New women's basketball league looks to build on the sport's success with fans

Women's basketball has shot up in popularity over the last few years thanks to the ubiquity of WNBA superstars like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and Cameron Brink — and a new league wants to continue capitalizing on this success. Unrivaled, a 3-on-3 women's basketball league, began play on Jan. 17 and is hoping to provide another option for fans.

Unrivaled's initial nine-week season will go from mid-January through mid-March. Since the WNBA season runs from May to October, Unrivaled's organizers are hoping the league will become a U.S.-based alternative for WNBA players, who often play overseas during the league's offseason.

How did Unrivaled get its start?

It is the brainchild of WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier. Others including "Michael Phelps, Coco Gauff, Carmelo Anthony and Alex Morgan are among athlete investors," as well as "businesses and other organizations who have ponied up a combined $35 million to fund the league's debut season," said The Guardian.

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The league also has significant corporate sponsorships helping it grow. This includes "Samsung and Wayfair in signature roles" and "equipment suppliers such as Wilson and Under Armour," said The Guardian. TNT Sports has also signed a deal to broadcast the games.

How does it work?

Unrivaled is a 3-on-3 league, and "games will be played on a compressed full court measuring 70 by 49.2 feet (a standard court is 94 feet long)," said Yahoo Sports. The league is made up of "six teams, each with six players." Unlike standard basketball, the game's final quarter will be "played to a target score that's 11 points higher than the highest score at the end of the third quarter."

The league is "hoping to produce a game reminiscent of the fast-paced, pickup style that hoopers are used to playing on a street court," said ESPN. The game will be "rooted in how you would play basketball as a kid on a black top," said Luke Cooper, Unrivaled's president of basketball operations, to ESPN.

What does the league mean for women's basketball?

Proponents of the league hope it will open more doors for women's sports. The six teams all play in the same building in a converted television studio near Miami, meaning that "everybody is in the same place, playing and learning from each other, instead of dispersing for offseason, individual overseas assignments," said The Guardian. This can eliminate the "isolation many of the athletes say they experience abroad."

Unrivaled hopes that "thousands more will tune in from home, drawn by a condensed format, some of the best players in the world and a made-for-TV approach that aims to bring viewers close to the action," said The New York Times. The "content piece and the TV piece of this is huge for us," league co-founder Collier said to the Times. We "want to make it the most interactive, fun and exciting experience we can."

The league has "goals to break barriers in women's sports and sports leagues in general," said USA Today. It is "challenging the pay scale in the sport, offering ownership and equity instead of just a WNBA salary that pales in comparison to their NBA counterparts."

Unrivaled's total salary pool is about $8 million, according to SB Nation, making the league's average salary around $242,000 for a nine-week season; the average salary for the WNBA's 16-week season is reportedly $102,000. For "so long, we've tried to fight against the narrative that women's sports is a charity, but it's a great business investment," Collier said to Time. "People are seeing that, and so they want to get involved. Because it's going to make them money."