Unrivaled, the professional women's 3x3 basketball league that made its debut in Miami in 2025, just pulled off a wildly successful road event in Philadelphia on Thursday and Friday — and the league is already hinting that there are plans underfoot to add more travel dates to the 2026 schedule.
The double-header match on Friday brought in 21,490 people to the Xfinity Mobile Arena. That's an attendance number that smashed regular-season women's basketball attendance records in any venue in the history of the sport. It's also a huge boost for Unrivaled, especially since there have been plenty of conversations about the league's longtime viability due to what's been perceived as a dip in viewership numbers.
Many have suggested that part of the reason the event was so popular is because it was hosted in a city that doesn't have a WNBA team of its own. While Philadelphia will be joining the WNBA in 2030, the city is one of many that's had to get by with watching games on TV and enjoying the league from afar. Unrivaled's success offers a blueprint the league could follow next year: staging more travel games in cities that are currently untouched by the W.
Breanna Stewart asked fans where the league should go to next
Co-founder Breanna Stewart made it clear that Unrivaled's organizers want to know where fans want to see them, and fans were quick to suggest more non-WNBA cities. Plenty of fans have suggested MIlwaukee — which is approximately halfway between WNBA powerhouse cities Chicago, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis — as one possible stop.
Des Moines is another option that could open up such an event to fans from Omaha and Kansas City, and Nashville is a third option that plenty of people were on board with, especially after the city failed to win an approved bid for a WNBA team before 2030.
Additional suggested cities include New Orleans, Boston, Denver, Charlotte, Sacramento, and Oklahoma City.
The magnitude of the event was also not lost on fellow Unrivaled co-founder Napheesa Collier. While speaking to reporters at the game, she said, "It's just a testament to what we're building here, how much people believe in it," she explained. "So to have the city show out like this, to break a record in all of women's professional basketball here tonight, and for it to be Unrivaled, I think it's just amazing. The future's Unrivaled."