WNBA star forwards Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier are forming an offseason U.S.-based women’s league that would both showcase the best players and comply with new WNBA rules, ESPN reported Thursday.
Stewart, of the New York Liberty, and the Minnesota Lynx’s Collier said the new league, named Unrivaled, plans to hold all events in Miami from January through March. In all, 30 of the top women’s players would be divided into six teams and play in 3-on-3 and 1-on-1 formats.
Their hope is to help the best WNBA players make enough money in the offseason that they can stay stateside and give up playing overseas. With family concerns part of the equation, the other half is the WNBA’s prioritization rule, which takes effect this coming offseason.
Under the rule, players must make their WNBA teams a priority and return from foreign commitments before the start of league training camp next spring. Often, the overseas season is still ongoing at the start of camp and sometimes into the season.
“It’s the ability for players to stay home, to be in a market like Miami where we can just be the buzz and create that with the best WNBA players,” Stewart told ESPN. “We can’t keep fighting (the WNBA’s prioritization rule). It is a rule that takes away our choices, which should never be a thing, especially as women, but it is still a rule.”
Stewart and Collier, both former UConn stars, discussed the idea over dinner along with Collier’s husband, Alex Bazzell. As basketball players and mothers, both see an opportunity for women to make money without leaving the United States.
“We’ve all been talking and realizing that we’re missing a moment, having a lot of our players be overseas or not playing basketball (during the offseason),” Stewart told ESPN. “… I think top players, they want to be playing, right? They want to be home, they want to be playing, but it has to make sense. It has to be right and the money has to be right. And I think that’s what Unrivaled is trying to do.”
While Stewart played in Turkey in the offseason, Collier stayed home after giving birth to her first child in 2022.
“I’m a homebody, by nature. I love being home for the holidays,” Collier told ESPN. “Being away from your family for six months, it’s not easy. Then the idea of having a family trying to figure out childcare overseas. That was kind of the main reason (for Unrivaled). But secondly, just the narrative around where the game is going right now. You have a lot of people, especially college players, saying that they would prefer to be in college than come to the league.
“And women’s basketball’s kind of the only place that that’s happening. It’s just not trending in the direction that we want. We’ve come so far. We want to obviously go a lot farther. So, having that narrative is just really harmful. And it’s true right now. So we definitely want to try to change that. I think we’re in such a special time right now. People are really finally starting to see the value of women’s sports.”
Stewart, 28, and Collier, 26, are working with potential business partners and are meeting with leaders from business and other sports leagues to form Unrivaled, with the goal of a January launch.
–Field Level Media