Unrivaled Basketball Is Changing The Game For Women's Pro Leagues
Most recently, the league reported over $27 million in revenue in year one, almost breaking even. This is a largely unheard of concept for not only a start-up league, but also a women's start up league where many times investment, support, and resources take time to grow.
However, the founders in Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, as well the leadership in President Alex Brazzell believed in the profitability of the product even from its infancy. Brazzell stated, 'I think for us, we're obviously excited about what we did in year one. We have to continue to be aggressive and be innovative in ways that just increase our ability to drive value, both to the players, the fans, and our shareholders. So, it was certainly the start we were hoping for. And now the challenge is going to be, how do we, how do we continuously improve and scale it from there?'
Perhaps for Brazzell and Unrivaled's front office, what made this league take off in comparison to several other women's professional sport leagues that started in 2025 was the star power of Stewart and Collier as founders coupled with the most competitive and engaging players from the WNBA. He said, 'I think it's all really based on star power. I think that we had a built in advantage right away. We had the best talent in the world, the most well-known players. I think even when you look at the media rights that exist, the top two commercial rights out there are actually the WNBA, and then it's March Madness for women in terms of annual rights, so, we're pretty proud of where we fit now into the ecosystem. So, I think it's all just a matter of looking at the ecosystem as a whole and knowing that if we have the best players, as many as we can, we give ourselves a really good chance.'
In addition, the league raised $35 million from a variety of investors including stars like Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Geno Auriemma, Dawn Staley, Steve Nash, and Steph Curry. As Brazzell looks towards season two this fundraising has placed Unrivaled in a unique position to not need money as they build, 'What's exciting is we don't need money, and we can take our time with future decisions. We're not playing from behind. And it seemed like last year, it was like we were trying to build a league and raise money at the same time, right? So, your attention is split, and now that we don't need that, we can really be selective and thoughtful about what growth looks like.'
Furthermore, Unrivaled's ability to secure a headlining broadcast partner in TNT as well as various other large sponsors in Under Armour, Ally Financial, State Farm, Miller Lite, Samsung, Sephora, Sprite, Morgan Stanley, Wayfair, Wilson, and Vistaprint led to year one triumphs.
In relation to TNT and viewership, Brazzell described that the consistent viewership was also a win for the league in year one as they averaged 221,000 viewers across the regular season, 377,000 in a game between Collier's Lunar Owls and Stewart's Mist on February 14, and 364,000 fans watched the championship game between Rose BC and Vinyl BC. The most impressive numbers were captured during the 1v1 tournament playoff between Collier and fellow UConn alum Aaliyah Edwards who squared off on TNT to 377,000 viewers, peaking at 398,000.
'I think the most encouraging thing about our viewership is it was consistent. It held steady. It didn't drop off a cliff after the opening night never to regain. Obviously, you're going to have peaks, the same way every league does, whether it's 1v1 playoffs or opening night, but I think we just built a really strong baseline. And I think the thing we're most excited about in the women's sports ecosystem is we're right up there with any major sport and performing well when it comes to that viewership.' Furthermore, Unrivaled captured the social market for their league by investing in their digital footprint strategy which led to 'over 30 million collective followers of our athletes', said Brazzell.
All of these intentional decisions for Unrivaled have led to increased interest in the investment of the league. Brazzell mentioned, 'We have a lot of interest from people who, I probably get an email every week from someone who's interested in purchasing one of the teams. We're not going to rush that process, but it's really exciting to just be in this position to have so many people who are bullish, now that they've seen it, and now that we've proven ourselves, is it's really cool for us.'
With any new business, organization, or league there are lessons learned, especially with a new concept breaking the mold. For Brazzell and his team, one challenge existed when launching the league was the education of the concept for fans, athletes, and even partners and sponsors. He stated, 'First and foremost, it's thinking about how much education has to go into what this was, because this is a format no one's ever seen before. It's a different format of three on three, which is something we knew was going to be, in our opinion, much more exciting. So, without that proof of concept, it's hard for people to visually understand what the league is going to be about, which makes everything much tougher, convincing athletes, convincing agents, convincing brands, convincing media rights, so those things took time. I wouldn't say it's something that we struggled with. It was just the reality of the difficulties that we were facing. When you're building a brand new product from zero, there's not a lot of data to go off of. I think for that we're glad this stage is behind us, and now that we have a real data improvement concept out there, it makes our life much easier.'
