Unrivaled breaks attendance record for professional women’s basketball with Philadelphia tour stop

It was a historic night at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia on Friday night, as Unrivaled drew the highest attendance figure of any professional women’s basketball regular-season game in the history of the sport.

A total of 21,490 packed into the home of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers for its inaugural tour stop in the three-on-three women’s basketball league’s second season.

“It speaks to the names of the players we have in our league,” Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell said. “The popularity, the sport is skyrocketing, the platform is finally there. We’re just excited to have an extremely diehard fan base.”

The previous attendance record for a regular-season women’s game was 20,711 for a WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and Washington Mystics on Sept. 19, 2024.

All of Unrivaled’s games have previously been staged at the Sephora Arena in Medley, Fla., the league’s home base. This was the league’s first time making a tour stop, and it plans to make touring a regular part of its schedule, expanding to more cities next season in 2027, while still maintaining its hub.

Unrivaled chose Philadelphia in part because several of its investors had ties to the city, including Wanda Sykes, Dawn Staley and Geno Auriemma. But part of the draw was that it wasn’t already a women’s basketball market; there was an opportunity to bring the women’s game to a new set of fans. Friday’s games were the first time the city had been home to professional women’s basketball since 1998, with the ABL’s Philadelphia Rage. The WNBA plans to return to Philadelphia with an expansion team in 2030.

“We want to go to numerous cities, making sure that we’re serving the fans, but also not certainly changing the entire DNA of who we are,” Bazzell said. “Players don’t want to be traveling every single game, but you like going to a different atmosphere and feeling the energy of a city and getting out there. To have a packed house tonight, (for) every player, it’s what you want to do. You want to play in front of a sold-out crowd.”

The interest in the Philadelphia stop is an important growth indicator for Unrivaled in 2026. The league experienced a significant decline in television ratings to start its season, which began earlier than in 2025 to accommodate the FIBA World Cup qualifying window in March, but it is beginning to bounce back. The highest-rated game of the season came last Monday (194,000 viewers for Lunar Owls vs. Hive), one of the first times all year when Unrivaled wasn’t directly competing against the NFL or College Football Playoff.

Unrivaled’s digital audience has increased by 24 percent year-over-year. Merchandise sales were up 54 percent as of opening weekend. Bazzell also touted the social reach of its newest club Breeze BC, which stars Paige Bueckers. That team has more social media followers than the two newest NWSL teams (Bay FC and Denver Summit FC).

The tour is also a new revenue stream for the league. Bazzell said the ticket sales from one night in Philadelphia essentially equaled what Unrivaled drew in the first season, when the capacity at its home arena was less than 800. Ticket revenue was already up in 2026 relative to 2025 because of an expanded arena that now seats about 1,000, plus an additional night of games every week.

“Our salaries have gone up substantially because the business is producing substantially higher than what we even expected coming into year one and year two,” Bazzell said.

Unrivaled just passed the halfway point of its regular season, which concludes on March 4. The league will break for its annual 1-on-1 tournament from Feb. 11-14.