Unrivaled Leans In to NBA Arenas After Making Millions in Philly

Unrivaled is hitting the road again. 

After bringing in $2 million in revenue—including ticket sales, merchandise, and sponsorships—from their tour stop in Philadelphia, the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league is moving its March 2 semifinals games from Miami to Brooklyn.

“We’ve been in conversations with Barclays for a while,” Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell told Front Office Sports. “We had already built a relationship. Candidly we were looking at potential stops for next year, so we’re in active dialogue with numerous venues across the country. This just so happened that the Nets were out of town. Coming off the heels of Philly, the excitement around it, we look at this as an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.” 

Unrivaled announced the Philadelphia tour stop—its first—in early October, giving them more than three months of lead-up time to sell tickets and market the event. This time the league will have just over two weeks to attempt to sell out the nearly 18,000-capacity New York arena. 

“This is very much a pop-up,” Bazzell said. “We’re not going to judge our success the same way we would Philly. But of course we want to sell as many seats as possible.” 

The league’s model has always included plans to travel to more cities and bigger venues. Bazzell believes being based in one location has allowed Unrivaled to provide players with the best resources. But growing the sport will require tour stops. The question is where? 

The obvious answers include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis—all WNBA cities—and the league says it has strong fan bases in Nashville, Austin, Kansas City, and St. Louis, based on ticket sales, merchandise sales, and social media.

But those aren’t the only metrics that matter. Before the announcement of the Philadelphia tour stop, it was not among Unrivaled’s top-15 markets, Bazzell said. They landed on it as the inaugural tour stop due to interest from the city to host the league, sponsors, and player ties to the city. It wound up paying dividends, with a record-setting sellout leading to more than $1 million in ticket revenue and $400,000 in arena merchandise sales driven by fans from the Northeast.

Next year Unrivaled plans to travel to two cities in the same weekend to maximize reach. The league hasn’t finalized any tour stops, but it is in conversations with a number of groups including ones that bid on WNBA teams and weren’t selected in expansion plans. Once the league’s 2027 TV calendar is finalized with TNT—which it says is close to happening—it can begin finalizing plans for tour stops.

“Our goal is to be anywhere from six to eight tour stops next year,” Bazzell said. “Which means each team would go on roughly two trips. It’s good for the league in terms of exposure. We would essentially be playing every weekend or every other weekend somewhere.”  

The league’s lease at its 1,000-seat South Florida arena extends through next season. While Unrivaled wants to move full speed ahead on tour stops, it does not have plans to be a fully touring league. 

“Players don’t want to be living out of a suitcase for 10 weeks,” Bazzell said. 

Last year Unrivaled made more than $27 million in revenue and said it “almost” broke even. This year, Bazzell said it is on pace to surpass $40 million in revenue, a number he wants to grow to $100 million annually in three or four years.

The league’s two primary revenue streams are its media-rights deal with TNT—a six-year deal reportedly worth nine figures with an opt-out after next year—and sponsorships, but the road stops are a growing source of revenue. 

Ratings Decline in Year 2

Unrivaled’s TV ratings have slumped in its second year. Overall, ratings are down 31%.

This season started more than a week earlier this year to accommodate the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup qualifying tournament, which put it up against the NFL and the College Football Playoff. 

A league spokesperson said that excluding last year’s season opener, and games that went up against football, the ratings are down only 15% year over year. 

Last year the league averaged 221,000 viewers across the regular season and the playoffs. 

“I’m still new in this industry compared to our partners at TNT and Warner Bros. [Discovery],” Bazzell said. “They’ve always been very calm about it. They’re like, ‘Yeah, this is to be expected.’ What we always try to look at is (1) what is the deeper context around where our numbers are compared to where they should be, but (2) how do we grow them?” 

For starters, the league will return to a mid-January start date, which it anticipates will have a positive impact on viewership. Additionally, it is trying to answer the question of converting social and digital reach into viewership. The conclusion of football head-to-head competition combined with the Philadelphia stop has had an immediate impact, though: Five of the league’s six most-viewed games this year came after the Jan. 26 slate. 

When it comes to WBD’s right to opt out after next year, Bazzell said he couldn’t get into specifics regarding negotiations, but he is “trying to strategize and plan for multi-years ahead.”

This season’s playoffs conclude March 4 with the championship, which includes a $600,000 prize pool to be split among the winning team.