u201d Lunkenheimer says. \u201cKids don\u2019t even know that they\u2019re getting healthy when they\u2019re playing.\u201d<\/p>\n Philadelphia: women\u2019s sports city <\/p>\n Since founding Philly Sisters in 2019, the Sykeses have seen interest in women\u2019s sports explode in Philly. There was the big WNBA announcement, and a smaller, but seriously viral \u2014 line-around-the-block\u2014 debut of Marsha\u2019s,<\/a> an all-women\u2019s sports bar on South Street a couple weeks ago. (Alex Sykes will join Jason Wright, former Washington Commanders president and now an investor in professional women\u2019s sports, at The Citizen\u2019s Ideas We Should Steal Festival <\/a>on November 14.)<\/p>\n Watch Party PHL raised just shy of $90,000 to open their own bar<\/a> in time to host watch parties for the PGA Championship, FIFA World Cup and MLB\u2019s All-Star Game and draft \u2014 all coming to town next year.<\/a> \u201cWe get to kick those things off,\u201d Bazzell says.<\/p>\n It couldn\u2019t happen at a better time: Last year\u2019s 2024 WNBA finals championship series drew an average of 1.6 million viewers<\/a>, a 115 percent increase from 2023. A report from McKinsey found that between 2022 and 2024 revenue from women\u2019s sports grew 4.5 times faster<\/a> compared to men\u2019s sports. They expect the market to reach $2.5 billion in value by 2030.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s only going to grow because the demand is so high and women\u2019s sports is so untapped,\u201d Sykes says.<\/p>\n Alex Sykes hopes that some of this meteoric growth makes its way to Philly. She and Wanda aren\u2019t stopping with women\u2019s basketball. They plan to continue fighting to bring more professional women\u2019s leagues to Philly \u2014 maybe try another soccer team? An ice hockey team? Volleyball? Boxing?<\/p>\n \u201cI want Philadelphia to be the capital of women\u2019s sports in the next five years,\u201d Alex says. \u201cI hope one day we\u2019ll have five men\u2019s mascots and five women\u2019s mascots.\u201d<\/p>\n Unrivaled Tournament play ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Unrivaled-Toledo-Champs.jpg\"\/)
The celebrating champions at Unrivaled in Toledo Founding Unrivaled <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Kahleah-Copper-and-Natasha-Cloud.jpg\"\/)
Philly\u2019s own Kahleah Copper, left, and Natasha Cloud, right Unrivaled + Philadelphia Youth Basketball <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/nl_bolt600-copy.jpg\"\/)
MORE SPORTS COVERAGE FROM THE CITIZEN<\/p>\n