Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 women’s basketball league co-founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, has a total salary pool above $8 million, president Alex Bazzell told SB Nation in a new interview. That salary pool does not include equity or revenue sharing payments, which all of the initial 36 players will receive.
“We are really changing the outlook of the ecosystem holistically,” said Bazzell, who is married to Collier. “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.”
There were initially only going to be 30 players for the league’s inaugural season. However, they were able to expand to 36 after outperforming their financial projections. The league has announced 34 players, but Kelsey Plum recently dropped out, leaving 33 confirmed players for now.
Each player will not receive an equal salary, but the average of $222,222 (assuming they fill all 36 spots) is higher than the regular max contract of $214,466 for the 2025 WNBA season, which underscores the league’s ambition.
“Women’s sports is on such a rise, and it feels like everyone is benefiting from that except the women in the sport, and obviously that’s something we’re trying to change and then also create generational wealth for these women,” Collier told CBS Sports’ “We Need to Talk” last year. “From the beginning, [Stewart] and I really set out to create a league that was founded on that principle that players deserve compensation and ownership that reflect their value.”
Unrivaled, which will be based in Miami for the 2025 season, is scheduled to tip off on Jan. 17 and will run for two months. Each team will play 14 games during the regular season, to be followed by a short playoffs, which is set for March 16-18. During the middle of the season, there will also be a one-on-one tournament with a $250,000 prize for the winner.
There are six teams: Laces BC, Lunar Owls BC, Mist BC, Phantom BC, Rose BC and Vinyl BC. Each club has a captain and a head coach, and all will eventually have six players, though Laces, Phantom and Rose all remain one player short at this time. No new players have been announced since Nov. 18, and it remains unclear when the final three players will be announced.
