WBB: Unrivaled 3×3 league inks media rights partnership with TNT Sports

Tonight, the 2024 WNBA champion will be crowned. Before then, catch up on the week’s women’s basketball news, including a landmark announcement from a pair of WNBA Finals rivals:

Unrivaled announces TV partnership with TNT

On Wednesday, Unrivaled, the forthcoming 3×3 professional league co-founded by WNBA Finals combatants Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, announced a multi-year media rights partnership with TNT Sports.

More than 45 primetime games will be broadcast on TNT and truTV during the league’s inaugural season. TNT will show games on Mondays and Fridays, while truTV will house Saturday broadcasts. All games also will be available via streaming on Max. The season tips off on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025.

According to sports business reporter Joe Pompliano, the deals extends for six years and could be worth over $100 million. As Winsidr’s Rachel Galligan points out, it took the WNBA, a league founded with the backing of the NBA, 28 seasons to ink a deal of comparable value. (Unrivaled’s deal also suggests that the WNBA’s new package continues to undervalue the league, as pointed out by women’s basketball legend Cheryl Miller, among others.)

The early interest and investment in the league is further proof that it is the players, not the suits or structures, that makes women’s basketball a great and growing product. And Unrivaled, in partnership with TNT, will also provide more insight into the league’s 30 players, with TNT Sports digital platforms (Bleacher Report, House of Highlights, HighlightHER) distributing highlights and other content.

As part of the announcement, Unrivaled also shared a sneak peek of the league’s specialized, compressed court designed for full-court 3×3 play.

Stewart received homophobic death threats during WNBA Finals

Between Games 1 and 2 of the WNBA Finals, Breanna Stewart revealed that her wife, Marta Xargay Casademont, received an email containing homophobic death threats. Stewart shared that she had reported the message to the Liberty and league, while her wife reported it to the police.

When discussing the incident with reporters, Stewart emphasized:

We love that people are engaged in our sport, but not to the point where there’s threats or harassment or homophobic comments being made. So we’re just continuing to let the league know. They’re handling it, but also, I think for me, just continue to use this platform to make sure that everyone knows that it’s unacceptable to bring to our sport and really into the world.

Racist, misogynist and homophobic threats to WNBA players, both on social media and in the real world, extend beyond Stewart, and beyond this season. After she returned to the WNBA last season following her wrongful detainment in a Russian prison, Brittney Griner and her Phoenix Mercury teammates experienced harassment at an airport. Members of the Chicago Sky have been targets of harassment, with Angel Reese encountering inundations of racist and sexist spew on social media and Chennedy Carter met by a threatening heckler when the team arrived an away hotel. During the first round of the WNBA playoffs, the Connecticut Sun’s Alyssa Thomas addressed the increase in racist social media invective directed at her and her teammates. One such teammate, DiJonai Carrington, shared an email she received that threatened sexual violence. And those are just the most prominent, public examples.

The WNBA, again, issued statement in response to the threat to Stewart and her family. And on Thursday, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert reiterated that “the hateful speech and threats directed at our players are troubling,” while noting that the league is working with the WNBPA to solve the problem by “utilizing technology, prioritizing mental health, reinforcing physical security and increasing monitoring.” Engelbert further stated, “We know there’s more work to be done, and as a league, we are fully committed to listening to the players and other stakeholders on this and other important issues,”

Yet, when it comes to addressing the identity-based harassment hurled at WNBA players, the league’s rhetoric is starting to sound like the “thoughts and prayers” pablum offered by Republican politicians after a(nother) mass shooting. No, it’s not sensible to think that the WNBA itself can staunch the racist, sexist and homophobic comments that flow on social media platforms. But, similar to how GOP electeds are captive to the NRA and refuse to address the root problem—easy access to guns—the WNBA appears blinded by growth—seen in their much celebrated record-breaking attendance and TV viewership numbers—and resistant to adjusting the league’s branding and messaging.

After WNBA players’ activist turn in 2016, a mindset that sharpened in 2020, the league had followed players’ lead and increasingly emphasized its diversity and inclusivity, highlighting players’ intersectional racial, gender and sexual identities as integral to the league and all it stands for. This season, in a moment of exponential growth, such messaging has gone quiet, with the league seeming intent on attracting as much interest as possible, even at the expense of elevating and protecting the integrity of all it’s players.

Maybe a return to more progressive messaging wouldn’t make a difference. But, using marketing and branding efforts to loudly and proudly make clear what the league stands for and who is welcome within its community could be a solution. It might be time to draw, rather than expand, the league’s cultural boundaries. As ESPN’s Andraya Carter has said, “As much as we want this league to grow, we will grow slower if it means leaving those fans out of the mix.”

AU heads to Nashville

Unrivaled is not the only women’s pro basketball league that will provide a domestic hoops fix during the WNBA offseason. Athletes Unlimited Pro Basketball returns for a fourth season. This time in Nashville, the home town of multi-time AU participants (and sisters) Isabelle and Dorie Harrison.

Nashville Municipal Auditorium with host the fourth season, with play beginning on Feb. 5 and continuing through Mar. 2. A total of 24 5×5 games, featuring 40 players, will be played across the four weeks.

AU will maintain its unique format, where four team captains draft new teams each week. All players earn performance points across the week’s three games, with the week’s top four point-earners then serving as captains for the following week. The player with most points across the whole season is crowned league champion.