Unrivaled Expands Roster, Aiming to Add Caitlin Clark To The Lineup

Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 women's basketball league, signed their 30th player on Thursday. Shortly after, they increased the roster to 36.

There's one WNBA player, who has yet to join, that the league is hopeful to sign before the season begins in January. There have been some "high level conversations" about Caitlin Clark joining and sources claim she could be paid a salary of more than $1 million if she decides to join.

As previously reported by The Blast, the new 3-on-3 women's basketball league is co-founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier. They originally decided on a 30-player roster with six teams to play during the WNBA's offseason so players wouldn't need to go overseas.

In 2023, Stewart told ESPN, "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. 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's still a rule."

Collier shared her own personal experience of playing overseas and how that experience impacted her decision to help create the offseason league.

"I think it just really opened my eyes even more to the problem that we have going overseas," she explained in 2023. "It's really hard to be away from family for so long, but unfortunately, it's like really the only option we have if we wanna make money in the offseason, we want to continue to grow our game, and it just leaves a huge hole marketing wise, so we just saw a lot of issues that we wanted to try to find a solution for."

Unrivaled's season begins in January and continues through March, concluding before WNBA training camp begins in April.

The league is hoping that Clark will decide to join them.

According to Sports Business Journal, sources said that Unrivaled told Clark that she can "take as long as she wants" to make her decision.

In the meantime, the league signed two of her closest friends - former Iowa teammate Kate Martin and Indiana Fever teammate Lexie Hull. Speculation is that Clark is "60/40" to saying "yes" to joining Unrivaled. Sources also said that the offer for Clark to join includes a salary of more than $1 million and significant equity in the business.

On Thursday, Collier shared the news of expanding the roster in a social media video shared on X.

"So, I have some super exciting news. We are now moving from 30 roster spots to 36 in Unrivaled," she said. "We're able to do this because we outperformed our financial projections, and so now we get to do something that we wanted to do in the future, which is give more people spots in Unrivaled."

She continued to say that "this is such an amazing time in women's sports," and they are "so thankful to all the positive people who have come out and supported us."

Collier also shared that dates and tickets will be released soon.

The new women's league recently signed a media rights partnership with TNT Sports.

According to a press release about the partnership, some of the highlight include:

"TNT as the lead network for Unrivaled's inaugural season," "sustained stability and financial security for all players and stakeholders," Unrivaled highlights and content "across all TNT Sports platforms, including Bleacher Report, House of Highlights, HighlightHER, and more."

"TNT Sports is proud to enter a multi-year agreement with Unrivaled and showcase this new women's basketball league and many of the best players in the world in a distinct, fun and compelling way. Our TNT Sports portfolio centers on premium live sports and our media and equity partnership with Unrivaled deepens our commitment to further expanding the depth of content we offer our fans and present an opportunity for us to amplify the continued growth of women's basketball," Luis Silberwasser, Chairman & CEO of TNT Sports said.

"Our TNT Sports portfolio centers on premium live sports and our media and equity partnership with Unrivaled deepens our commitment to further expanding the depth of top tier women's sports programming we offer our fans and presents an opportunity for us to shape and amplify the continued growth of women's basketball."

This offseason women's league will have a non-traditional format.

"Three-on-three is just so fun. It's really fast pace, and it's still gonna be a full court but it's about two-thirds the size of a regular court," Collier previously explained.

"So, you still get that up and down, but I think it's gonna be really fun to watch and then you also see, like we said the premise is the 30 best players in the league, so you get to see them playing more offense, doing what they do best and why they became the best that they are so I think it's just gonna be highly entertaining."