24-04-2025
Napheesa Collier on how Unrivaled's success will pay off for women in all sports: 'We have more leverage now than we've ever had'
With record attendance, ratings and revenue, women's sports are exploding in popularity.
But as professional basketball player Napheesa Collier told CNBC's Julia Boorstin at the second annual CNBC Changemakers Summit in Los Angeles on April 8, "It feels like everyone is benefitting from that, except for the women in the sports."
Collier, one of the most impactful basketball players of her generation, has seen success at nearly every level, from leading UConn to four straight Final Four appearances and winning the 2016 NCAA Championship, to becoming a four-time WNBA All-Star for the Minnesota Lynx where she is the reigning WNBA Defensive Player of the Year, and being a crucial piece of the U.S. Women's basketball team, capturing back-to-back Olympic gold medals at the Tokyo and Paris Games.
But even with all that on-court success, Collier told Boorstin that still for many WNBA players, "We make most of our money off the court, so brand building is really essential for us."
That challenge becomes even more difficult when WNBA players play overseas during the league's offseason, forcing them to move away from their families and commercial opportunities to supplement their playing incomes in another league.
Collier, along with fellow WNBA superstar Breanna Stewart, saw an opportunity to replace that outdated approach, and looked to create something that could not only benefit the players financially but also shine a spotlight on their skills and personalities.
The result was Unrivaled, a new three-on-three women's basketball league featuring some of the biggest WNBA stars — including both Collier and Stewart, who were both named to this year's CNBC Changemakers list.
The league recently finished its first season, which Collier told Boorstin was a success on multiple fronts. Unrivaled landed more than 20 brand deals, a multiyear media rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, and was able to raise more than $28 million in a Series A funding round. It also reframed the modern athlete experience, providing players with not only things like a training room and recovery areas, but also nursing and daycare facilities alongside a "glam room," which Collier said provides space for players to prepare for brand campaigns and advertising shoots.
Unrivaled also paid out an average salary of more than $220,000, significantly higher than WNBA's maximum salary of $214,466 for the 2025 season.
"Unrivaled is a tool where we're trying to raise all boats," Collier said. "We've already seen the effect that it's having in overseas contracts, other domestic league contracts."
Collier said the league made $27 million in revenue this year, but perhaps more importantly "We raised enough money where we had the leeway for several years for the league to be sustainable."
Going into year two, Collier said the focus is now on taking the league on the road — last year it played all of its games at a custom-built facility in Miami — expanding the player pool, offering more salary, and "just heightening everything."
"It was year one, and it's like, you have an idea and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't," she said. "We were changing things in real time, so we're hoping to improve the fan experience and make it even better for the players — so growth is what we're looking at."
Amid that success, Collier is not taking her eye off the ball when it comes to the WNBA. A vice president on the Women's National Basketball Players Association executive committee, Collier is currently in the middle of WNBA CBA discussions after the players opted out of existing deal, giving the league and WNBPA until October 31 to negotiate a new contract.
"We have more leverage now than we've ever had as women's basketball players," Collier told Karen Finerman, co-founder and CEO of Metropolitan Capital Advisors and CNBC Changemakers Board Advisor, on the sidelines of the CNBC Changemakers Summit. "Our last CBA, we were really proud of it, [it] was a huge step up from where we were before that, but we obviously saw a lot of things that we wanted to change in that."
Collier said with this new agreement, the players are aiming to "take an even bigger step for what it means to pay and treat women's professional athletes."
That comes back to her work alongside Stewart to establish Unrivaled, something she said can "raise the ecosystem of not only women's basketball, but women's sports in general."
