Culture
Unrivaled’s an instant hit, but can the new women’s basketball 3×3 league sustain?
MEDLEY, Fla. — Outside a custom-built arena on the outskirts of Miami, a line of fans waited to sit on a throne composed largely of basketballs. They wrote personal answers on a sign asking, “What does Unrivaled mean to you?” Empowerment. Leadership. Community. Future. Not even some evening rain could extinguish the buzz that had been building since 2023, when fans learned about the creation of this new 3×3 women’s basketball league.
As fans filed into the 850-seat Wayfair Arena on Friday night for the opening night of Unrivaled, they sported a tapestry of WNBA gear. But many wanted new apparel, too, crowding into the gift shop an hour before tipoff. The least expensive single ticket cost north of $300, but fans flocked to support their favorite WNBA stars and witness a new chapter of women’s basketball history.
At tip-off before the first game of a doubleheader, co-founders Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart posed at center court for a photo to capture the moment before they competed against each other.
The nationally televised contests aired back to back on TNT, highlights replayed on SportsCenter, and a clip of Skylar Diggins-Smith sinking the league’s first game-ending shot amassed millions of views across various social media platforms.
In its opening weekend of games, Unrivaled has undoubtedly commanded attention. But to carve out a permanent space in women’s basketball, it needs to accomplish what many other start-up sports leagues have historically failed to do: sustain.
Unrivaled executives say the league’s long-term success has been set up by its stable foundation — signing renowned WNBA stars, attracting big-brand sponsors, capitalizing on lucrative investments and inking a multi-year television deal.
“I think we put ourselves in a great position to be successful right away, but it’s a marathon,” said league president Alex Bazzell, a basketball skills trainer and Collier’s husband. “We’re not running out there from Day 1 trying to get millions of viewers out of the gate. It would be tremendous, but we’re gonna be here for a little while.”
Phee with the steal and Sky got it done 😮💨🔥 pic.twitter.com/CtpkLUnznR
— Unrivaled Basketball (@Unrivaledwbb) January 18, 2025
Before Unrivaled filled its rosters with 22 WNBA All-Stars, it started with just two — Stewart and Collier. Like many of their WNBA peers, the star forwards share a history of spending months overseas during the offseason and competing professionally abroad to supplement their WNBA incomes and sharpen their games.
The routine sparked brainstorming between them. Bazzell first pitched Unrivaled to Stewart in late 2022. “(We were) trying to make women’s basketball continue to be relevant in the offseason from a professional standpoint,” she said.
From the beginning, both players were on constant phone and Zoom calls. They met with investors, relaying their experiences from their years in countries such as Turkey, France, China and Russia. They explained why they believe top women’s basketball players should be marketed in the U.S. during the WNBA offseason and how Unrivaled could offer comparable domestic competition and salaries on par with high-paying overseas clubs.
They wanted to convince stakeholders that Unrivaled wouldn’t be just a novelty but that the league would have staying power. “(Stewart and Collier were) instrumental because when brands come in they act like founders,” Bazzell said.
The two players, alongside other Unrivaled executives, sold their idea to major brands and to deep-pocketed investors, including Gary Vaynerchuk, U.S. soccer star Alex Morgan and NBA legend Carmelo Anthony.
Bazzell said the league already has “far exceeded” the first-year revenue expectations it pitched to initial investors. “We’re focused on building a great business, but for the time being we don’t have to worry about money,” he said.
That is partially because of its media rights deal — a six-year $100 million agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a source with knowledge of the agreement — and a robust sponsorship roster.
The day before tipoff last week, Stewart paused for a moment and pointed out a banner displaying some of Unrivaled’s partners: Ally, Under Armour, Samsung Galaxy, Sephora. “People are walking that walk and also talking that talk,” she said.
The question is: Will they continue?
Unrivaled’s launch comes at a time of unprecedented attention on women’s basketball. Record-breaking viewership, attendance and media deals became commonplace for women’s college basketball and the WNBA over the last two years.
