Taking the world by storm on Jan. 17 in their inaugural first game, Unrivaled Basketball League has changed the game for women basketball players.
Based in Miami, Unrivaled Basketball League is a three-on-three women’s basketball league founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart in July of 2023.
As mothers, founders Collier and Stewert felt it was unfair that many WNBA players are forced to uproot their lives playing for abroad basketball teams in the off season to make ends meet. With Unrivaled, they wanted to create a space for women basketball players to domestically earn a living in the off season.
Lasting just nine weeks, Unrivaled allows players to play without overlapping with the WNBA season. Unrivaled players earned an average salary of over $220,000, which is more than the WNBA’s max salary of $214,466.
Aside from the higher salary, Unrivaled is very different from WNBA. As mentioned before, Unrivaled is three-on-three rather than five-on-five like the WNBA. Unrivaled games are played on a 49.2-by-72-foot court. With four fewer players on the court, there is more space and less court so the players are able to retain their stamina.
Each game is played with three seven-minute periods. The last period is called “winning score,” which is completed when a team reaches the target score. The target score is determined by the amount of points the leading scorer has by the end of the third period plus 11.
Free throws also work differently in Unrivaled. When a player gets fouled they shoot only one free throw. Free throws are worth two points unless a player is fouled on a 3-point attempt (3 points) or it’s an ‘and-1’ free throw (1 point). Since the teams are so small, if a player fouls out, they can keep playing if their team does not have another available player to substitute. However, every additional foul by the fouled out player will result in a technical foul.
Unrivaled also featured a one-on-one tournament with the winner earning $200,000 and her three-on-three teammates receiving $10,000 each. The runner up of the one-on-one tournament receives $50,000 and each semifinalist earns $25,000 apiece.
The first season of Unrivaled was very successful. The league featured top names such as Sabrina Ionescu, Brittney Griner, Angel Reese and recently signed WNBA first overall draft pick Paige Bueckers to an unprecedented $3 million dollar contract. Unrivaled generated 589 million earned and owned social impressions while drawing an average of 221,000 viewers on TNT and truTV simulcast coverage.
The league has 21 corporate partners including Sprite, State Farm, Under Armour and a plethora of investors including the likes of Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, JuJu Watkins, Dawn Staley and Geno Auriemma. Unrivaled just proved that female sports leagues can prioritize their athletes and still succeed — something the WNBA hasn’t been able to do in the past 25 years.
