THE PIPELINE EXPANDS
In 2025, women's professional sports experienced an unprecedented wave of league launches and expansions, creating new pipelines for elite athletes.
Unrivaled remains unrivaled.
Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 basketball league co-founded by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, was founded in 2023 in part to allow WNBA players to play domestically and to bypass complications from the WNBA's prioritization rule for players who choose to play overseas in the WNBA offseason. The league's inaugural season began on January 17, 2025, in Medley, Florida near Miami, with plans for the 2026 season to have games played across the United States. The season concluded on March 17 with Rose BC defeating Vinyl BC 62-54 to capture the first championship, with Chelsea Gray earning Finals MVP honors.
The inaugural season exceeded expectations across every metric. Unrivaled amassed an average of 221,000 viewers on TNT and truTV simulcast coverage for the entire season including playoffs, reached 11.9 million total viewers, and generated more than 589 million earned and owned social media impressions. The championship game between Rose BC and Vinyl BC averaged 364,000 viewers with a peak of 385,000 viewers, while the top performing game was the 1-on-1 Tournament Finals between Napheesa Collier and Aaliyah Edwards, which peaked at 398,000 viewers with an average of 377,000 viewers. The league's total salary pool for the 2025 season was $8 million, making the average salary per player around $222,222, the highest average salary in U.S. women's professional sports history.
The financial foundation reflected unprecedented investment in women's basketball. In December 2024, the league announced that their Series A round had closed with a new total capital of $35 million and included new investors such as Dawn Staley, JuJu Watkins, Michael and Nicole Phelps, Rip Hamilton, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, with Coco Gauff also announcing her investment in January 2025 and Stephen Curry joining as an investor at the end of the inaugural regular season. ESPN reported that Unrivaled made $30 million in revenue its inaugural season, double what league officials had projected.
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In December 2025, Maker's Mark became Unrivaled's first Official Spirits Partner, the bourbon brand's first-ever sports league sponsorship, bringing together two brands that both broke with tradition to create something better. The partnership signaled that blue-chip brands now recognize women's professional leagues as premium marketing platforms worthy of their inaugural sports investments.
The league's success prompted immediate expansion plans: Unrivaled announced it would expand from six to eight teams for the 2026 season, increasing roster spots from 36 to 54 with two new teams called Breeze BC and Hive BC. On April 13, 2025, the day before Paige Bueckers was the first overall pick in the WNBA draft, she signed a three-year deal to play in Unrivaled, with the first year of her Unrivaled contract reportedly paying her more than her entire four-year WNBA rookie contract. In July 2025, Unrivaled announced the signing of 14 of the best women's college basketball players to NIL deals as part of "The Future is Unrivaled Class of 2025," including Lauren Betts, Madison Booker, Azzi Fudd, Hannah Hidalgo, Flau'jae Johnson, and JuJu Watkins.
The league proved that elite female basketball players could earn substantial salaries playing domestically during the WNBA offseason, fundamentally reshaping the economic landscape for women's basketball and providing leverage in ongoing WNBA labor negotiations.
PWHL MOMENTUM BUILDS
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The Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) expanded to eight teams in its 2025-26 season with the addition of Seattle and Vancouver. During the league's 2024-2025 second season, it drew 737,455 fans across 102 games (regular season plus playoffs), up 52.5% from last season's 483,530. Overall average attendance increased 27% from Season One, rising from 5,689 to 7,230 per game. With 1,220,985 fans attending games across the league's first two seasons, the PWHL's momentum continues to build.
The expansion markets delivered immediate impact. Vancouver's inaugural home opener on November 21 drew a sold-out crowd of 14,958 at Pacific Coliseum, marking a new record for the PWHL for attendance at a permanent home venue. Seattle's attendance of 16,014 raised the bar even higher for the league, with captain Hilary Knight noting, "I don't know if it's the rich history of women's sports, how you all have started a movement well before we even got here, to the icons and the legends that have graced this arena. We could feel the love". Since both April expansion announcements, fans in both cities showed remarkable enthusiasm, placing more than 10,000 combined Season Ticket Member deposits.
The league's commercial success extended beyond the arena. Sales of PWHL gear doubled season over season, reflecting 100% growth across the league. The increase was sparked by the unveiling of team names and logos ahead of Season Two, new collections to support Unity Games, and new collections with Barbie and Peace Collective, and lululemon. The league and team partnership portfolio grew by 50% season over season, with notable additions including Ally, Bravado, EA Sports, Factor Meals, Intact Insurance, Midea and SharkNinja. When Seattle and Vancouver's generic market jerseys were unveiled, Seattle broke the league's all-time mark for most jerseys ordered in a single day, with Vancouver's sales recording the second most all-time by the league in a single day.
The inaugural PWHL Takeover Tour featured nine neutral-site regular-season games, drawing a total of 123,601 fans. The Vancouver game drew a sold-out crowd of 19,038 at Rogers Arena, the fourth-highest single-game attendance in PWHL history. The Detroit game set a U.S. attendance record with 14,288 fans at Little Caesars Arena and marked the moment the league surpassed its one millionth fan Bullets Forever. Advisory board member Stan Kasten outlined an ambitious vision that foresees further expansion beyond eight teams, the league capitalizing on the 2026 Milan Winter Games to broaden its reach internationally, and the prospect of turning a profit by 2031 when the league's current CBA with its players expires olympics.
THE WOMEN'S PRO BASEBALL LEAGUE MAKES HISTORY
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The Women's Pro Baseball League (WPBL) held its historic inaugural draft on November 20, 2025, with 120 players from 10 countries selected across six rounds by four founding teams representing Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. This marks the first prominent American women's professional baseball league since the 1940s-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), which was immortalized in the film A League of Their Own.
Trailblazer Kelsie Whitmore, who has played in an MLB partner league, was selected first overall by San Francisco, while Little League World Series star Mo'ne Davis was picked tenth by Los Angeles. The league will begin play in summer 2026 at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.
The WPBL is strategically learning from the challenges faced by its predecessors: the AAGPBL (1943-1954), the barnstorming Colorado Silver Bullets (1994-1997), and the short-lived Ladies League Baseball (1997-1998). The key differentiator is a modern, dual-phase strategy: branding teams with major, nationally recognized markets (NY, LA, Boston, SF) to build immediate fan recognition and media interest, while playing the inaugural season entirely in a single, central venue (Springfield, IL) to avoid the high travel costs and logistical challenges that contributed to the demise of previous leagues.
With a total team salary cap of $95,000 and provisions for housing, food, and a share of sponsor revenue, the WPBL is prioritizing stability and minimizing risk in its crucial first year while establishing a sustainable, high-visibility professional pathway for female baseball players. [RS]
Join us daily for the countdown to #1, followed by our Sportsperson of the Year.
Sources:
Maker’s Mark nets first sports league sponsorship with Unrivaled || Unrivaled Numbers || UNRIVALED AND MAKER'S MARK ANNOUNCE PARTNERSHIP CELEBRATING THE SPIRIT THAT CHANGED THE GAME || PWHL CELEBRATES HISTORIC SECOND SEASON OF GROWTH || Details for Inaugural Player Draft || Kelsie Whitmore Selected First Overall in Inaugural Women’s Pro Baseball League Draft
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