The WNBA has never been more popular. In the past three years, viewership records have been broken, sponsorship dollars have flooded in, and overall status has reached an all-time high. Yet the compensation structure for its players cannot keep up. That disconnect is where Unrivaled, a player-founded 3-on-3 basketball league now in its second season, has become one of the most under-appreciated forces in the ongoing WNBA CBA negotiations.
What is Unrivaled, and Who Built It?
Unrivaled was co-founded in May 2024 by Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier and New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart. The concept originated from the players’ frustrations with spending their offseasons playing abroad in international leagues because the domestic market offered no viable income during the winter months.
Unrivaled tips off each January and runs for roughly two months, featuring 36 players across six teams competing in a 3-on-3 format. Several popularWNBA stars have joined the league, including Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese, and Kelsey Plum. Based out of a converted production studio in the Miami area, Unrivaled has raised over $35 million and attracted partnerships with major brands including Samsung, Sephora, and State Farm. Its investor roster spans across professional sports, including soccer, tennis, and NBA stars.
The Unrivaled founders created a model where players are treated as stakeholders, not just talent. Every inaugural player received equity in the league alongside their salary– a structural choice that, as discussed below, has become relevant to CBA talks.
A Fast Rise: Popularity, Attendance, and Momentum
In its debut 2025 season, Unrivaled operated in a venue seating fewer than 800 people. Despite the modest beginning, the league generated significant buzz. Collier’s team, the Lunar Owls, went 13-1 in the 2025 regular season, and Collier was named the league’s inaugural MVP.
Year two brought rapid expansion. The home arena was enlarged to roughly 1,000 seats, a third game night was added weekly, and the league launched a touring model targeting cities without existing WNBA franchises. The first 2026 tour stop drew 21,490 fans to a Wells Fargo Center-class arena in Philadelphia, surpassing the previous professional women’s basketball regular-season attendance record of 20,711 set by a WNBA game just months earlier. Philadelphia had not hosted professional women’s basketball since 1998.
Off the court, Unrivaled’s digital audience grew 24 percent year-over-year, merchandise revenue rose 54 percent by opening weekend, and the league’s newest club named Breeze BC, anchored by Paige Bueckers, accumulated a larger social media following than either of the National Women’s Soccer League’s two most recent expansion franchises. Unrivaled is now valued at approximately $340 million, with revenue outperforming projections in both of its first two seasons.
The Financial Picture: Salaries, Prizes, and Equity
The pay gap between Unrivaled and the WNBA is substantial. The WNBA’s average player salary in 2024 was roughly $120,000, with a maximum base contract of approximately $214,000 for the 2025 season. Unrivaled’s inaugural season targeted an average salary of $222,000 across its 36 players backed by a total salary pool above $8 million, already exceeding the WNBA ceiling. By 2026, top stars like Bueckers were reportedly pulling in upwards of $350,000 for a single Unrivaled season. Even Unrivaled’s minimum salary of $100,000 outpaces what many veterans earn over a full four-month WNBA season.
Beyond base pay, Unrivaled runs a mid-season 1-on-1 tournament with a $200,000 winner’s prize. Collier captured the inaugural title in 2025, noting afterward that her entire annual WNBA salary equaled what she earned in about 30 minutes of 1-on-1 competition. This quote spread widely and clearly illustrated the pay disparity between leagues. Championship team bonuses of $50,000 per player add another perk; for a WNBA rookie earning around $76,000 annually, that single bonus equates to nearly two-thirds of a full year’s pay.
The equity component may be the most structurally significant element of Unrivaled’s model. All founding players received ownership stakes in the league– approximately 15 percent of total equity distributed collectively. The WNBA offers no equivalent. The WNBPA has explicitly stated in CBA negotiations that it wants an equity-based compensation model tied to league growth, and Unrivaled has provided a clear model to support that demand.
How Unrivaled’s Success Affects the Bargaining Table
The WNBA players opted out of their existing CBA in October 2024, triggering a negotiation window. By mid-2025, tensions were high, as the WNBPA had submitted multiple proposals over several months before receiving a formal response from the league in June. Players publicly described how the process felt like “stonewalling.” Stewart characterized the league’s posture as dismissive of proposals rather than responsive to them.
The players’ core demands are higher salaries, revenue sharing, expanded rosters, player equity, and involvement in media rights negotiations. For years, the WNBA resisted calls for higher pay and equity participation, often citing financial constraints. Unrivaled removes that excuse from the table. When the players’ own league can fund average salaries exceeding what the WNBA allows as a contractual maximum, it is no longer reasonable for the WNBA to claim that better compensation is structurally impossible.
There is another subtler dynamic at play– Unrivaled has given some players a kind of financial independence they never had before. In prior CBA cycles, players negotiated with more urgency, as the WNBA season was their primary domestic income, and a prolonged work stoppage carried financial consequences. Now, with players earning an average of $220,000 during the Unrivaled season, and with the league expanding and raising salaries each year, players are no longer sitting idle while waiting for the WNBA to act. Rather, they are earning, competing, and building equity in their own league. They are not desperate, and that changes everything at the bargaining table.
Collier has been direct about what running Unrivaled has taught her as a negotiator. Speaking live on the TNT broadcast of Unrivaled’s 2026 opening night, with the CBA deadline days away, she addressed the WNBA’s claims that the players’ compensation demands were financially unsustainable: “Being on this side with Unrivaled, I know what it takes to run a sustainable business. If they can’t find a model that makes that happen, they need to put people in place who can. Because we’ve proven that it is possible.”
The WNBPA’s negotiating posture reflects Collier’s confidence. Collier has stated that accepting inadequate terms would be a disservice to every player who fought for the sport before them, and that while someone will ultimately have to give ground, the players have no intention of blinking first. WNBA ownership understands the stakes equally well, and is working to secure favorable terms before a new agreement locks in the players’ gains. What is different this cycle is not only what the players are demanding, but that Unrivaled has given them the upper hand.
Unrivaled was created to solve an offseason income problem. What it has evolved into, however, is evidence that WNBA players carry more value than ever. Because of Unrivaled, the players now enter CBA negotiations with economic leverage and tangible proof of their market value.
Sources:
Ximena N. Beltran Quan Kiu, WNBA Star Napheesa Collier is Building the Future of Women’s Basketball, Equinox.
Sports Business Journal, Napheesa Collier defends dual Unrivaled, WNBPA roles amid CBA negotiations (July 7, 2025).
Sabreena Merchant, Unrivaled breaks attendance record for professional women’s basketball with Philadelphia tour stop, NY Times (Jan. 30, 2026).
Ben Pickman, Here are four ways Unrivaled could change the WNBA, The Athletic (March 14, 2025).
Jack Maloney, Unrivaled basketball league targeting average salary of $222,222, exceeding the WNBA’s regular max, CBS Sports (Dec. 14, 2025).
RAÍZ, Unrivaled League 2026 Prize Money: How much do players get paid?, Marca (Jan. 5, 2026).
As a second-year law student at UB Law, I've found my calling at the intersection of sports, labor law, and collective bargaining. Growing up watching professional basketball and football, I was always captivated by the games, but in law school, I developed a deep interest in what happens off the court and field.
I'm particularly drawn to the high-stakes world of CBA negotiations, where leagues and players' unions negotiate over revenue sharing, workplace protections, and compensation models. Through this blog, I analyze the legal strategies behind sports headlines, breaking down complex labor disputes, arbitration cases, and contract negotiations.
This is where my love of sports meets my dedication to law. Welcome to the conversation!
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