With North America as bullish on women’s sports as it has ever been, expansion can be seen everywhere—from the WNBA to the NWSL to the PWHL.
Now, the expansion wave has been taken to its logical conclusion: a new women’s sports league is making plans to expand before it even begins play.
Unrivaled—a six-team 3-on-3 offseason women’s basketball league co-founded by Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier and New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart—is increasing its roster size from five to six players per team. The Miami-based circuit is scheduled to begin play in 2025.
“We’re able to do this because we outperformed our financial projections,” Collier said Thursday via Ben Pickman of The Athletic. “So now we get to do something that we wanted to do in the future which is give more people spots in Unrivaled.”
The league is offering salaries in excess of $100,000, marketed as the largest for any women’s sports league in history. For comparison’s sake, the WNBA league minimum this season was about $64,000.
