The WNBA continued its surge in online search and topped the 2025 charts with a rise of 140%. Though the traditional league is making progress, the newly formed Unrivaled league is not much behind. They expanded to eight teams in just one season and are now aiming for a bigger schedule and touring games.
The idea came from their success in Philadelphia, which broke the record for the highest attended Women’s basketball game. The league earned $2 million from the tour and now aims for a much bigger slice with even bigger markets, as CEO Alex Bazeell spoke to the media.
Unrivaled Looking For Expansion In Mega Cities
After the success in its inaugural season, the league started experimenting and expanding its wings to stay relatable and progressive. Their first move was to move to Philadelphia, with the teams playing a couple of games at Xfinity Mobile Arena. The expansion not only became commercially profitable, but it was also a great initiative to connect with the fans.
Now they are heading to Brooklyn for the semifinal games, eyeing some more expansion in megacities. Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell spoke to the media about the move, saying, “We had already built a relationship. Candidly we were looking at potential stops for next year, so we’re in active dialogue with numerous venues across the country. This just so happened that the Nets were out of town. Coming off the heels of Philly, the excitement around it, we look at this as an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”
Unrivaled made $2M playing in front of a record crowd at the 76ers' arena in Philadelphia.
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) February 13, 2026
Now, the league is moving its March semifinals to Brooklyn and eyeing more road games in NYC, LA, Nashville, and beyond.@AnnieCostabile talked to league president Alex Bazzell ⬇️
With limited time for ticket sales, though, the league is hoping to fill the 18000-seater home to the Nets and Liberty. From the league’s opening season, expansion included travel to the bigger cities.
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The league is targeting WNBA cities to get ‘readymade’ fans, as well as new markets where facilities are good, and the sport has a mega fan following. But will that conflict with the WNBA? Bazzell has an answer for that, too.
No Rivalry Between WNBA and Unrivaled
Fans earlier targeted Napheesa Collier for the delay in the CBA conclusion, putting forward the ‘conflict of interests’ as the primary reason. Though the leagues operated on different model, their recent move will also add more ‘fuel’ to those rumors. But the Unrivaled CEO denies such a notion.
“We want the WNBA CBA to get done. The WNBA running and operating, continuously growing, is great marketing exposure for our league because a lot of the top players that play there, play with us,” Bazzell told the media.
The ideology behind starting the unrivalled league, its schedule, and even the formats don’t overlap with the WNBA, and it’s the WNBA players who are making the Unrivaled league a major success at the moment. Rather, both leagues can complement each other in the future if they continue to cover the calendar year with their schedules, keeping away from any other competitor.