{"id":515170,"date":"2026-03-10T14:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/515170\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T14:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:43:08","slug":"unrivaled-shows-its-worth-with-wnbas-2026-season-uncertain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/515170\/","title":{"rendered":"Unrivaled shows its worth with WNBA\u2019s 2026 season uncertain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Unrivaled\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Unrivaled<\/p>\n

After historic tour stops in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, the women\u2019s 3\u00d73 basketball league, Unrivaled, crowned the Breanna Stewart-led Mist as its second-ever league championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amid uncertainty about the 2026 WNBA season due to ongoing CBA negotiations, this season of Unrivaled made it clear that there\u2019s still a growing appetite for competitive women\u2019s basketball.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so exciting to see. It\u2019s so reassuring, so validating,\u201d said Micky Lawler, Commissioner of Unrivaled. \u201cWe\u2019re always surprised, but we\u2019re not surprised. It\u2019s very obvious that the voice economy is very strong in women\u2019s basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 viewership grew 35% after Unrivaled\u2019s stop in Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019t go to Philadelphia to play were \u201ckind of jealous.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"PaigePhoto courtesy of Unrivaled<\/p>\n

But the league will have to strike a balance \u2014 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stewart, who is also one of the co-founders of Unrivaled, said after the Mist\u2019s semifinal win that the league was contemplating hosting the finals in Brooklyn too, but ultimately did not.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a thing to going and winning a championship in the place that we built,\u201d Steward said.\u00a0 \u201cSo while it is a smaller arena and venue, that\u2019s where the banner is raised.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 the average salary of an Unrivaled athlete is $220,000, while the average salary of a WNBA athlete is around $130,000 a season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A significant salary increase is a major component of what the players are bargaining for, along with a revenue-sharing structure. The WNBA<\/a> and the players\u2019 union are still negotiating a deal ahead of a March 10 soft deadline set by the league. If a deal isn\u2019t reached by then, WNBA leadership said the season would likely start late.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unrivaled doesn\u2019t have any plans to host events if the season is postponed, Bazzell said, adding that he hopes a CBA gets done.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we\u2019re at right now is we only like to focus on what\u2019s 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\u2019s not a long-term strategy for us,\u201d he said last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For more like this Unrivaled feature, visit AMNY.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy of Unrivaled After historic tour stops in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, the women\u2019s 3\u00d73 basketball league, Unrivaled,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,18419,434],"class_list":["post-515170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-unrivaled","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}