When women’s 3-on-3 basketball league Unrivaled was founded in 2023, it promised a compelling value proposition for players: a probability to make the very best average salary in women’s sports without having to travel overseas in the course of the WNBA offseason.
For marketers seeking to reap the benefits of the increased attention and investment in women’s sports, Unrivaled represented a rare white-space opportunity to get in on the bottom floor. By the time the league tipped off in January, its roster of brand partners included Miller Lite, Sprite, Under Armor and State Farm.
Unrivaled wrapped up its first season in March, nearly breaking even with revenue of more than $27 million and averaging 221,000 viewers, per a Front Office Sports report. A Feb. 14 game between the Lunar Owls and Mist — captained by league co-founders Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, respectively — averaged 377,000 viewers. The league quickly proved to be a probability for marketers seeking to activate around women’s sports during a time of yr when the WNBA and National Women’s Soccer League are dark.
“Brands are looking to speculate more in women’s sports. They’re seeing true ROI now, but there’s still limited opportunity to deploy,” said Unrivaled President Alex Bazzell. “They need to have touch points quarterly, all year long, and we fit right into a timing where it was a large open landscape.”
But even with a possibility to market around a brand new winter sport, Unrivaled was also unproven, from its variety of basketball to data around viewership and social media impact. Although Ally Financial signed on as founding brand partner and jersey sponsor in July 2024, it wasn’t until the league secured a media rights partner in TNT Sports in October 2024 that “the floodgates opened” for partnerships, with brands like Sephora reaching out to the league, Bazzell said.
“Our vision of sponsorships is more of partnerships, where we must be an extension of those brands,” the manager explained. “Everyone has a distinct storytelling mindset of what they need to perform.”
Samsung’s galaxy of devices
By starting a league from scratch, Unrivaled offered unique opportunities for brands to showcase their products in organic ways. Along with serving because the naming rights partner of the league’s venue, Wayfair helped outfit player housing in apartments just a few minutes from the power.
As official technology and presenting partner, Samsung Galaxy provided the computing power that coaches, players and the league needed, including mobile devices with artificial intelligence and health-tracking features. But the partnership also represented an alignment of shared values between brand and league.
“We have all the time been about innovation, inventing and reinventing ourselves and breaking boundaries,” said Olga Suvorova, vice chairman of mobile experience marketing at Samsung Electronics America. “Unrivaled … was exactly that: difficult the conventions in sports and investing in athletes and ladies’s sports in unprecedented ways.”
Basketball star Brittney Griner holds a Samsung smartphone.
Permission granted by Unrivaled
With Unrivaled, Samsung integrated its tech on and off the court, each in sports contexts and as a part of an effort to make the league social-first and more engaging for fans. An in-game Galaxy Game Winner segment used the slow-motion feature of the S25 Ultra smartphone, while the Galaxy Huddle Cam used the phone’s Audio Eraser feature to remove background noise. But the players’ use of smartwatches and smart rings was perhaps the deepest a part of the combination.
“My favorite moment was when the athletes, unprompted, began calling our devices ‘Sammies,’” Suvorova said. “That’s the moment where it’s a part of their routine, their training and the way they’re hanging out, outside of the games.”
Athletes as creators
Even as Unrivaled provides a possibility for the very best average salary in women’s sports, the vast majority of players’ income will still come from off the court via their very own brand sponsorships. In kind, athletes increasingly must operate as creators — a skill most don’t naturally have and one that takes time and energy to develop. The league hopes to assist fill the void by capturing, creating and distributing content.
“Our job is to proceed to assist grow their brands, since it’s so priceless for them to leverage for these other partners that need to get into the space — they simply do not know where to enter,” Bazzell said.
Collectively, Unrivaled players’ social accounts grew by almost a million followers over the course of the season, an information point that proves that the league added more value to their social portfolios.
Similarly, Samsung has also integrated the league into its Galaxy Creator Collective, tapping Collier and Stewart as creators and bringing others to games to expand the league to their followings. The brand’s engagement rates on its owned channels went up exponentially because it began to create in-game and behind-the-scenes content with Unrivaled, demonstrating the worth the partnership builds.
“It’s beyond just the logo slap — it’s beyond traditional promoting,” Suvorova said of the brand’s work with Unrivaled. “Reimagining how we deliver an experience to fans goes to proceed being a priority.”
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