Unrivaled is a new women’s basketball league, ironically set to rival the WNBA.
The new three-on-three basketball league is spearheaded by 2024 WNBA Finalists Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier and will begin in January in Miami, before the 2025 WNBA season tips off in May.
The new league will be contested by six teams (Lunar Owls, Laces, Mist, Rose, Phantom and Vinyl) across eight weeks, including the playoffs, and was initially meant to feature 30 of the WNBA’s biggest stars.
However, ahead of announcing what was supposed to be the 30th and final player – Indiana Fever center Aliyah Boston – Collier revealed Unrivaled was expanding to feature 36 players.
“We’re able to do this because we outperformed our financial projections, and so now we get to do something that we wanted to do in the future, which is give more people spots in Unrivaled,” Collier, of the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx, said in a social media video.
“This is such an amazing time in women’s sports and we’re so thankful to all the positive people who have come out and supported us.”
Unrivaled is backed by $100 million of TNT Sports money, with more than 45 games set to broadcast in prime time three days a week. TNT will air games on Mondays and Fridays, while truTV will have coverage on Saturdays.
It has already recruited stars like Reese, Brittany Griner, Kelsey Plum, as well as college basketball standout Paige Bueckers.
One superstar it is still yet to recruit is Caitlin Clark.
Clark became the biggest thing in women’s sports last season after the Fever selected her with No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft.
The NCAA‘s all-time leading scorer — man or woman — picked up from where she left off in college, raining down logo 3s en route to a Rookie of the Year campaign.
The 22-year-old sharpshooter also smashed ticket and merchandising sales, and brought in record TV audiences while making the WNBA’s sponsors a boatload of money.
Everyone is desperate to know if Clark will commit to Unrivaled.
Front Office Sports recently reported that Unrivaled was set to table a ‘Lionel Messi-like deal’ to Clark to entice her to join.
She’s yet to public announce her commitment, but Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell says she has a spot if she wants it.
“We’re always going to have a roster spot for Caitlin Clark,” Bazzell told Sportico. “We’re not applying a full court press the way people think. We are letting her decompress from basketball. … She knows that we have a spot for her when she’s ready.”
He reiterated Collier’s statement that the league was able to expand quicker than expected after outperforming early revenue projections.
“It has allowed us a lot more flexibility,” he said. “It allows us to bring in six more premium athletes who will also be part of the ownership group. It was strictly a business decision; as we make money there will be more opportunities.”
Clark previously told ESPN she will not be participating in any offseason basketball. Instead, she’ll be enjoying some much-deserved down time and focusing on her other sporting love, golf.
“It’s gonna be nice, I think,” Clark said in her Fever exit interview, “getting out of the spotlight and just getting to live my life and do things that I want to do.”
Pay has been a controversial topic in the WNBA for years now, something which Unrivaled has made its M.O.
The league will also offer big salaries to players, with each player receiving a minimum of $100,000 for the season — for a maximum total of eight weeks of basketball.
There will be an all-star event on February 10, as well as a one-on-one tournament featuring all 36 players. The winner will receive a $250,000 prize.
To put that into perspective, Clark and Reese made around $73,000 each for the entire 2024 WNBA season. The latter claimed it wasn’t even enough to cover her rent.
Unrivaled’s six-figure salaries are expected to be the highest average in the history of US professional women’s team sports.
Crucially, players who join the league will also receive equity in it, an issue set to be at the forefront of players’ negotiations with the WNBA following their recent opting-out of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).
Clark has until November 20 to decide whether to play in Unrivaled.
The entire list of 36 players will be announced at the deadline.
If Clark does decide to participate, she will join Fever teammates Boston and Lexie Hull.
Her Iowa Hawkeyes teammate, Kate Martin, now of the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, also joined Unrivaled as the 28th player in the talent pool.
