By Michaela Althouse

Copyright phillyvoice

Philly has to wait until 2030 for the arrival of its new WNBA team, but in just a few months the city will host its first professional women’s basketball games since 1998.

Unrivaled, a 3-on-3 league that was founded in 2023 by WNBA stars Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, is going on tour this year and will make a stop at Xfinity Mobile Arena in January, officials announced Thursday.

Back-to-back games will be played Jan. 30 and feature four teams that have yet to be announced. Unrivaled said it will release the league’s schedule in November, and tickets are on sale now. The games will be broadcast starting at 7:30 p.m. on TNT, truTV and HBOMax.

The last professional women’s basketball game played in the city was nearly 30 years ago, when the Philadelphia Rage was in the American Basketball League.

Unrivaled played all of its games near Miami for its inaugural season, which ran from January to March. While it will still be based in Florida, the league is planning to travel across the country this year for some games during its 10-week season, which starts Jan. 5.

“We’ve been saying for a while, we need to take Unrivaled on the road,” President Alex Bazzell said at a news conference Thursday. “We’ve kind of looked everywhere. This was such an easy choice for us because the support we had here from the city.”

Mayor Cherelle Parker, Unrivaled investor Alex Sykes and player Natasha Cloud were among the speakers during the event at Love Park.

“I’m really excited to be here on behalf of Unrivaled more than anything,” said Cloud, who grew up in Delaware County, went to St. Joe’s and plays for Phantom BC. “This is a league that is continuing to set a precedence for women’s basketball across the across the realm.”

Unrivaled was created as an alternative for players to going overseas to play basketball during the WNBA offseason, where many cashed in on lucrative contracts.

The six teams in the league include stars like Angel Reese, Sabrina Ionescu and Brittney Griner, who in 2022, while playing for a team in Russia, was arrested on drug-related charges and detained for nearly 10 months.

The players’ average salary in Unrivaled is over $200,000 per year, according to the Athletic, which is higher than the last season’s average in the WNBA.

The announcement in Philly comes days after Unrivaled co-founder Collier publicly criticized WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, saying that she’d been negligent in managing that league. WNBA players and officials are in the middle of negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement, with the current one set to expire at the end of October.

“We have the best players in the world,” Collier said about the WNBA. “We have the best fans in the world, but right now we have the worst leadership in the world.”

Earlier this year, it was announced that Philly would get a WNBA franchise team in 2030.

“Advancing women’s pro sports in Philly has been a goal we’ve passionately pursued for years, and this initiative represents the perfect alignment of purpose and passion,” comedian Wanda Sykes, an investor in Unrivaled and a leader in an effort to bring a WNBA team to the city, said in a statement. “Unrivaled, this groundbreaking league, is set to elevate the women’s basketball ecosystem as a whole, and we are honored that Philly has been chosen as its first-ever tour stop.”