In the hours that followed the official launch of Unrivaled, a three-on-three league cofounded by the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and the Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, Stewart received plenty of congratulatory messages.
People encouraged her to keep “moving the needle forward” — a role she has embraced as one of the WNBA’s stars.
Others asked if they could invest, too.
Stewart has been at the center of the league’s fight for charter flights, which was approved and implemented earlier this month, and when Unrivaled revealed Thursday that it was targeting a January 2025 start for its 30-player league, Stewart helped address the current reality that many players travel overseas to play basketball in the offseason — but now must return by May 1 or be suspended for the WNBA season, according to the league’s new prioritization rule.
“I think that my entire mindset behind this and really doing things is for the next generation,” Stewart said Tuesday before the Liberty hosted the Washington Mystics at Barclays Center, “and making sure that we continue to elevate this game while we’re still here playing.”
So Unrivaled will offer the highest average salary for a women’s professional sports league with minimum six-figure deals.
The three-month season will unfold in Miami on a court that is two-thirds the size of the traditional one, and there could even be a mid-season one-on-one tournament in the works, Yahoo! Sports reported.
All 30 players also will receive equity in the league, Stewart said.
“I think that we want Year 1 to be a splash,” Stewart said, “and to be able to make sure that we’re starting big and it’s only going to get bigger.”
And then there are the investors: soccer stars Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe; Basketball Hall of Famer Steve Nash; golfer Michelle Wie West; Knicks great Carmelo Anthony; and Geno Auriemma, Stewart’s former Hall of Fame coach at UConn.
Even ex-ESPN president John Skipper and former Turner president David Levy are on board to help with landing a media rights deal, maximizing the ratings that helped define both the 2024 NCAA Tournament and early stage of the professional season.
“When you’re investing, sometimes it’s not easy,” Stewart said, “but they believe, too.”
Unrivaled will provide something new, Stewart said.
Something that hasn’t been done before.
When Stewart was drafted No. 1 overall in 2016, the expectation was that players traveled overseas for the offseason, so that’s what she did.
She started by signing with a team in the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association and has also played in Russia and Turkey.
But with Unrivaled, the only comparison could be a USA basketball camp, Stewart said. Even those would last just four or five days.
After the WNBA season ends in October at the latest with the Finals, those 30 players — selected by a committee that doesn’t include Stewart or Collier, according to Yahoo! Sports — would descend on Miami after a few months and “know that we’re getting ready for the W season.”
At some point, reportedly this summer, Unrivaled will announced its participants.
Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu — a WNBA All-Star and 3-point champion — hasn’t decided whether she’d participate if selected, though Stewart suggested that she’d continue trying to convince Ionescu.
“I enjoy my time with my husband, the few months that I get with him in the offseason,” Ionescu said. “So as of now, I’m not really thinking about it too much, but who knows. I mean, I have no idea.”
But, Ionescu said, it’ll “create great exposure.” It’ll help close the seven-month gap in between the WNBA Finals and the start of the following season. It’ll make strides with salary growth and bring women’s basketball to a new market that doesn’t have a professional team.
There have been conversations about Unrivaled for two years, Stewart said. And now, with the league approaching Stewart considered a critical juncture, there are some tangible details to build on, too.
“Making that 30 will be the hardest decision,” Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said. “But it helps them to prepare and earn money. So it’s a win-win.”
