Unrivaled is speeding down a new lane in women’s sports: The barnstorming tour.
The attendance is through the roof when Unrivaled takes its show on the road. There were 21,490 fans (including me) at Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Center on Jan 30. On March 2, the league drew 18,261 to the Barclays in Brooklyn.
These games were events! And that makes sense, because fans of women’s sports — more than fans of men’s — love a limited-time-only spectacle. It has always been there for the Olympics and the World Cup. But also, the Grand Slams and even Nebraska’s Volleyball Day tournament in 2023, when more than 90,000 fans showed up to see a four-team tournament in a massive football stadium, Memorial Stadium in Lincoln.
Given Unrivaled’s record-breaking numbers, p.s. that Philly game was the largest crowd ever for a professional women’s basketball game, you’d think the league is an unqualified success. But the stats don’t unilaterally back that up. According to Sports Business Journal, viewership was down 40% this season. And attendance at Unrivaled’s home venue in Miami has been meh.
For season three, taking the show on the road was good business.
Fans of women’s sports are a different audience, so meet them where they are. Literally. Make it the Final Four and the Eras tour, with graphic T’s and merch at the door. This is about building community - in person, in the arena.
There's a feeling at a women's game when most of the seats are filled and the crowd is every age, race, and reflects the prism of the identity spectrum.
For a lot of us, it feels like home.
Philly is a women’s basketball city that has been denied a pro basketball team for way too long, although that will be changing when the WNBA finally adds a franchise in 2030. But there are plenty of other cities like that. Will every one of them set a new house attendance record? You never know until you try.
The WNBA is locked into an NBA model while it tries to hash out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with players before the 2026 season is in serious jeopardy. Unrivaled is a new business that showcases and centers the players. If fans are less invested in teams than players, who cares? If people don’t know that Natasha Cloud and Kelsey Plum are on the same team until tipoff, or even that the Phantom are playing that night, they’ll figure it out.
Unrivaled can break the traditional sports league model, and it should. There are some numbers to be crunched, can a pro league make it without maximizing broadcast revenue? But, in the meantime, book an arena and put a hoop in the tour bus.