“You couldn’t have landed this at a better time,” said David Levy, an Unrivaled investor who is the former head of Turner Sports and current co-CEO of Horizon Sports and Entertainment.
Bazzell said Unrivaled operates with a “startup mentality.” Executives might create rules one day and unload boxes the next. The league, of course, is still unproven. But unlike many other short-lived start-up leagues, key to Unrivaled’s early success is that its most important members are verifiable stars.
“A lot of times leagues go away because they don’t have the best of the best playing in them,” Levy said. “Unrivaled didn’t start with names nobody knew or people that didn’t make the WNBA. This is the best of the best.”
Early on, Unrivaled executives recognized attracting top talent would be critical to creating visibility on TV, with partners and on social media. With nearly two-dozen WNBA All-Stars — Stewart, Collier, Brittney Griner, Sabrina Ionescu, Angel Reese among them — and seven No. 1 WNBA Draft picks, name recognition isn’t an issue.
To keep so many stars in the U.S., they knew the importance of paying salaries competitive with top overseas clubs. Unrivaled said it is the highest-paying American women’s sports league in history, with salaries averaging north of $200,000.
Its 36 players are more than just talent in Unrivaled, too. A substantial portion of the league’s equity — around 15 percent — is allocated to players. “We’re proud to be here also as investors,” Diggins-Smith said. “All of us being investors, (we) really care about this product and (it) really doing well… You want it to sustain.”
GO DEEPER
How Unrivaled became a welcome alternative for WNBA players’ overseas offseasons
Three-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson and rookie sensation Caitlin Clark are among those not playing in Unrivaled. The league made overtures to rookie Clark, but she elected to sit out the inaugural season, as she recovers from a nonstop last 12 months. Clark’s WNBA salary — around $75,000 — is supplemented by her countless endorsement deals, and she told Time she felt training privately in her own space would be beneficial. Clark, though, didn’t rule out playing in the league in the future. If she does, Levy said, interest in the league will “catapult,” surely propelling its long-term outlook. But he stressed that Unrivaled isn’t built around one person.
Unrivaled already has a high-profile media rights partnership, which is critical to its financial foundation and will be important in its ability to grow.
Initially, Unrivaled executives wondered if the league would need to broker a revenue-sharing deal with a potential TV or streaming partner before getting a licensing deal once the season launched. But they quickly found that multiple parties were interested in a licensing agreement with at least four companies in the final bidding, Levy said.
Bazzell relied on Levy and John Skipper, the former president of ESPN and another early Unrivaled investor, to tap into their professional networks and help find a partner.
Things crystallized this summer when Bazzell met with TNT Sports CEO Luis Silberwasser while in France for the Olympics. Having reach outside of traditional broadcast windows was important to Unrivaled, Bazzell said, as founders recognized the importance — both financially and culturally — of having broad social media reach. Warner Bros. Discovery’s portfolio including Bleacher Report, House of Highlights and HighlightHer (recently renamed B/R W) made it especially appealing.
WBD was ideal, executives said, because of everything it had under one roof: widespread TV distribution (all games will air on TNT or TruTV, and stream on Max), ancillary production, and social media strongholds, a key component of Unrivaled’s business strategy. Warner Bros. also financially invested in Unrivaled, as a sign of its deep commitment to the league’s success.
Getting WBD and Unrivaled founding partner, Ally, on board were critical in the avalanche of partnership deals that followed. (Ally has pledged a 50/50 media spend to support men’s and women’s sports equally.)
Under Armour senior lead for global sports marketing, Tamzin Barroilhet, first met with Bazzell in the summer of 2023. A former college and overseas pro player, Barroilhet said she was “hooked” on the concept and Unrivaled’s deal with WBD helped convince the apparel brand to sign on as the official outfitter. Unrivaled is Under Armour’s highest-profile women’s basketball partnership, and a number of other brands also struck deals in women’s basketball for the first time. Sephora’s agreement with the league is the beauty company’s first partnership with any sports league.
