Who really won Unrivaled? — Georgia Amoore talks Kentucky, WNBA future

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Let’s start from the Unrivaled title game and work our way out. Unrivaled’s television ratings matter more than almost anything that happens on the court from both a long-term viability view and from a leverage with the WNBA perspective. Accordingly, the dip after respectable opening week numbers caused consternation around the women’s basketball space. And so the 364k average viewers for the championship game — even with Angel Reese out due to injury — per TNT Sports, is a sign that fan momentum built, rather than tailed off, following the start of the season.

It is the kind of number that might just lead to fewer Turner Sports executives speaking on the record ahead of the championship game about their disappointment with the television product (way to hype your own product, guys!) and more of a focus on the ways the success of Unrivaled intersect not just with where the games are played but who is playing in them. The six-year road provided by the deal between Unrivaled and Turner Sports is really three years, given the opt-out in the contract, and whatever boost to the television experience that would come from putting Unrivaled on the road must be balanced against how using that money on travel will affect the league’s ability to provide first-class amenities, higher salaries, and even a single-site experience most favorable to and therefore most capable of attracting the players themselves.

You know: the costs the WNBA needs to take into account already.

Speaking of the WNBA: there’s a collective bargaining agreement currently in negotiation, the two sides meeting roughly twice a month, with a deadline of the end of the 2025 season. It is striking to me that we haven’t seen the public case be presented, particularly on the player side, since they seem to have the far easier brief in this negotiation.

Here it is in simple terms: the WNBA’s media rights deals were worth around $25 million, growing to $35 million, over the life of the last CBA, signed in January 2020. (I am intentionally not using things like the iON deal in this calculation, since it did not exist when the last CBA was signed.)

The new media rights deal is going to check in, when all the games are sold, somewhere in the neighborhood of eight times that. Media rights is by no means the only revenue stream for the WNBA, but as with any league, it is the biggest. So how every WNBA player in the world isn’t saying on every single podcast, “We’re not asking for NBA money, we just want eight times what we got last time, since that’s the growth in media rights” is utterly perplexing to me. How is that not the starting point for public posturing?

There are many reasons why the financial picture is murkier than that on the league side, but those are the hard cases to make on, say, a podcast. For instance, the fact that WNBA owners only own around 42 percent of their own teams, with the NBA owning another 42 percent of the league and the remaining 16 percent belonging to the world’s best bargain-hunters, the folks who paid $75 million for it back in 2022.

If you thought that was a good deal already, Sportico reported this past week that the expansion teams coming into the WNBA will dilute the ownership stake of the WNBA owners, but specifically not the NBA or the 16 percenters. Will the NBA take on greater costs? Will the independent investors? There’s a case the WNBA effectively needs to make within its own structure, beyond simply getting WNBA owners on board at a moment their stake in the league’s success is getting reduced. Not easy to explain on a podcast!

Anyway, I will cop to befuddlement when we see WNBA players go on podcasts or speak to Sports Illustrated and talk about striking without making this easy-to-understand demand central to their arguments.

That is just the start of the critical questions to answer, of course, the pot that then needs to get divided. How that division looks must change, considering that the last time the two sides negotiated the CBA, the middle class got squeezed (which is what happens when you double max salaries but raise the salary cap only around 30%) and rookie scale is in five figures, kneecapping the league’s ability to appeal financially to some of the most popular players in the sport. (So is the presence of a draft, which the NWSL and its players realized, but that doesn’t appear to be on the chopping block.)

As I have written before here, just how all of these moving parts push against one another is clearest in the upcoming decision-making process of one Paige Bueckers. I am amused at the occasional stray I draw on social media from people who are big mad that I have reported there is deep uncertainty in Bueckers’ immediate future. After all, she has said publicly that she isn’t returning to Connecticut. Binary question solved, right? What’s Megdal’s problem, anyway?

