3 things WNBA could learn from Unrivaled’s inaugural season, explained

Unrivaled’s inaugural season has come to an end, with the Rose club winning the championship in the new professional women’s 3-on-3 basketball league earlier this week. By most accounts, it was a successful first season for the new league, which was co-founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier and tipped off in January in Miami.

Unrivaled signed 36 WNBA players to full-time contracts, reached more than 11.9 million total viewers across TNT and TruTV, and partnered with a wide range of corporations, like Sephora, Wayfair, Under Armour, Samsung, Icy Hot, and over a dozen others. It successfully provided WNBA players a chance to stay in the U.S. and hone their craft, rather than have to go overseas to generate income during the league’s long offseason, all while continuing to center women’s basketball in the U.S. on the heels of a historic W season.

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert visited Unrivaled last month alongside head of league operations Bethany Donaphin, signaling her support for the offseason league as a complement to the WNBA. And while all parties have made clear that the full-court 3-on-3 league isn’t intended to replace the WNBA by any means, its existence could push the long-standing pro league to implement new measures in its wake.

Here are three ways the WNBA could build off of a successful Unrivaled season, explained.

Providing higher salaries (and equity) for all players

From the jump, Unrivaled made clear that player compensation was foundational to everything. The league offered players an average salary of $220,000 for less than three months of basketball — in comparison, the WNBA’s average salary in 2024 was around $120,000, despite the length of annual league commitment being twice as long.

Unrivaled also promised all players to earn at least $100,000, while the WNBA’s minimum salary was around $64,000 in 2024 (and a superstar like Caitlin Clark earned just over $76,000 in her rookie season).

In addition, Unrivaled offered all inaugural players equity in the league — something players have expressed is a priority in the upcoming CBA negotiations for the WNBA.

League president Alex Bazzell told SB Nation before the season that while off-the-court compensation was great, the league wanted to prioritize players’ salaries for playing basketball.

“We are really changing the outlook of the ecosystem holistically,” Bazzell said. “You’re seeing more leagues bumping up their pay because that’s where the space is now. We’re proud to play a part in that growth of just the economics of these players being paid a lot of money to play basketball. That’s where we want to get to. It’s great to have brand deals, it’s great to have all this off-court stuff, but at the end of the day, we want to be able to pay them high salaries on the court.”

The WNBA’s ultimate goal should be to pay players enough so that they see no need to play anywhere else in the offseason. Already, we’ve seen the season length increase from 40 games last year to 44 games next year — and that could continue to extend in future years, which would generate additional revenue for teams. Rather than playing overseas, players could instead can stay in the U.S. and continue promoting the product, just like their NBA counterparts do.

Higher salaries would also ultimately reduce injury risk, as there have been many high-profile examples of WNBA players suffering severe injuries while playing professionally abroad. Breanna Stewart is one high-profile example of a player who suffered a serious injury overseas; the then-Seattle Storm star ruptured her Achilles in a EuroLeague championship in 2019, an injury that likely wouldn’t have happened had she had been better paid and able to stay in the U.S. in the offseason. While players are always at risk of injuries, it’s much more likely that one would tear a ligament playing heavy minutes on an abroad club, rather than training and recovering in the offseason, with only their self-improvement in mind.

The Storm have been plagued by serious offseason injuries more recently, too. Just this winter, two of the team’s bench players — Nika Muhl and Jordan Horston — tore their ACLs playing offseason professional basketball, Muhl in Turkey and Horston in Athletes Unlimited, a pro league based in Tennessee. The fact that Muhl and Horston had to play competitively in the offseason is not surprising; both made under $70,000 in their rookie seasons. Now, as a result of their injuries, both will entirely miss their sophomore campaigns.

Ensuring all WNBA teams have childcare centers

Las Vegas Aces guard Chelsea Gray, who won the Unrivaled championship with the Rose club this past season, was asked in a Twitter Q&A on Wednesday which element of Unrivaled that the WNBA should adopt.

In response, she wrote: “Care for the babies! Nanny league, childcare during games, etc.”

It’s an unsurprising answer considering the prominence of Unrivaled’s childcare services since the league’s launch. Unrivaled has hired a nanny service to watch players’ kids during games and other obligations, and the arena itself has a childcare center comprised of multiple rooms filled with toys and other activities for the kids. At least 8 Unrivaled players brought their kids to the facilities.

“Stewie and I both being moms — that was a big thing,” Napheesa Collier told SB Nation in January. “From the beginning, we knew we had to have childcare.”

Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Indiana Fever forward Katie Lou Samuelson, who missed the 2023 WNBA season after giving birth to her daughter, lived by herself in Miami with her daughter during the unrivaled season — and said that having around-the-clock childcare has been hugely impactful.

“I bring her to the game, and then they watch her the whole entire time — for me to warm up, do what I need to do, and then I’m able to go home,” Samuelson said. “It’s definitely been a huge help. I don’t know what I would be doing without having that.”

The WNBA should implement these childcare measures across the board not just because it’s the ethical thing to do — but also because it will allow players to perform at the highest level. As the women’s game continues to evolve, ensuring that players have every resource at their disposal, both mentally and physically, enhances the product for the viewers at home, too.

Generating more engaging social media content leaning on players’ brands

From the beginning, a major part of Unrivaled’s objective was to elevate players’ brands during the WNBA offseason. As such, the league focused on producing original content centering players — both on and off the court — on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms. In all, Unrivaled-owned and earned content across league and club accounts as well as fan conversation generated 589.1 million social media impressions, the league reported Thursday.

Unrivaled also announced that since Jan. 1, the aggregate social media following for all of its players grew by 947,000 followers across their personal social media accounts.

The league leveraged the fact that it had big names already on board — even though some players were unable to actually compete. Los Angeles Sparks forward Cameron Brink, for example, sat out the season as she recovered from an ACL tear, but nonetheless helped with social media content in the opening weeks. Brink posted vlogs on the Unrivaled YouTube channel.

Marina Mabrey similarly missed most of the season recovering from a calf strain she suffered at training camp, but nonetheless continued elevating her brand — and Unrivaled’s — through the launch of a brand-new YouTube show, Marina in Miami.

It’s a tactic that most WNBA teams could better employ. Some WNBA teams’ social media teams have done a better job elevating and building off of players’ brands than others. The Fever, for example, have gone behind-the-scenes extensively this offseason to show player workouts between stars like Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston, and others.

But, Unrivaled has leaned on players’ personalities in a way that even the most social-media-savvy teams have yet to. That is a win for the players themselves, who are now better positioned for off-the-court brand deals, and it’s a win for the league, which benefitted from the big names it was able to sign early on.

The reality is that, at the moment, individual players’ brands are bigger than any WNBA team’s. Take Instagram, for example. Unrivaled’s Defensive Player of the Year, Angel Reese, has 4.7 million followers — while the most-followed WNBA team, the Fever, has just over 643,000 followers. The more WNBA teams go behind the scenes in promoting their players — both the big names and the smaller ones — the better. For the fans, the regular social media content has been a way to get to know players who haven’t been in the public spotlight as much, and therefore growing their investment in new teams.

At its core, Unrivaled is a vastly different league than the WNBA that has to account for far fewer players and logistical concerns, being that all games are played in the same arena and all players can utilize the same facilities and amenities. Still, there are lessons to be learned from the successes in Unrivaled’s first year — and ones that the WNBA may choose to implement.