Hours after the official launch of Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 league co-founded by the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and the Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, Stewart received a flood of congratulatory messages.
People encouraged her to “keep moving forward,” a role she has embraced as one of the WNBA’s biggest stars.
Others asked if they could invest too.
Stewart was a central figure in the league’s fight for charter flights, which was approved and implemented earlier this month, and when Unrivaled revealed Thursday it was aiming to start the 30-player league in January 2025, Stewart helped address the current situation in which many players travel overseas to play basketball in the offseason. But under the league’s new prioritization rules, if they don’t return by May 1, they will be suspended for the WNBA season.
“My whole mindset behind this and really what I’m doing is for the next generation,” Stewart said Tuesday before the Liberty took on the Washington Mystics at Barclays Center, “and I want to make sure we continue to elevate the level of the sport while we’re still here playing.”
As a result, Unrivaled will offer the highest average salary of any women’s professional sports league, with contracts worth at least six figures.
The three-month season will be played on a court two-thirds the size of a normal court in Miami and could even include a one-on-one tournament mid-season, Yahoo! Sports reported.
Stewart said all 30 players will also receive league rights.
“We want to do great things in year one,” Stewart said, “and get off to a great start and make sure we can continue to grow.”
And then there are the investors: soccer stars Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe, basketball Hall of Famer Steve Nash, golfer Michelle Wie West, Knicks standout Carmelo Anthony and Geno Auriemma, Stewart’s former Hall of Fame coach at the University of Connecticut.
Former ESPN president John Skipper and former Turner president David Levy also helped secure the media rights deal to maximize viewership that will help define both the 2024 NCAA Tournament and the early stages of the professional season.
“When you’re making an investment, it’s not always easy,” Stewart said, “but they also believe.”
“Unrivaled will offer something new,” Stewart said.
Something that has never been done before.
When Stewart was the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2016, players were expected to travel overseas in the offseason, so that’s what she did.
She began her career signing with a team in the Chinese Women’s Basketball Association and also played in Russia and Turkey.
But Stewart said the only thing Unrivaled can compare to is basketball camps in the US, and even those only last four or five days.
According to Yahoo! Sports, if the WNBA season concludes with the Finals in October at the latest, the 30 players selected by a committee that didn’t include Stewart or Collier will gather in Miami in the coming months “to find out they’re ready for the W-season.”
Unrivaled will reportedly announce its participants sometime this summer.
Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu, a WNBA All-Star and 3-point champion, hasn’t yet decided whether she’ll participate if selected, but Stewart indicated he plans to continue to convince her.
“I’m enjoying spending time with my husband these past few offseason months,” Ionescu said, “so right now I’m not really thinking about it, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. I have no idea.”
But Ionescu said it would “create great exposure,” help bridge the seven-month gap between the WNBA Finals and the start of next season, make a big push with the salary increase and bring women’s basketball to new markets without professional teams.
“Unrivaled has been in discussions for two years, and now, as the league approaches a critical juncture, Stewart is building on that with some concrete details,” he said.
“Going for 30 points is going to be the toughest decision,” Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said, “but it helps the team prepare and makes money, so it’s a win-win.”