So, uh, about that. I am quite aware of her public statements about not returning to Connecticut for the 2025-26 season. But there are almost infinite possibilities for Paige Bueckers beyond the two choices of “return to school” or “sign with the Dallas Wings after they pick her first in the 2025 WNBA Draft”. Even declaring for the draft isn’t something she’ll need to decide until the end of Connecticut’s season, but the typical speedboat race for top college players — declare for the draft or not, 48 hours following their last game, then go wherever you’re selected — doesn’t apply here.

For instance: she can declare for the draft, but make it clear to the Dallas Wings that she will not sign with them. At that point, it is the Wings on the clock — even if Bueckers and the Huskies win a national title on April 6, and Bueckers takes the full 48 hours, that’s a good six days until the April 14 draft. And the reality is, that’s more than six days, potentially — in this scenario, they hold Bueckers’ rights for a full year. Critically, though, not after next year’s draft, so they’d need to make a deal, eventually, to take advantage of those rights (and end what would otherwise keep the franchise in suspended animation).

Bueckers, though? She can do virtually anything she wants. She can sign overseas, get a seven-figure deal in the Turkish league. She can join Unrivaled once she’s signed a pro contract anywhere else, WNBA or Turkish League or Athletes Unlimited or even Maverick Carter’s new venture. She can sign a deal for a video podcast to follow her around the world attending sporting events. She can monetize TikToks she makes with Azzi Fudd. The world belongs to Paige Bueckers.

And consider this: it might not just be in Bueckers’ best interest to play for Unrivaled before the WNBA — she has an equity stake in Unrivaled, after all — but for the players as a whole. Picture this scenario: it’s January 2026, the WNBPA and the league haven’t yet agreed to a deal, there’s a lockout, and Unrivaled’s Year 2 is looming with Paige Bueckers set to debut there, a debut they’ve spent months hyping. Easy to see that providing a ratings boost a lot bigger than forcing the Unrivaled show to hit the road, yes?

In short: it may well be the most beneficial thing Paige Bueckers could do for the WNBPA is to not play in the WNBA in 2025. And not just for the Unrivaled one-time benefit, either — to stand up for player empowerment, to give the WNBPA more structural support for loosening of player movement and rookie scale rules that ultimately hurt the league’s ability to grow as well. (Please be prepared for this conversation around JuJu Watkins, too, it’s coming.)

Or she could sign with the Dallas Wings for $78,831 and be bound to the team for the next four seasons, while even rookies who enter the league right after her will likely make several times what she will.

To be clear, that outcome is very much in play. Bueckers will not be focused on that decision until after UConn’s season ends, she has not shared a decision with the Dallas Wings, and multiple WNBA teams tell The IX there is no indication which way she is even leaning at this time.

But eventually, she’ll have that decision to make, and all the evidence in front of her to do it. Should she choose to assert her independence, many fellow players stand to benefit, and I sure wouldn’t want to be the one arguing publicly that a professional women’s athlete in the year 2025 should just take what she’s given and be grateful. I’d imagine other stakeholders will reach the same conclusion.

Just as a single ratings number for Unrivaled reverberated around the sport in areas that aren’t even superficially tied to Unrivaled’s future, so too will the decision Paige Bueckers makes.

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This week in women’s basketball

Again: The Next has been ALL OVER the NCAA Tournament, while covering the WNBA and Unrivaled. Live coverage, in-depth analysis. There’s nothing like it.

Maitreyi is must-read on Diana.

JuJu Watkins Is the Moment, Louisa Thomas tells me, and who am I to argue with her?

Maddie Kenney writing about the Ivy League in the New York Post? Okay!

Detroit Shock beat reporter Michael Rosenberg goes long on Lauren Betts.

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Five at The IX: Georgia Amoore, Kentucky

Mondays: Soccer

By: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer

Tuesdays: Tennis

By: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer

Wednesdays: Basketball

By: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The Next

Thursdays: Golf

By: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX

Fridays: Hockey

By: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden

Saturdays: Gymnastics

By: Lela Moore, @runlelarun, Freelance Writer