Can Unrivaled prove there’s money in women’s sports? ‘There’s real dollars in this’
On a recent Monday night in Medley, the cascading lights shimmered extra brightly at Wayfair Arena. Loud hip-hop music boomed over the PA system, and attendees of all ages feverishly milled about.
Unrivaled is a 3-on-3 pro women’s basketball league in its first season, featuring 36 of the best women’s basketball players in the world. The league, which has all of its games at a 20,000-square-foot facility in Medley, represents a rise in prominence for women’s hoops.
“We didn’t really have [games] as much on TV when we were growing up,” said Napheesa Collier, a founder of Unrivaled who plays on its Lunar Owls team. “So to do that for another little girl is a big honor for sure.”
Unrivaled could represent a real turning point in American women’s sports. Women’s basketball is more popular across America than ever, and the league has emerged to help address the pay disparity between professional women’s basketball players and their male counterparts. Players in Unrivaled are encouraged to capitalize on their popularity in real life and on social media. Those players services’ are worth top dollar — and some figures in the sports world believe Unrivaled’s impact will have a positive effect for the careers of other female athletes, too.
Haley Rosen, the founder of the media site Just Women’s Sports, said both the industry and fans seem to finally be waking up to the promise of women’s athletics as a profitable endeavor.
“I totally think women’s sports is a business, and Unrivaled is proving that,” said Rosen, 31. “It’s important for people to realize there are all these benefits to women playing sports. There’s real dollars in this. Women’s sports historically have been treated like a charity and not a business.”
Collier and fellow basketball star Breanna Stewart, also an Unrivaled player, are the league’s cofounders and have worked to make sure the women’s league is equitable for every person involved. All 36 players across Unrivaled’s six teams — called “clubs” — have equity in the league and share a salary pool of approximately $8 million. The average salary is $220,000, compared to the WNBA, where only 25 players earned $200,000 or more in salary in 2024.
Players also have a chance to win more money at individual games and events. The winner of a recent 1-on-1 tournament took home $200,000, and each of their teammates received $10,000. The runner-up in the tournament received $50,000, and the two other semifinalists earned $25,000.
Unrivaled has received $35 million in funding so far, including from athletes Coco Gauff and Michael Phelps. Its three-year television deal with TNT ensures that the games get primetime viewership on cable.
A ‘fortunate era’
Kate Meier, the recently retired University of Miami women’s basketball coach, said it’s been inspiring watching the fledgling league get started.
“Sometimes I can’t even believe the fortunate era that women’s basketball is celebrating right now,” she said.
Meier, 57, was an All-American player at Duke University in the late ‘80s. Since the WNBA didn’t launch until 1997, Meier played basketball overseas for three years after college and then became a coach upon her return to the United States.
Meier’s coaching career included some of the best moments in University of Miami women’s basketball history, like a run to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight in 2023. Her tenure as a coach coincided with the playing careers of college basketball players and social media influencers Haley and Hanna Cavinder, who became famous for their balance of student-athlete lifestyles and their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) business. Women players like the Cavinders now have more ways to earn income than ever before, Meier noted.
“They are exactly what the NCAA was trying to be permissible about,” Meier said. “It would be unfair if they couldn’t receive the income if they were allowed to play.”
Rickea Jackson, a star on Unrivaled’s Mist Basketball Club, had a promising rookie season in the WNBA and aimed to bring that momentum into Unrivaled. In her first round matchup, she used dizzying ballhandling skills and layups to win her 1-on-1 matchup 11-3.
Standing at 6’2” in bright pink Skechers basketball shoes, Jackson, 23, is another one of basketball’s new generation of female stars who have benefited from developments like NIL. Like the Cavinder twins that Meier coached at the University of Miami, Jackson believes that NIL has helped her better understand the business of sports. That understanding gave her even more reason to promote herself to her nearly 400,000 Instagram followers upon joining the Unrivaled league.
“I feel like NIL helped me a lot,” she said. “[It helped me with] starting to manage money early on instead of just now getting into [the business side].”
Rosen, the founder of the Just Women’s Sports news site, believes that Unrivaled is succeeding particularly in connecting with fans in the digital space. While having games aired on cable television via TNT is important in familiarizing fans with the league, it also helps produce content to be shared across social media, she said. At a time when NBA TV ratings are in decline, Unrivaled is trying a somewhat different approach, using every aspect of its visually stimulating experience to its advantage online.
“The day-to-day casual fans get built and developed in digital spaces,” Rosen said. “They’re consuming their sports content on social media. Unrivaled has done a great job by building content first. That’s something women’s sports does well as a whole.”
Unrivaled’s 1-on-1 format as a midseason tournament is one such example of how Unrivaled has tapped into the pulse of basketball culture. Online, 1-on-1 videos of players of all levels regularly gain millions of views on YouTube and are frequently shared on social media. An Instagram reel of Mist Basketball Club star Aaliyah Edwards playing during the 1-on-1 tournament got 629,000 views, showing the league’s reach.
Looking ahead
But as the number of financial opportunities for women hoops players increase, some people wonder if the WNBA will respond with limitiations. While Fort Lauderdale employment and sports attorney Michael Elkins doesn’t see Unrivaled experiencing any legal issues right now, he wonders if its schedule occurring in the WNBA’s offseason may eventually lead to player restrictions.
“It’s a free marketplace,” he said. “However, if WNBA team owners have concerns about players playing in an alternate league, team owners could place provisions that could lead to a fight with the [WNBA] players’ union, which could come down the [line].”
In October, basketball star Angel Reese raised eyebrows when she said that her WNBA salary could not cover her bills. Reese won a national championship at Louisiana State University and also earned NIL income that capitalized on her offcourt popularity. She now plays in the offseason for Unrivaled’s Rose Basketball Club and has been an outspoken advocate for women players getting the equity they deserve.
Two of the game’s most famous stars — A’ja Wilson and Caitlin Clark — are not playing in Unrivaled. Both have lucrative Nike sneaker contracts, with Wilson’s debut shoe to be released soon and Clark’s in the works. Both athletes have a level of offcourt income that can allow them to not work in their offseasons.
Unrivaled has also appealed to players by offering benefits like on-site childcare that go beyond equitable financial compensation. Skylar Diggins-Smith has won a gold medal as an Olympian and won fans the world over due to her tenacity as a floor general. She’s also a mother of two children and was drawn to participate in the league because of its willingness to support working mothers like her.
“It was founded by working moms, so it’s for us, by us,” she said. “Everything was thought out as far as what we would need in mind. I really do think that’s because of their vision for what they wanted it to be and who they wanted to compete in this. They understood what came with that.”
As Diggins-Smith rushed to a locker room after her first-round victory in the recent 1-on-1 tournament, she was approached by a group of girls who wanted to take a picture with her. She gladly obliged.
Two of those girls are the daughters of Steve Solomon, a coach at Weston’s K-12 Sagemont Preparatory School. He rushed them to Wayfair Arena after their own basketball game ended to see their favorite players.
“It’s just making the game bigger,” said Solomon, 39. “Right now, women’s basketball is at an all-time high. This is needed and happened at the right time.”
%20Cropped.jpg)