Paige Bueckers’ new Unrivaled contract is a sobering reminder of WNBA salaries

Paige Bueckers is signing a three-year deal with Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 professional women’s basketball league that took place in Miami this offseason for the first time, ESPN’s Kendra Andrews reported on Sunday.

The league, co-founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, has prioritized paying players the highest average salary of any professional sports league — and the contract that Unrivaled offered the projected No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft further solidifies that.

The first year of Bueckers’ three-year deal will exceed her entire four-year rookie deal, ESPN reported. That means Unrivaled will pay the UConn star more than $330,00 for just 10 weeks of basketball. In comparison, Caitlin Clark signed a 4-year rookie deal last summer with the Indiana Fever for $338,056.

Players in Unrivaled were paid an average salary of $220,000 in the inaugural season, a figure that is close to the maximum salary in the WNBA.

“We are really changing the outlook of the ecosystem holistically,” Alex Bazzell, Unrivaled’s president, told SB Nation before the season. “You’re seeing more leagues bumping up their pay because that’s where the space is now. We’re proud to play a part in that growth of just the economics of these players being paid a lot of money to play basketball. That’s where we want to get to. It’s great to have brand deals, it’s great to have all this off-court stuff, but at the end of the day, we want to be able to pay them high salaries on the court.”

From the jump, Unrivaled has focused on signing the WNBA’s biggest stars — the league currently boasts big names like Angel Reese, Sabrina Ionescu, and Brittney Griner, and continues to prioritize signing Clark and A’ja Wilson heading into next season, ESPN reported. Bueckers’ signing a three-year deal isn’t a surprise; she signed an NIL deal for equity in the league last year, as did LSU star Flau’jae Johnson.

Front Office Sport’s Annie Costabile reported that Unrivaled nearly broke even in Year 1, while Andrews reported that the league exceeded $27 million in revenue, more than double what it projected to investors.

The league is eyeing profitability as soon as next year, in large part thanks to a media deal with TNT and a slew of corporate sponsors. In addition, the league was only able to add merchandise toward the end of the season after the conclusions of negotiations with the WNBA union — so the $1.4 million Unrivaled earned in merch is expected to increase in future years.

The WNBA will undergo a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiation next summer, but for now, Unrivaled’s emergence in the women’s basketball scene has put a spotlight on just how limited stars’ pay is.