Unrivaled Basketball and trading card manufacturer Panini America are teaming up, bringing the 3×3 league's first officially licensed trading cards to market on Friday.
As part of a multi-year agreement between the two parties, Panini will debut the Instant Cards just hours before the first full weekend of play in the 2026 Unrivaled season tips off on Friday.
Panini also plans to launch a Rewind set of trading cards celebrating the 2025 inaugural Unrivaled season, among other future drops.
"Our partnership with Unrivaled is a great way to reinforce and showcase our support of the women's game and female athletes," said Panini America SVP of marketing Jason Howarth in the pair's Thursday announcement. "Unrivaled's 3-on-3 format makes for exciting and compelling game play and continuing to work with the best players in the world in this format made this partnership make perfect sense."
Following Monday's Season 2 tip-off, Unrivaled is continuing to form strategic partnerships as the offseason pro league grows in popularity.
"We want to meet fans where they are, and Panini's history in this space makes them an ideal partner to highlight the biggest moments for women's basketball's biggest stars," said Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell.
How to purchase Unrivaled Instant Cards
The full Unrivaled Instant Card set will release online at 3:08 PM ET on Friday at PaniniAmerica.net.
Unrivaled leadership is back in the hot seat, telling reporters at Monday's Season 2 tip-off that the offseason 3x3 league is open to whatever the future might bring — even if it's a formal partnership with the WNBA.
"We're not in constant dialogue about that," Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell said from Miami. "But as I've made very clear, we are open to growing the ecosystem, whichever way that looks like."
"Nothing is on the table or off the table," he continued. "I'm not going to speculate what could happen down the road, but everyone knows our door is always open."
As reported prior to the 3×3 upstart's inaugural 2025 season, Unrivaled co-founders Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier had approached the WNBA about a potential equity stake — in part to further illustrate that the new venture is complementary, rather than in competition with, the WNBA — but league leadership turning down the offer, citing a possible rules violation.
Questions have since come up about Unrivaled becoming a prioritization issue for players under the WNBA's still-developing CBA, but Bazzell underlined the league's benefits as being supplemental, rather than in direct conflict with the 5x5 league.
"As long as you can look at the space through an innovative lens, anything is doable," he said. "Anything is possible."
Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball is hitting the road, with the offseason league announcing on Thursday that it will make its first-ever tour stop during the upcoming expanded 2026 season when it takes over Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia on January 30th.
"The energy and dedication of everyone who helped bring this tour stop to life, combined with the passion of Philadelphia's sports fans, made the city the perfect stage for Unrivaled," league president Alex Bazzell said in Thursday's press release.
Featuring four as-yet-unannounced Unrivaled teams in a regular-season doubleheader, the Miami-based league will also pack additional activations and events supporting the competition into its inaugural tour stop.
"Philadelphia is the city of firsts, so it makes perfect sense that the Unrivaled League picked our historical city, with unmatched sports enthusiasts, as its first tour stop," said Philadelphia mayor Cherelle L. Parker.
The upstart league's first foray outside of Miami will also mark Philadelphia's first professional women's basketball games since 1998.
"Advancing women's pro sports in Philly has been a goal we've passionately pursued for years," said comedian Wanda Sykes, an Unrivaled investor and a founding member of the Philadelphia Sisters, a women's sports advocacy group. "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."
How to purchase tickets to Unrivaled in Philadelphia
Unrivaled isn't revealing the four participating teams until sometime next month, but fans can secure their own spots at the Philadelphia tour stop today.
Tickets for the January 30th doubleheader are currently available for purchase online at Ticketmaster.
Unrivaled Basketball is stocking up ahead of the 3×3 offseason league's 2026 campaign, rolling out the first group of six players set to join its second season on Monday.
Officially returning to the league's Miami court this year are Phoenix forward Alyssa Thomas and her Mercury teammate Satou Sabally, as well as LA Sparks forward Rickea Jackson.
Joining the Unrivaled returnees will be a trio of newcomers, with Seattle Storm veteran guard Erica Wheeler set to log her first minutes in the new league alongside a pair of WNBA star freshmen in Connecticut Sun guard Saniya Rivers and 2025 Rookie of the Year and Dallas Wings standout Paige Bueckers.
Unrivaled plans to announce six athletes every weekday through October 1st, as the league gears up for its first 54-player season, which tips off on January 5th.
Fueled by a successful debut year and significant additional investment, Unrivaled accelerated its salary growth and expansion plans, adding two new teams plus an additional development pool of players to the league's 2026 season.
"If we didn't expand rosters, there were going to be All-Stars who we didn't have space for," Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell recently told ESPN. "We want to be the home for all of the best players in the world."
Due to the increase to eight total teams, Unrivaled could see their rosters rearranged for the sophomore campaign — meaning returning players like Laces BC's Thomas, Mist BC's Jackson, and Phantom BC's Sabally could suit up for a different squad next year.
Following the reveal of the league's full lineup, Unrivaled plans to drop team assignments in November.
Business is booming for Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball, with Monday's Series B investment round valuing the upstart offseason league at $340 million — a 10-fold increase over its initial May 2024 valuation.
Founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier in 2023, Unrivaled's most recent investors include Serena Ventures, Warner Bros. Discovery, and soccer legend Alex Morgan's Trybe Ventures, as well as buy-ins from NBA players Trae Young, Franz Wagner, and Moritz Wagner plus sports executive Sam Rapoport.
With $35 million raised well ahead of tip-off, the competition's 2025 inaugural season reportedly came close to breaking even via TV and sponsorship deals — even while paying the highest average salaries in women's team sports.
"Because we outperformed our revenue expectations in season one by almost doubling it, it allows us to move a bit quicker," Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell told ESPN following the league's valuation increase on Monday.
Unrivaled is planning to use some of the new funding to expand its Miami venue, building out a new practice court alongside 150 additional spectator seats.
As the league prepares for its second season, the 3×3 venture anticipates turning a profit in 2026, all while increasing pay and equity for participating players.
"[Players] are largely majority shareholders," Bazzell said. "They are going to reap the benefits of these growing valuations."
Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball is ahead of the game in preparing for its second season, with co-founder Alex Bazzell telling Front Office Sports on Saturday that the offseason league has already signed upwards of 90% of its 2026 roster.
"We have a few spots left open to fill and then we're pretty much ready to go," Bazzell confirmed.
While Unrivaled won't stray from its six-team format, the 2026 overall pool will expand from 36 to 42 players, with the six new slots comprising a developmental pool meant to subsidize rosters in case of injury — an issue the league struggled to manage during its 2025 inaugural campaign.
Unrivaled is also looking to boost athlete pay above the reported $220,000 average earned by players in the 3x3 league's two-month 2025 season, far outpacing the WNBA's $147,745 average — for a season three times as long as Unrivaled's — all in a year when tense CBA negotiations continue to make headlines.
"The numbers are going up because the business outperformed every metric that we had," Bazzell explained. "It's part of our business model that we built from the ground up, which is that as the business continues to drive more revenue, [we're going to funnel it] back into the players."