Unrivaled’s scarcity was also intriguing to prospective investors. The league runs only 10 weeks. Its $8 million salary pool is one of its two largest categorical allocation of funds. As a single-site operation, it has a lower operational cost than many other start-up leagues, which Bazzell said minimizes its burn rate.
“(When you) keep the product at a premium level and ultra-competitive, you have some opportunities to pique interest,” he said.
The league announced in December it had raised an additional $28 million (on top of the $7 million in its seed round) from investors, including Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, tennis star Coco Gauff, swimmer Michael Phelps, and South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley. A number of its initial investors, including Anthony, Morgan and UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma, committed additional capital.
“We have new people trying to rush in and now we’re getting to a point where you have to be selective,” Bazzell said.
Fans flocked to buy merchandise before Unrivaled’s inaugural games in Florida. (Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
How Unrivaled engages and grows its audience is paramount to its future.
League officials stress TV ratings will be just one aspect of that answer. “It’s part of a puzzle,” Levy said. “How many people are following (on social media)? What are they doing? How many people are sharing? How much is the fan base interacting with it? How much is merchandise going up? There are going to be so many different metrics that I think are going to play into this.”
Part of their build involves recruiting the next generation. Aliyah Boston, the Indiana Fever center and 2023 No. 1 pick, said college players she’s talked to aim to play in the WNBA and Unrivaled. LSU star Flau’jae Johnson has an NIL deal with Unrivaled, and UConn’s Paige Bueckers, who is the presumed No. 1 pick in this April’s WNBA Draft, has an NIL deal and equity in the league. Bueckers plans to play in Unrivaled when she turns pro.
USC’s JuJu Watkins won’t enter the WNBA until 2027, but when she enters the pro ranks, Unrivaled will have a spot for her. She was among the December investors and is optimistic about the league’s future and sustainability.
When those players set foot in Unrivaled, the league will almost assuredly be different. This season, all 10 weeks of action take place at the Florida facility, but a tour model for competition is planned for next year.
GO DEEPER
Can Unrivaled’s 3×3 style benefit WNBA players?
The locations are yet to be determined but Unrivaled is targeting non-WNBA cities and college towns. Bazzell said it wouldn’t visit more than four cities and the league will still have a home base. The operational cost, Bazzell said, would be similar as it’s likely only four teams would travel to a given stop. Important to maintaining a premier player experience, the league would use charter airfare to transport its players.
“We want to go to different markets to help grow the game and bring a touch point to hopefully a lot of young girls around the country that are looking up to these players and haven’t been able to see them play in person,” Bazzell said.
Taking the league on the road will bring logistic challenges, but league executives believe it will help grow Unrivaled’s business and open it to even more fan opportunities. Barroilhet, the Under Armour executive, foresees potential youth clinics and camps in conjunction with Unrivaled’s tour. Brands could produce activations at different venues, furthering engagement and reach.
Ensuring the WNBA’s top players participate will be critical to Unrivaled’s sustainability, and perhaps some are less interested in any travel necessary for touring. WNBA salaries drastically increasing in the next CBA — the league is negotiating a new agreement with the WNBPA — could also diminish part of a player’s financial lure to the new league. Plus, while TV ratings aren’t fully indicative of overall fan interest, they still remain a datapoint that will impact the league’s viability, especially when media rights conversations begin for a second time.
Yet for now, the stars seem delighted to be in the new venture. Throughout Friday and Saturday’s action, Unrivaled athletes from other teams sat around the arena and watched their peers, enjoying the moment. Fans approached players like Jackie Young, Rhyne Howard and Natasha Cloud for selfies. Onlookers cheered not only for athletes playing, but for those wandering the aisles. “It’s a very intimate setting,” Jewell Loyd said.
