Unrivaled — a new professional 3-on-3 women’s basketball league — began its inaugural season Jan. 17, paving the way for a more even playing field for women’s sports. The new league was co-founded by Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, who set out to offer WNBA players the opportunity to earn a competitive salary domestically in the offseason.
WNBA players earned an average salary of $147,745 for the 2024 season, with the highest-earning player making $241,984. In contrast, the average salary of a National Basketball League (NBA) player for the 2024-25 season is $11,910,649, with the highest-earning player making over $55 million. To put this in context, the average NBA player made 80 times as much as the average WNBA player in 2024, while viewership differed between the two leagues by a magnitude of about 11 times when combining 2023 viewership figures for the regular season, playoffs and championship, with the WNBA averaging about 1.6 million viewers combined and the NBA averaging 18.71 million viewers combined.
To put these numbers into further context, the minimum salary for WNBA rookies to players with two years of experience is $64,154 and $76,535 for players with three-plus years of experience. In 2023, the real median U.S. household income was $80,610, and the 2023 average annual expenses for U.S. households was $77,280. Therefore, a WNBA player earning the minimum salary for the 2024 season earned less than the average U.S. household’s expenses. Take into account the fact that all 13 WNBA teams are based in major cities where the cost of living is higher, and the problem only grows.
To help close the gap, roughly half of all WNBA players supplement their income by playing overseas during the offseason in leagues such as the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, the EuroLeague Women, the Turkish Basketball Super League and other leagues across Europe and Australia. Unrivaled offers an opportunity to change that by providing players an opportunity to supplement their income without living overseas for part of the year. Unrivaled operates in a unique 3-on-3 format, consisting of six teams with no geographic ties. The six teams — Laces Basketball Club (BC), Lunar Owls BC, Mist BC, Phantom BC, Rose BC and Vinyl BC — each consist of six players for a total of 36 WNBA players in competitive rotation at a time.
Unlike traditional International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and Olympic 3-on-3 basketball, which is played on a half court with one hoop, Unrivaled is played on a condensed version of a full court — about twice the size of a standard 3-on-3 basketball court and about 20 feet shorter than a standard WNBA court. Coupled with a novel format of three seven-minute quarters and a fourth, untimed quarter where a team must end with a score equal to the leading team’s score from the first three quarters plus 11 points to win, Unrivaled encourages fast-paced play and entertainment. The league also has a shortened shot clock of 18 seconds and a system where one free throw attempt is awarded and is worth either two or three points, depending on the shot being contested at the time of the foul.
Reminiscent of the 2020 NBA finals bubble, the 850-seat Wayfair Arena just outside of Miami, Fla., hosts all Unrivaled games. Like the rules of the game, the arena was constructed with streaming viewership in mind, featuring 18 cameras with the main camera only 51 feet from center court — compared to the NBA’s 81 feet from center court.
The inaugural Unrivaled season will feature eight weeks of standard competition and a midweek 1-on-1 tournament Feb. 10-14, also designed to bolster entertainment and viewership. The top four teams during the regular season will make the playoffs, with the semifinals slated for March 16 and the championship occurring March 17, just ahead of March Madness’ kick-off.
Currently, following the first two weekends of play, the Laces and Lunar Owls are tied with a record of 4-0. Lunar Owls and WNBA team Minnesota Lynx forward and league co-founder Napheesa Collier heads the league with 28.5 points per game. Two Laces guards, Kayla McBride (Minnesota Lynx) and Tiffany Hayes (Las Vegas Aces), round out the top three with 25.5 and 20 points per game respectively. Other league co-founder Breanna Stewart’s team, the Mist, has yet to win a game, losing three of their four matchups by a margin of 5 or fewer points.
Even without certain big-name stars such as three-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson and WNBA rookie of the year and Iowa Hawkeyes legend Caitlin Clark, Unrivaled recorded over 3 million viewers its opening weekend and set a record as the most-watched women’s basketball broadcast in TNT history at 364,000 viewers. The Unrivaled players will benefit from the viewership success directly, splitting a 15% revenue pot and a 15% league equity pool. All players will earn a six-figure salary, with the average salary being over $220,000 — close to the maximum base salary for the WNBA. The winner of the midseason 1-on-1 tournament will also take home an additional $250,000.
Unrivaled’s unique format presents both entertainment opportunities to fans and monetary opportunities that can create equality for players. Coupled with the decision earlier this month that women’s NCAA Division I teams could be paid for their participation in March Madness, women’s basketball is moving in the right direction to approach an equal monetary playing field. Unrivaled will look to continue to aid in this goal, as the league plans to travel next year to different college towns, increasing publicity.
Viewers can catch Unrivaled’s games until mid-March on truTV and TNT and streaming on Max. The league’s two undefeated teams, Laces BC and Lunar Owls BC, will take on each other at 8:15 p.m. on TNT Jan. 31.
