The unrivaled women's basketball league debuts on Friday

Unrivaled, a new 3-on-3 women's professional basketball league, launches Friday, presenting both an important test and an opportunity for women's sports to boost its growing profile in the United States.

The league, co-founded by WNBA superstars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, has already announced deals with a dozen sponsors and raised $35 million in funding. Collier told CNBC that the league has already shown it has “immense” potential and opportunity.

“When you invest in players and women's sports, I think we're already seeing the return,” she said. “This is just the beginning for us. It's the first year and we've already been able to do it, so we're very excited about the future.”

The games will be broadcast Property of Warner Bros. Discovery TNT Sports platforms in multi-year media rights deal. Television ratings will matter not only in terms of total viewership, but also demographically, said Lee Berke, president and CEO of sports consulting firm LHB Sports, Entertainment & Media.

“You're looking for audiences that are younger, men and women watching, you're looking for audience size,” Berke told CNBC. “There's obviously a lot of excitement from day one. You want to see the audience expand and grow throughout the season.”

Here's what you should know about Unrivaled ahead of its inaugural announcement:

The first season of Unrivaled will feature six teams playing against each other over two months. The season culminates with a four-team playoff tournament, with the championship taking place on March 17. There is also a 1v1 player tournament scheduled for mid-season.

Matches are played in a 3-on-3 format and are held on a smaller court compared to WNBA courts. They last one hour and are broadcast on TNT on Fridays and Mondays and on TruTV on Saturdays. The games are also available to stream on WBD's Max.

All games are played at the Mediapro US headquarters in Medley, Florida, a suburb of Miami. The season takes place during the WNBA offseason and aims to provide an alternative to playing overseas.

Many WNBA players spend their offseason playing for teams in Russia, China and other countries to supplement their income. However, the WNBA collective bargaining agreement signed in 2020 now suspends players without pay for the season if they do not return from their overseas teams in time for training camp. WNBA training camp begins April 27.

“It's trying to fill a void in the schedule for these players. It's expanding the lane of professional basketball,” Alex Bazzell, president of Unrivaled and Collier's husband, previously told CNBC.

Unrivaled will also pay many players a higher salary than the WNBA. The total salary package is more than $8 million, Bazzell told SB Nation, which averages out to about $242,000 per player this season. Players will also receive stock and revenue sharing in the league, which has said it offers the highest average salary in the history of the women's professional sports league.

At a news conference Friday, Bazzell said the league does not have a minimum or maximum salary, but that pay is based in part on what competing and other women's sports leagues pay.

“We are being extremely aggressive when we look at the entire landscape and ecosystem,” Bazzell said. “We try to look at numerous things: What are you potentially earning overseas? What are you earning in the WNBA? How do we beat those numbers, frankly, to make it worthwhile?”

WNBA annual salaries currently range from the low of $66,079 to the top player maximum of $249,244. Only one player per WNBA team can be designated as a top player and earn that amount.

The league has 36 participants for its first season, all of whom played in the WNBA last year. There are 15 2024 WNBA All Stars on the rosters, led by first-team All-WNBA honorees Collier, Stewart and Alyssa Thomas. Other notable players include Sabrina Ionescu, Brittney Griner and Angel Reese.

Unrivaled has raised $35 million in its seed and Series A rounds from a host of high-profile investors. Its sponsors include basketball stars such as Giannis Antetokounmpo and Carmelo Anthony, as well as Olympians such as Alex Morgan and Michael Phelps. Tennis great Coco Gauff was announced as its new investor on January 6.

Collier said while everyone else is realizing the rise of women's sports, sports figures were the first to recognize the value of the industry.

“I think people in the sport have known that for a long time,” Collier said. “Seeing the support from other athletes is really encouraging. They believe in us a lot, so it's been really nice to see.”

Unrivaled's corporate partners, Collier added, align with his vision of growing the sport.

“We've said for a long time that this is not a charity. It's a great business opportunity and those brands recognize that too,” Collier said. “Not only do they do it out of the goodness of their hearts, but they believe in the growth of women's sports. But they also do it because they know it is something that has a lot of potential to be profitable.”

About a dozen companies have signed sponsorship deals with Unrivaled, including Sephora, State Farm, Wilson, Ally Financial and Samsung. Most recently, Unrivaled named Sprite as its presenting partner for the 1v1 tournament and Bodyarmor as its official sports drink.

“It's tremendously impressive, both in terms of the number of sponsors, the quality of the sponsors and the fact that these are non-traditional sports sponsors,” Berke said.

TNT Sports' team of broadcasters and studio hosts for Unrivaled coverage includes Basketball Hall of Famer Lisa Leslie and two-time WNBA Most Valuable Player Candace Parker.

Unrivaled's debut comes amid a surge in national interest in women's sports, particularly basketball.

The WNBA in particular enjoyed a boom, as former college stars Caitlin Clark, Cameron Brink and Reese led an attention-grabbing rookie class. The league said it broke an all-time record with more than 54 million unique viewers during the season and posted its best in-person attendance numbers in 22 years.

Last year's WNBA Finals, in which the New York Liberty defeated the Minnesota Lynx in five games, was the league's most-watched championship series in 25 years, according to ESPN.

The WNBA is expanding the Finals from a best-of-five format to a best-of-seven series starting next year. It will also launch a 13th franchise, the Golden State Valkyries, next season and add teams in Toronto and Portland, Oregon, in 2026.

Both the WNBA and its players are prepared to take advantage of the momentum.

The league may reevaluate its current 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal after 2028, CNBC previously reported, and the WNBA players union opted out of its current collective bargaining agreement in October. A new deal, which would take effect after next season, could provide players with higher salaries and more benefits, and the growing attention on WNBA athletes gives them greater leverage at the negotiating table.

Unrivaled will have a big impact on the women's basketball business, Collier told CNBC.

“We're already seeing the landscape expand. Foreign contracts are increasing, contracts from other domestic leagues are increasing,” Collier said. “We're trying to expand what is the normal thinking around the business of women's sports, and you'll definitely see us push those same things in the CBA.”

— CNBC's Lillian Rizzo, Jake Piazza and Alex Sherman contributed to this report.