The expertise of the perfect ladies’s basketball gamers is unmatched. And so they’ll get to show it in Unmatched, a brand new 30-player 3-on-3 ladies’s skilled basketball league set to launch in January 2025.
Co-founded by the New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and the Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, the league will encompass a 10-week season held in Miami, permitting prime gamers to play domestically—and be well-compensated whereas doing so—in the course of the WNBA offseason. The league, which can be player-owned with alternatives for fairness, intends to supply the best common wage for a ladies’s skilled sports activities league.
The 30 members, who can be introduced this summer season, can be divided into six 3-on-3 groups and play video games on a compressed full court docket.
#LIGHTITUPNYL celebrity Breanna Stewart & #Lynx star Napheesa Collier are beginning an off season basketball league in 2025 “Unmatched” that can happen in Miami. #WNBA
“It’s going to be the highest 30 athletes the place we’re play 3-on-3, 1-on-1. Simply to be at dwelling…to be in market… pic.twitter.com/E7qXFLEUeP— Nick Hamilton (@NickHamilton213) Might 30, 2024
In an announcement saying Unmatched, Stewart mentioned:
For years, ladies have relied closely on off-court sponsorships for a majority of their earnings. With Unmatched, we’re revolutionizing the sport by prioritizing investments in our stars and making certain their on-court efficiency is mirrored of their pay.
Collier added:
With the rising recognition of girls’s basketball and the WNBA, this is a chance for us to increase our visibility into the normal basketball season. Breanna and I got down to create a league that may change the way in which ladies’s sports activities are considered and in the end how sports activities leagues function. We might have had the imaginative and prescient, however this isn’t simply our league—it belongs to the gamers, and the Unmatched mannequin displays that.
Co-founders of the league are former ESPN president John Skipper and former Turner president David Levy, each of whom will work on securing a media rights deal. Buyers within the league embody US ladies’s soccer legends Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe, former NBA stars Carmelo Anthony and Steve Nash, golfer Michelle Wie West and UConn head coach Geno Auriemma.
The chance to hitch Unmatched from the start was a no brainer and we could not be extra excited to assist the league and these ladies each on and off the court docket.
Lets go! https://t.co/azSTNmP6nw
— Alex Morgan (@alexmorgan13) Might 30, 2024
On X/Twitter, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert provided her assist for the endeavor, writing:
On behalf of the WNBA, we applaud WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart on launching Unmatched. The momentum for girls’s basketball has by no means been higher, and we are going to proceed to work with them to showcase the superb gamers of the WNBA.
On behalf of the WNBA, we applaud WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart on launching Unmatched. The momentum for girls’s basketball has by no means been higher, and we are going to proceed to work with them to showcase the superb gamers of the WNBA. https://t.co/zx50ZnYNjV
— Cathy Engelbert (@CathyEngelbert) Might 30, 2024
