Unrivaled CEO Shares Post-Championship Plans Amid WNBA CBA Controversy

Mist Basketball Club and Phantom BC will play for Unrivaled’s championship Wednesday to conclude the 3-on-3 league’s second season. After that, it’s unclear when women’s basketball’s biggest names will face off next.

Usually, players would be about to turn their attention to WNBA preparations around this time. But if negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement don’t lead to a pact before March 10, the beginning of the WNBA season could be delayed, the league said.

If there is a work stoppage or missed games, Unrivaled is unlikely to spin up its own alternative, even though player Natasha Cloud hinted at that possibility earlier this year, and the league has proven the ability to put on events on short notice. Monday’s sellout of Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center, the home of the WNBA’s New York Liberty, for semifinal games came together in a matter of weeks after a January sellout in Philadelphia.

The winners of Wednesday’s championship (9:30 p.m. ET, TNT/truTV) will earn $600,000 to be split among the roster of 6-7 players.

Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell said before Monday’s games that potential pop-up contests would distract from the league’s longer-term growth plans. And a CBA could come at any time, eliminating the need for alternate action. 

“We get asked a lot by players, naturally,” Bazzell said. “But we don’t focus any of our time on it.”

Phantom guard and WNBPA first vice-president Kelsey Plum spent much of her pregame media availability period before Monday’s semifinal contest answering questions about where players stood amid CBA talks. The same was true for Unrivaled co-founder, Mist forward and WNBPA VP Breanna Stewart. 

“The biggest priority right now is to come to an agreement,” Stewart said. “Both sides need to see the wins that we do have, and then we really have to kind of collab on this thing.”

Internal CBA talks were scheduled for Tuesday, ahead of Wednesday’s final. According to ESPN, Plum and Stewart recently wrote a three-page letter to union executive director Terri Jackson expressing “serious concerns” about how the PA has handled negotiations to date.

After the Unrivaled finale, Plum and Stewart will transition back to 5-on-5 play with a USA Basketball training camp ahead of the FIBA World Cup qualifying tournament in Puerto Rico next week. Stewart has also committed to play a short stint for EuroLeague team Fenerbahce Opet in April.

On paper, training camp is scheduled to start April 19. But that’s just on paper.

The WNBA sent its latest proposal to union leaders on Sunday. It included changes to rookie pay that would allow the best newcomers—think Caitlin Clark or Paige Bueckers—to earn a max salary earlier in their careers. The league has proposed a 2026 salary cap of $5.75 million in 2026 (up 280% from last year’s roughly $1.5 million) and growing from there.

The union is pushing for hundreds of millions of dollars more for athletes over the course of the multiyear agreement compared to W proposals. Players voted in December to authorize a strike, though on Monday Plum and Stewart emphasized the downside ramifications of that tactic.

“Both sides aren’t moving,” Bueckers, the 2025 WNBA Rookie of the Year, said Monday. “We need to continue to have these conversations, continue to actually have change implemented for us to move on our stance.”

Unrivaled executives, meanwhile, will soon turn their attention to making tweaks for Season 3. TV ratings dropped at the start of the 2026 season, in part because schedule changes led to a larger overlap with college football and NFL playoffs, though Bazzell said “our viewership has been growing week over week” since then.

TNT Sports EVP and chief content officer Craig Barry said the games in bigger, packed venues had a clear impact on the broadcast at home as well. Throughout the season, Unrivaled also brought a comparatively high ratio of female viewers to the company’s channels. TNT will cover Wednesday’s final starting with a pregame show from Miami’s Sephora Arena, directly following a U.S.-Canada women’s soccer match.

“(Unrivaled) has proven time and time again that it drives a large, bespoke audience,” Barry said. “It’s a highly sustainable product.”

Unrivaled commissioner Micky Lawler said the league made roughly $45 million in revenue this year, up 67% over the league’s first year as it began embracing a touring model, with eyes on visiting even more locations next season. It is also considering expanding the capacity in its Miami home base.

In the meantime, rather than trying to capitalize on WNBA labor drama, Bazzell sounds as eager as anyone for the back-and-forth to conclude. “Hopefully, there’s a CBA signed,” he said, “so I can stop getting asked this question.”