Unrivaled basketball league: Start date, schedule, how to watch, format, teams

Unrivaled, a 3-on-3 women’s basketball league founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, launches in 2025.

Unrivaled will provide WNBA players, whose offseason begins in September or October and runs until May, a chance to earn money playing during the offseason without having to travel overseas.

Let’s get into all you need to know about this brand new league.

What is Unrivaled?

Unrivaled is a 3-on-3 women’s basketball league with six teams and 36 total players considered the “top professional players” in women’s basketball.

The New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and the Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, whose teams faced off in the 2024 WNBA Finals in October, founded the league in 2023. Stewart and Collier also featured on the U.S. women’s team that won gold in the Olympics this past summer.

The league is a first of its kind for athletes in American professional sports leagues. Typically, professional athletes use the offseason to rest, recover, and train for the next season.

With WNBA salaries insufficient for many players to live comfortably, the league was created in part for “players to be paid what they should be paid,” Collier told Yahoo Sports.

Unrivaled player salaries are reported to be around $250,000, and each player will receive equity in the league, per CBS Sports. The average player salary in the WNBA in 2024 was $120,000, per Statista.

Unrivaled 2025 start date

Unrivaled will debut with a two-game slate on Friday, January 17, 2025.

Unrivaled 2025 schedule

The 2025 Unrivaled season will run for nine weeks, with games taking place every Friday, Saturday and Monday from January 17 to March 17, 2025.

Each week will have a six-game schedule, with each team playing two games per week.

The league’s semifinals will take place on Sunday, March 16, and the finals on Monday, March 17, 2025.

There will also be a 1 vs. 1 tournament taking place between Monday, February 10 and Friday, February 14, 2025. The winner of this will receive an additional $250,000 prize.

How to watch Unrivaled, TV channel and streaming

All Unrivaled games will be broadcast on TNT or truTV, with streaming available on MAX.

Unrivaled league format

All six Unrivaled teams will play 14 regular season games across eight weeks. The top four teams in the standings after 14 games will clinch a spot in the playoffs, starting on March 16.

Each team will play a round robin style schedule, facing four different teams on three occasions and the remaining team twice.

For example, Team Rose will face Laces, Vinyl, Lunar Owls and Mist three times each, and Phantom just twice.

Games will be played on a “compressed full court” measuring at 70x50 feet (WNBA court is 94x50 feet). Each game will be played over four 7-minute quarters with a shot clock.

Unrivaled teams

• Laces
• Lunar Owls
• Mist
• Phantom
• Rose
• Vinyl

Read more about Unrivaled teams, players, and coaches here.