We’re halfway through the inaugural season of Unrivaled, the groundbreaking 3v3 women’s basketball league. Founded by NBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, the league gives WNBA players the unique opportunity to play closer to home while owning a piece of the action. While it is a revolutionary concept, not everything has gone according to plan for the organizers!

Ever since the 1v1 tournament started, things have begun to take a turn for the worse! Day 1 of the tournament saw a big shock when Stewart lost 12-0 to rookie Aliyah Edwards. It created a huge buzz on social media and people started wondering if the NBA could repeat it as well. However, the excitement quickly turned sour on Day 2, when the tournament generated headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Rachel Annamarie DeMita didn’t hold back on her YouTube channel when she discussed the struggles of Unrivaled. She highlighted some glaring issues, one of which was especially concerning, players who are also part owners of the league speaking out against it. She pointed out how Rhyne Howard stirred the pot on X by retweeting posts that claimed Unrivaled to be rigged after her loss to Courtney Williams in the 1v1 tournament. DeMita also gave another example of a player, who, openly criticized the league. You guessed it right! We are talking about Angel Reese here.

The TV show host said, “So Angel Reese was ejected in one of the games by getting two technical fouls in a row and then after the game, someone said ejection and unrivaled the refs are out of their mind and Angel Reese retweeted and she said I can’t wait to get back to Chicago man.” She continued, “this is a stark difference from the beginning of the season where Angel Reese basically said if she never had to leave Unrivaled, she wouldn’t.” 

It’s a worrying sign for any league when players who own a stake in it start publicly voicing their dissatisfaction! As Rachel pointed out, projecting your frustrations online only creates more chaos and casts a shadow of uncertainty over Unrivaled’s future as the investors might not be willing to invest in it anymore!

In her latest video, Rachel dives into other challenges that could put Unrivaled’s future in jeopardy. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Players like Angel Reese calling out is not the only problem Unrivaled has

One of the biggest challenges that the league has been facing is its TV ratings. Despite having a pretty strong social media game, the league hasn’t been able to attract a lot of viewers and DeMita herself admitted to not being able to see all the games! She gave more details about the numbers.

She said, “So the opening weekend the numbers were pretty strong, there were 313k average viewers.” She then continued, “Now the viewership dipped significantly next Saturday, and then Monday it also dipped but as the weeks continue to go ratings have gone pretty significantly.” She dropped the final nail in the coffin and stated, “All the viewership has now been in the 100ks.”

These are not great numbers for a newly formed league and work has to be done with improving it. Trends also show that the first game of the day is getting more viewership than the second game which suggests that the timeslot can be tweaked for a better viewership. Moreover, Injury woes have also been a major stumbling block for Unrivaled. Several players were forced to exit the 1v1 tournament last minute due to injuries, and a Laces BC game against Vinyl BC had to be canceled because Laces simply didn’t have enough players to compete.

Given that this is a 3v3 format, players are naturally more prone to injuries than in the WNBA. As it stands, the WNBA will always prioritize their athletes over their Unrivaled commitments, so the league will need to step up its game in safeguarding players from injury. The first step would be to bring in better referees.

With players like Angel Reese and Rhyne Howard publicly voicing their frustrations, injury concerns mounting, and TV ratings struggling to rise, Unrivaled’s inaugural season has hit a few major roadblocks. For Breanna Stewart and co, these changes need to be addressed quickly or there might not be an Unrivaled next season!