When women’s 3-on-3 basketball league Unrivaled was founded in 2023, it promised a compelling value proposition for players: a chance to make the highest average salary in women’s sports without having to travel overseas during the WNBA offseason. 

For marketers looking to take advantage of the increased attention and investment in women’s sports, Unrivaled represented a rare white-space opportunity to get in on the ground floor. By the time the league tipped off in January, its roster of brand partners included Miller Lite, Sprite, Under Armour and State Farm.

Unrivaled wrapped up its first season in March, nearly breaking even with revenue of more than $27 million and averaging 221,000 viewers, per a Front Office Sports report. A Feb. 14 game between the Lunar Owls and Mist — captained by league co-founders Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, respectively — averaged 377,000 viewers. The league quickly proved to be a chance for marketers looking to activate around women’s sports during a time of year when the WNBA and National Women’s Soccer League are dark.

“Brands are looking to invest more in women's sports. They're seeing true ROI now, but there's still limited opportunity to deploy,” said Unrivaled President Alex Bazzell. “They want to have touch points quarterly, throughout the year, and we fit into a timing where it was a wide open landscape.”

But even with an opportunity to market around a new winter sport, Unrivaled was also unproven, from its style of basketball to data around viewership and social media impact. Although Ally Financial signed on as founding brand partner and jersey sponsor in July 2024, it wasn’t until the league secured a media rights partner in TNT Sports in October 2024 that “the floodgates opened” for partnerships, with brands like Sephora reaching out to the league, Bazzell said.

“Our vision of sponsorships is more of partnerships, where we need to be an extension of these brands,” the executive explained. “Everyone has a different storytelling mindset of what they want to accomplish.”

Samsung’s galaxy of devices

By starting a league from scratch, Unrivaled offered unique opportunities for brands to showcase their products in organic ways. Along with serving as the naming rights partner of the league’s venue, Wayfair helped outfit player housing in apartments a few minutes from the facility. 

As official technology and presenting partner, Samsung Galaxy provided the computing power that coaches, players and the league needed, including mobile devices with artificial intelligence and health-tracking features. But the partnership also represented an alignment of shared values between brand and league.

“We have always been about innovation, inventing and reinventing ourselves and breaking boundaries,” said Olga Suvorova, vice president of mobile experience marketing at Samsung Electronics America. “Unrivaled … was exactly that: challenging the conventions in sports and investing in athletes and women's sports in unprecedented ways.”

With Unrivaled, Samsung integrated its tech on and off the court, both in sports contexts and as part of an effort to make the league social-first and more engaging for fans. An in-game Galaxy Game Winner segment used the slow-motion feature of the S25 Ultra smartphone, while the Galaxy Huddle Cam used the phone’s Audio Eraser feature to remove background noise. But the players’ use of smartwatches and smart rings was perhaps the deepest part of the integration.

“My favorite moment was when the athletes, unprompted, started calling our devices ‘Sammies,’” Suvorova said. “That's the moment where it's part of their routine, their training and how they're hanging out, outside of the games.”

Athletes as creators

Even as Unrivaled provides an opportunity for the highest average salary in women’s sports, the majority of players’ income will still come from off the court via their own brand sponsorships. In kind, athletes increasingly must operate as creators — a skill most don’t naturally have and one that takes time and energy to develop. The league hopes to help fill the void by capturing, creating and distributing content. 

“Our job is to continue to help grow their brands, because it's so valuable for them to leverage for these other partners that want to get into the space — they just don't know where to enter,” Bazzell said. 

Collectively, Unrivaled players’ social accounts grew by almost one million followers over the course of the season, a data point that proves that the league added more value to their social portfolios.

Similarly, Samsung has also integrated the league into its Galaxy Creator Collective, tapping Collier and Stewart as creators and bringing others to games to expand the league to their followings. The brand’s engagement rates on its owned channels went up exponentially since it started to create in-game and behind-the-scenes content with Unrivaled, demonstrating the value the partnership builds.

“It's beyond just the logo slap — it's beyond traditional advertising,” Suvorova said of the brand’s work with Unrivaled. “Reimagining how we deliver an experience to fans is going to continue being a priority.”