In its inaugural season, Unrivaled was a spectacle, drawing a sold-out crowd of 870 eager eyes hungry for basketball to watch during the WNBA offseason. The new format was intriguing, and the salaries and player accommodations that rivaled the WNBA’s were cause for fan celebration. 

In Year 2, the sparkle has worn off.

The campus just beyond Miami’s city limits was quieter during opening weekend of the 3-on-3 league’s second season. 

The fan fest outside was less of a throng and more of a collection of supporters. Inside the renovated arena—which added roughly 150 seats, bringing the capacity from 850 to 1,000 fans—seats were empty. 

And most concerningly for the second-year league, ratings on TNT were lackluster. Unrivaled’s opening slate on Jan. 5 (which kicked off with a Monday afternoon game) averaged 175,000 viewers in the two games that aired both on TNT and truTV; the two truTV-exclusive games on Jan. 5 averaged 32,000 viewers. Games on Jan. 9 averaged 139,000 viewers across TNT and truTV. The four games that aired Jan. 10 and Jan. 11 averaged 71,000 viewers on truTV. All Unrivaled games also air on HBO Max, which is not measured by Nielsen. 

That’s a steep drop compared to its first season, when the league averaged 221,000 viewers on TNT across the regular season and playoffs, peaking at 377,000 viewers for the final of the 1-on-1 tournament. The opening night last season averaged 312,000 viewers across TNT and truTV. The 2026 games faced a competitive broadcast window with the NFL wild-card round and the College Football Playoff. 

“We’re building Unrivaled for the long game and we’re confident in our outlook, keeping in mind the same core principles and goals we set forth when establishing the league,” Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell told Front Office Sports on Wednesday. “We’re proud of the product we’re putting on the court each week and are going to continue growing our audience while showcasing the best women’s basketball players in the world. Leagues aren’t built overnight.”

The WNBA—in its 29th season—averaged nearly a million viewers per game this past season across all networks, even with Caitlin Clark largely absent.  

Following her team’s 83–81 win over the Laces on Saturday, cofounder Breanna Stewart addressed her measure of success for the league in Year 2. 

“TV ratings are one thing for sure,” Stewart said. “Obviously, you want them to be consistently high no matter if we play on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, and know that we have a space of our own here. In the league of sports, people aren’t typically used to seeing women’s professional basketball at this time unless you’re watching EuroLeague or something like that. So, ratings is a huge one.” 

Unrivaled has other ways to make money—chiefly, ticket and merch sales. (Despite empty seats in Florida, a league spokesperson said that every opening-weekend game was sold out.) The league will also feature a tour stop in Philadelphia, which stands to pay dividends. The two-game slate on Jan. 30 will be played at Xfinity Mobile Arena, which has a capacity between roughly 17,000 and 20,000 fans depending on the event. Unrivaled said these games are sold out, and resale prices were starting at $123 as of Wednesday afternoon. 

A league spokesperson said merchandise sales from September through opening weekend were up over 50% year over year, and that ticket revenue was up 40% for the opening weekend thanks to the added seats and games. (Unrivaled couldn’t sell licensed player gear until February of last year.)

Unrivaled added to its player pool in Year 2, expanding from 36 players to 54, but it lost stars as well. Sabrina Ionescu did not return for the league’s second season. The league announced on Jan. 8 she would be “unable to participate in on-court activities” due to an injury sustained during the WNBA season. Angel Reese and Jewell Loyd are two other big names who decided not to return. 

There are also players who determined 3-on-3 is not suitable for their development and are moving on to Project B, a worldwide 5-on-5 league set to begin play in November of this year. 

“I think there’s a misconception that we don’t want to be overseas,” Alyssa Thomas said. “For me it’s about where the best opportunity is, where I can continue to grow my future. I enjoyed overseas. There’s plenty of opportunities over here. Unrivaled is an opportunity as well. Three-on-three for me I felt was a little harder to transition back into 5-on-5.” 

Unrivaled has a six-year media-rights deal with TNT reportedly worth nine figures, but parent company Warner Bros. Discovery can opt out after three; TNT also has equity in the league. (WBD is facing its own shaky future as Netflix and Paramount fight to buy the company.) The biggest question facing the 3-on-3 league is whether it’s sustainable, and viewership plays a significant role in the answer. 

The viewership momentum for the College Football Playoff came to a crashing halt during the semifinals, as both games showed viewership attrition from last year. 