Maintaining that connection will build fan loyalty. But for television audiences, the game — the appeal of watching the best players in the world perform — will have to remain at the forefront.
“At the end of the day, the product needs to be great for fans to continue to want to watch it,” Bazzell said. “You can capture people’s attention, but how do you keep people’s attention? It’s done through the most competitive product possible, which is really what we’re adamant on, day in and day out.”
(Top photo of Kahleah Copper: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
WHEN THE FOREST BREATHES: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World, by Suzanne Simard
It’s the summer of 2023 and the Canadian forest ecologist Suzanne Simard is sitting tucked in the knobby embrace of an Amazonian tree trunk, imagining that she too is a tree as she “reached out with leaves unfurling to greet the sun.” She can feel the rat-a-tat of woodpeckers on her bark, the stretch of her roots in the soil below. She draws strength from a sense of family: “The trees were in my blood. They were my kin.”
But in Simard’s new book, “When the Forest Breathes,” trees are not just supportive relatives. They are teachers and healers, capable of communication and perception, a woodland congregation in which young trees grow “in halos” around their elders. Back in Canada, she describes a forest visit that further amplifies that sense of magic, a moment in which she stands beneath aged cedars, “the supernatural trees, the grandmothers,” listening as they whisper wisdom on the breeze.
All of which brings a heady, inspirational quality to her writing as she urges readers to hear the forest as she does. “Nature is waiting for us to listen,” she writes, “and to learn.” The siren quality of her message is almost tangible, as is the allure of gaining knowledge from the Zen master inhabitants of the ancient forests.
And yet. I find myself considering the message in my annoyingly cautious, science-writerly way. Would I find it inspiring to be pecked by a woodpecker? Probably not. Have I ever thought of myself as a tree? Probably never. Is this the measured language we hear from most scientists? Not even close. Simard emphasizes this point in the book: her growing sense of alienation from the methodologies of Western science, its tendency to obsess over small details and, as she sees it, miss the forest for the trees. “I found myself longing to push back against these rigid boundaries,” she writes, and to find “other ways of seeing and knowing the natural world.”
This longing derives in part from her collaborations with Indigenous scientists on Canadian forest management, which led her to deeply admire their more holistic approach to nature. She cites studies showing that “Indigenous-held land,” including forests, “contained some of the most biodiverse and carbon-rich ecosystems in the world.” Amid perilous global climate change, Simard is drawn to their loving attitude to nature as her “philosophical and spiritual home.”
Increasingly, she feels more anchored in their worldview than in that of her longtime research community. A professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, Simard published her first semi-autobiographical book, “Finding the Mother Tree,” in 2021, and it became an international best seller. In it she wove her central theory about the forest — that trees “talk” to one another through an underground network of connective fungi, fostering an intergenerational system in which older trees protect and help the younger ones — with her own experience of grief and illness, emphasizing the parallels between the lives of trees and those of humans.
Despite the book’s rapturous public reception, the scientific community’s response was often unenthusiastic. Other biologists accused her of exaggerating the evidence for cooperation among organisms at the expense of “the important role of competition in forest dynamics.” They worried she was selling a forest story that might be only partly true. And they disliked her use of anthropomorphizing descriptors like “mother tree,” which suggested these organisms should be valued for their similarities to humans, instead of for their own remarkable biology.
Simard admits to having been hurt and frustrated by these accusations, to which she responded with a point-by-point rebuttal in a scientific journal. She returns to these grievances in the new book, where she expresses resentment for the demeaning accusation of anthropomorphism (“the mere utterance of the word” in Western science “suggests the scientist who makes this blasphemous mistake is not an objective observer, but rather impure, intuitive and subjective, perhaps lacking integrity”), and the resistance to her efforts to do justice to the inherent poetry of the forest.
