The Unrivaled 3v3 league will be bigger than ever this coming season, as the organization has announced the addition of two more clubs. The Breeze Basketball Club and Hive Basketball Club will join the six team league in time to compete this season.
“If we didn’t expand rosters, there were going to be All-Stars [wanting to join] who we didn’t have space for,” league president Alex Bazzell told reporters. “We want to be the home for all of the best players in the world.”
Originally scheduled to remain at 6 teams, Unrivaled’s success in terms of viewership, and financial projections fast tracked the league’s expansion efforts. The new crop of incoming athletes is headlined by Paige Bueckers, will add another 12 roster spots for the league to showcase some of the top women’s basketball players in the world.
Financially, it makes sense for players to want to participate in the league, even after a demanding WNBA schedule wraps up. Bueckers for example will make more playing with Unrivaled for 10 weeks than she will in her first 4 years of her WNBA rookie contract. The former 1st overall pick is currently earning $78,831 per season with the Dallas Wings.
Unrivaled is also adding a player development pool for the upcoming season. That pool of players will be made up of WNBA players currently on their rookie deals, who will follow a regimented practice and scrimmage schedule. They’ll earn the minimum six figure salary that the rest of the league takes home, giving extra financial incentive for some of the top young players to try to carve out some playing time in the offseason.
Logistically, in an effort to accommodate the two new clubs, Unrivaled plans to expand to four game nights per week in Year 2, and will look to eliminate back to back games as well.
“With all of the things we’ve done well, we have to learn from where we need to be and what we need to answer and what the players are looking for,” Bazzell continued. “I live with an athlete [Napheesa Collier] who is going through the pains of the current schedule and has been through injuries, and she is one of many.”
“We have to stay consistent with listening to who we are serving. … At the same time, while we expand, we don’t dilute the product. The product stays at a high level, and we don’t dilute the money.”
While the 2026 schedule has yet to be released, anticipation for year 2 has been steadily growing in both the sports world and business community alike. Following a round of Series B investments led by the Bessemer Venture Partners, Unrivaled announced that it currently has a market valuation of $340M after just one season.
Photo: Liam Enea. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.