No ladies’s skilled basketball sport has seen as many attendees as Unrivaled did on Friday. At least in the common season.
The player-led, 3-on-3 league drew 21,490 fans for a sold-out doubleheader at Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Arena, it introduced. That reportedly units a record for the highest-attended regular-season skilled ladies’s basketball sport.
Advertisement
For reference, the most-attended WNBA regular-season sport was on Sept. 19, 2024, between the Washington Mystics and Indiana Fever at D.C.’s Capital One Arena. That was the final game of Caitlin Clark’s rookie season. The WNBA has seen two video games with 22,076 fans, although, in the 2003 and 2007 Finals on the Detroit Shock’s Palace of Auburn Hills.
Unrivaled additionally famous the attendance is a record for any occasion at Xfinity Mobile Arena, which is the house of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers.
The many fans in attendance loved a enjoyable first sport, with Kelsey Plum hitting the game-winner for Phantom to complete a 22-point evening.
Also on the victorious Phantom was Natasha Cloud, who grew up in the Philadelphia space. She gave an emotional interview after the primary sport, breaking into tears whereas speaking about how a lot she loves the town.
The second sport featured one of many best performances in Unrivaled’s quick historical past, as Marina Mabrey of the Lunar Owls posted 47 factors with 18 subject targets made and 10 3-pointers. Each of these numbers is a league record, with Mabrey additionally scoring the game-winner in an 85-75 win over the Rose.
The Philadelphia video games are the first stop of the new Unrivaled tour, meant to broaden the attain of ladies’s skilled basketball. Philadelphia has by no means had a WNBA staff however was awarded an expansion team last year, which is set to begin playing in 2030.