This book is not, however, a rejection of the insights that good science — including Simard’s own — can bring. She provides examples of experiments showing how the heavy machinery used by loggers destroys the ability of the forest floor to sequester carbon; and how clear-cutting of old-growth forests can turn wooded lands into places that release carbon into the atmosphere rather than absorbing it.
Given the urgency of climate change, Simard’s dissatisfaction with the standard research model is in many ways a dissatisfaction with communication. If we are to protect our endangered forests, she argues, then science needs to be less timid in its messaging. She urges her colleagues to take a lesson from the First Nations people who fight for what they believe. To “stand tall in the wind,” as the Mother Trees do.
WHEN THE FOREST BREATHES: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World | By Suzanne Simard | Knopf | 310 pp. | $30
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment celebrates lines from popular crime novels. (As a hint, the correct books are all “firsts” in one category or another.) In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the novels if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.
Xia De-hong, who survived persecution and torture as an official in Mao Zedong’s China and was later the central figure in her daughter’s best-selling 1991 memoir, “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China,” died on April 15 in Chengdu, China. She was 94.
Ms. Xia’s death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her daughter Jung Chang.
Ms. Chang’s memoir, which was banned in China, was a groundbreaking, intimate account of the country’s turbulent 20th century and the iron grip of Mao’s Communist Party, told through the lives of three generations of women: herself, her mother and her grandmother. An epic of imprisonment, suffering and family loyalty, it sold over 15 million copies in 40 languages.
The story of Ms. Chang’s stoic mother holding the family together while battling on behalf of her husband, a functionary who was tortured and imprisoned during Mao’s regime, was the focus of “Wild Swans,” which emerged out of hours of recordings that Ms. Chang made when Ms. Xia visited her in London in 1988.
Ms. Xia was inspired as a teenager to become an ardent Communist revolutionary because of the mistreatment of women in the Republic of China, as well as the corruption of the Kuomintang nationalists in power. (Her own mother had been forced into concubinage at 15 by a powerful warlord.)
In 1947, in Ms. Xia’s home city of Jinzhou, the Communists were waging guerrilla war against the government. She joined the struggle by distributing pamphlets for Mao, rolling them up inside green peppers after they had been smuggled into the city in bundles of sorghum stalks.
Captured by the Kuomintang, she was forced to listen to “the screams of people being tortured in the rooms nearby,” her daughter later wrote. But that only stiffened her resolve.
She married Chang Shou-yu, an up-and-coming Communist civil servant and acolyte of Mao, in 1949.
It was then that disillusionment began to set in, according to her daughter. The newlyweds were ordered to travel a thousand miles to Sichuan, her husband’s home province. Because of Mr. Chang’s rank, he was allowed to ride in a jeep, but she had to walk, even though she was pregnant, and suffered a miscarriage as a result.
“She was vomiting all the time,” her daughter wrote. “Could he not let her travel in his jeep occasionally? He said he could not, because it would be taken as favoritism since my mother was not entitled to the car.”
That was the first of many times that her husband would insist she bow to the rigid dictates of the party, despite the immense suffering it caused.
When she was a party official in the mid-1950s, Ms. Xia was investigated for her “bourgeois” background and imprisoned for months. She received little support from Mr. Chang.
“As my mother was leaving for detention,” Ms. Chang wrote, “my father advised her: ‘Be completely honest with the party, and have complete trust in it. It will give you the right verdict.’ A wave of aversion swept over her.”
Upon her release in 1957, she told her husband, “You are a good Communist, but a rotten husband.” Mr. Chang could only nod in agreement.
He became one of the top officials in Sichuan, entitled to a life of privilege. But by the late 1960s, he had become outraged by the injustices of the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s blood-soaked purge, and was determined to register a formal complaint.
Ms. Xia was in despair; she knew what became of families who spoke out. “Why do you want to be a moth that throws itself into the fire?” she asked.