Additionally, when the league rolled out their merchandise, specifically the sale of jerseys in partnership with Under Armour, the jerseys were not ready in time for the start of season. Instead, the jerseys went on sale in early March, towards the end of the regular season for the league. Despite the late launch, jerseys sold out within minutes, especially for the fan favorite players in Collier, Stewart, Angel Reese, and Kate Martin.
As Unrivaled moves into season two, having merchandise stocked and ready is a priority for Brazzell. He explained, 'I think a pain point that we dealt with was even jersey sales. You know, it took us a while just to establish a great partner with Under Armour, and that came together pretty quickly at the tail end of the fall. And you just need time to build out what a merchandise strategy looks like. You don't know how much demand there will be, and inevitably, we had to also reach a term with the WNBA Players Association to be able to sell merchandise at that level. So, I think for us, that was something that was a hindrance, that was a miss in terms of what we could do, not because we didn't try, but just because of time frames that we dealt with.'
Again, despite some delays in the process, Unrivaled made roughly $1.5 million off merchandise in year one. As Unrivaled looks towards year two, Brazzell feels that the profit off merchandise can be doubled, 'I think we have a strong opportunity to double what we did just based on market timing. Our revenue that was done was essentially in the span of five months. Whereas, when you look at an entire fiscal calendar year just having more time and even thinking more thoughtfully around drops that we can do that are of high value for our fans. We want to ensure we're not just throwing out the same merch over and over and expecting people to want to support, but we're trying to think innovatively about things that we can do with our players, both in individual merch but also obviously in jersey sales.'
For Brazzell and Unrivaled the focus on continuous growth and improvement has already begun with fan engagement and experience at the forefront. Unrivaled is played in a small venue of only 850 seats and there is talk about expanding the in-person audience capacity, 'We want a small venue. It's not going to be a huge venue, but there's some easy wins on the board there with just adding more availability.'
Moreover, to engage Unrivaled fans further, Brazzell is considering a tour model that could have the league playing in larger venues and allowing fans to see games outside of simply traveling to the singular location in Miami.
However, even with a tour model, Brazzell and his team want to keep the experience for fans intimate, 'I think the challenge that we have to think about, and what we have to maintain is just the experience for fans, even when we're in larger venues, because when people come to a game with Unrivaled I want them to leave with the feeling that they don't typically get from a normal basketball game. So, it's not just about coming in throwing down our court into an arena and then playing our games and going home, but what is the experience that we can provide for fans that they don't normally get during a normal outing? I think those are the things that we're going to be working on pretty diligently over the next few months.'
Furthermore, Unrivaled understands their key demographic is 60% women fans who traveled from out of state to Miami for a winter destination. Thus, Brazzell wants to ensure that in year two those fans feel additional engagement and catered experiences, 'We certainly want to build our hospitality packages, game day experiential stuff that we could do for fans with just more timing and runway. We were able to do some of those things, but certainly those are going to be areas of focus for us over the next few months.'
Again, Unrivaled has made it an intentional decision to center the fan experience as they considers year two and the future, Brazzell emphasized that product itself is not going to change, as this is what draws fans in, 'I think really excited about the product. We're very bullish on just the entertainment value of what we've created with the product, and keeping it exclusive, you know, for as many of the best of the best athletes as we can, but we also want to grow more than 36 roster spots.'
As the roster spots expand this leaves room to invite more influential players into the league such as Caitlin Clark, A'ja Wilson, and Paige Bueckers. Recently, Unrivaled announced via ESPN Paige Bueckers, UConn star, and projected first pick in the draft has signed a three-year deal with the league after serving as a league ambassador this past season.
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