ESPN said the Jan. 8 Fiesta Bowl between Miami and Ole Miss, won by the Hurricanes, drew an average of 15.8 million viewers. That’s down 11% from the comparable Thursday night CFP semifinal last year, a Notre Dame win in the Orange Bowl over Penn State.

The Jan. 9 Peach Bowl between Indiana and Oregon, won by the Hoosiers in a rout, recorded an average of 18 million viewers. That trails the comparable Friday night CFP semifinal last year, an Ohio State win over Texas, by 13%. 

Overall, this season’s CFP viewership, which had been up 3% from a year ago after a particularly robust quarterfinal round, is now even with last year, with an average of 14.9 million viewers per game. 

Big Names Missing

The primary issue with the CFP viewership trends appears to be a lack of college football programs with widespread national appeal that have advanced in the tournament. Alabama, the most-watched college football team in the regular season with a per-game viewership average of nearly 8.5 million viewers, was knocked out in the quarterfinal round by Indiana. 

That game between the Crimson Tide and Hoosiers averaged 23.9 million viewers on New Year’s Day—and it remains the most-watched game of not only this year’s CFP but any game in the event’s 12-team era. 

Texas, No. 2 in regular-season viewership, was left out of the field entirely over the strident objections of the Longhorns. Georgia and Ohio State, the third- and fourth-most-watched teams, respectively, were also eliminated in the quarterfinals. 

Uncertain Forecast

Looking forward, the likelihood of an overall decrease for this year’s CFP is rising. The Indiana-Miami matchup on Jan. 19 has been a massive one on the ground already, fueling record-level pricing on the ticket resale market. Neither team, however, ranked among the 10 most-watched college football teams during the regular season, and the matchup will have a somewhat tough comparison from last year’s game that included Ohio State and Notre Dame—two particularly popular bluebloods in the sport.

That CFP title game last year drew an average of 22 million, down 12% from the year before. The viewership patterns for the CFP are also veering heavily from those in many pro leagues, which often have more direct increases in each subsequent round of postseason competition. 

The latest viewership declines are also happening despite expansions by Nielsen with its audience measurement processes, notably the arrival last year of Big Data + Panel.

The Nationals are now officially part of Major League Baseball’s in-house structure to produce and distribute local games, becoming the seventh team to do so. Before spring training, though, they could have plenty of additional company.

Washington made the highly expected announcement Wednesday, saying it will join MLB Media for its local games, beginning next month. The move arrived after the Nationals early last year ended a bitter, two-decade fight with the Orioles-controlled Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. That settlement involved the Nationals remaining on MASN for a final season in 2025, which they did. 

Since then, the club has evaluated a series of options, ultimately landing for the time being on the league-led structure that also includes the Diamondbacks, Guardians, Padres, Rockies, Twins, and most recently, the Mariners.

The new Nationals.TV will be available online, and with a set of cable and satellite providers to be announced. Mark Lerner, the team’s managing principal owner, called the move “a new chapter for Washington Nationals baseball.”

Parallel Issues

As the Nationals make the move into MLB Media, more teams could soon join them, depending on the outcome of the embattled Main Street Sports Group. 

The operator of FanDuel Sports Network, which shows nine MLB clubs, is on the brink of a potential collapse, with a proposed deal with DAZN now looking increasingly unlikely. Without that agreement, it’s quite possible that Main Street Sports will shut itself down—shifting the local rights of those teams, and 20 more across the NBA and NHL, back to those franchises and their leagues.

Main Street Sports recently missed the scheduled rights payments for many of its clubs, heightening tension around the issue and prompting all nine of the MLB clubs to terminate their deals.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last week the league is ready to take on any or all of those Main Street Sports clubs into the in-house structure. Among those affected are the Tigers, currently in the midst of a high-stakes arbitration battle with star pitcher Tarik Skubal. 

“Our focus, particularly given the point in the calendar, is to maximize the revenue that’s available to the clubs, whether that’s MLB Media or a third party,” Manfred said in response to a Front Office Sports question.

MASN’s viability, meanwhile, is now also in increasing question after the Nationals’ departure. The inclusion of the team’s local rights was a key part of the settlement between MLB and then–Orioles owner Peter Angelos that helped pave the way for the relocation of the Expos to become the Nationals. Last year’s agreement put an end point on that, but now MASN will have just one major league team on the network.