Mr. Chang’s career was over, and both he and his wife were subjected to physical abuse and imprisoned. Ms. Xia’s position was lower profile; she was in charge of resolving personal problems, such as housing, transfers and pensions, for people in her district. But that did not save her from brutal treatment.
Ms. Xia was made to kneel on broken glass; paraded through the streets of Chengdu wearing a dunce’s cap and a heavy placard with her name crossed out; and forced to bow to jeering crowds.
Still, she resisted pressure from the party to denounce her husband. And unlike many other women in her position, she refused to divorce him.
Twice she journeyed to Beijing to seek his release, the second time securing a meeting with the prime minister, Zhou Enlai, who was considered a moderate. Ms. Xia was “one of the very few spouses of victims who had the courage to go and appeal in Peking,” her daughter wrote in “Wild Swans.”
But Ms. Xia and her husband never criticized the Cultural Revolution in front of their children, checked by the party’s absolute power and the fear it inspired.
“My parents never said anything to me or my siblings,” Ms. Chang wrote. “The restraints which had kept them silent about politics before still prevented them from opening their minds to us.”
She was held at Xichiang prison camp from 1969 to 1971 as a “class enemy,” made to do heavy labor and endure denunciation meetings.
The camp, though less harsh than her husband’s, was a bitter experience. “She reflected with remorse on the pointlessness of her devotion,” her daughter wrote. “She found she missed her children with a pain which was almost unbearable.”
Xia De-hong was born on May 4, 1931, in Yixian, the daughter of Yang Yu-fang and Gen. Xue Zhi-heng, the inspector general of the metropolitan police in the nationalist government.
When she was an infant, her mother fled the house of the general, who was dying, and returned to her parents, eventually marrying a rich Manchurian doctor, Xia Rui-tang.
Ms. Xia grew up in Jinzhou, Manchuria, where she attended school before joining the Communist underground.
In the 1950s, when she began to have doubts about the Communist Party, she considered abandoning it and pursuing her dream of studying medicine, her daughter said. But the idea terrified her husband, Ms. Chang said in an interview, because it would have meant disavowing the Communists.
By the late 1950s, during the Mao-induced Great Famine that killed tens of millions, both of her parents had become “totally disillusioned,” Ms. Chang said, and “could no longer find excuses to forgive their party.”
Mr. Chang died in 1975, broken by years of imprisonment and ill treatment. Ms. Xia retired from her government service, as deputy head of the People’s Congress of the Eastern District of Chengdu, in 1983.
Besides Ms. Chang, Ms. Xia is survived by another daughter, Xiao-hong Chang; three sons, Jin-ming, Xiao-hei and Xiao-fang; and two grandchildren.
Jung Chang saw her mother for the last time in 2018. Ms. Chang’s criticism of the regime, in her memoir and a subsequent biography, made returning to China unthinkable. She told the BBC in a recent interview that she never knew whether her mother had read “Wild Swans.”
But the advice her mother gave her and her brother Xiao-hei, a journalist who also lives in London, was firm: “She only wanted us to write truthfully, and accurately.”
-
West Virginia4 minutes agoMonths of mudslinging is almost over – WV MetroNews
-
Wyoming10 minutes ago2 dead, 1 injured after vehicle goes airborne, strikes pole in Fremont County
-
Crypto16 minutes agoTrio charged in Bay Area cryptocurrency robbery spree
-
Finance22 minutes agoNorway faces dilemma on openness in wealth fund ethical divestments, finance minister says
-
Fitness28 minutes agoExercise Icons Of The ’70s Who Were So Ahead Of Their Time – Health Digest
-
Movie Reviews40 minutes agoFilm Review: ‘The Wizard of the Kremlin’ Finds Paul Dano and Jude Law in a Compelling Throwback Political Drama – Awards Radar
-
World52 minutes ago
A South Korean startup captures workers’ techniques to develop AI brains for robots
-
News58 minutes agoInstructure Strikes Deal for Hackers for Return of Canvas Data
