Unrivaled made a historic splash on Friday, setting a new pro women's basketball regular-season attendance record as 21,490 fans packed the Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia for the 3×3 league's first-ever tour stop.
"It was unbelievable. You could feel the love tonight," said Unrivaled co-founder Napheesa Collier about the record-breaking crowd. "It's just a testament to what we're building here, how much people believe in it."
Friday's Unrivaled tally — which also shattered a venue record for the highest attendance of any event — blew through women's basketball's prior record, set in the 2024 WNBA season when a 20,711-strong crowd watched the Indiana Fever top the Washington Mystics inside DC's Capital One Arena.
The reward for Friday's crowd was a larger-than-life performance, as Lunar Owls guard Marina Mabrey dropped a league-record 47 points — complete with 10 three-pointers — in Friday's 85-75 win over Rose BC.
"I think the city is ready for women's professional sports," Philadelphia product and Rose BC guard Kahleah Copper said following the doubleheader, with the City of Brotherly Love gearing up to launch a WNBA expansion team in 2030. "I'm excited that one, it's here, and two, that I'm a part of it."
Last week's success in Philly has Unrivaled already eyeing more tour stops for the offseason league's 2027 season, with this year's action finishing up on the venture's 3x3 home court in Miami.
"We're going to continue to make the sports world proud by the product we put out," Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell told reporters.
With the 2026 Winter Olympics fast approaching, US skiing icon Mikaela Shiffrin has started the 2025/26 FIS World Cup cycle in top form — particularly in her favored slalom event.
Closing out last season with a victory, Shiffrin is currently on a multi-event winning streak, earning her sixth straight slalom title in Semmering, Austria, on Sunday.
"It was a really hard day today, tough conditions, a really big fight, and the pressure's on… I did my best, best possible run," Shiffrin said afterwards.
Momentum is on her side, with Shiffrin set to enter the 2026 Winter Games in Italy as the winningest skier in World Cup history, surpassing Swedish legend Ingemar Stenmark's 86 wins in March 2023 and becoming the first skier to reach 100 World Cup victories earlier this year.
Sunday's race marked the 30-year-old's 106th career World Cup title, with Shiffrin looking to add to her ever-growing historic record with three more slalom events scheduled before the Olympic women's Alpine skiing events kick off on February 8th.
The 2014 Olympic slalom champion and 2018 Winter Games giant slalom gold medalist is aiming to return to the podium after failing to medal at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Shiffrin will likely hit the slopes again next weekend, when the women's FIS World Cup lands in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, for a giant slalom and slalom competition.
With the rookie card of Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark still doing numbers, trading card manufacturer Panini America is debuting Caitlin Clark Chronicled this week, dropping a limited-edition release on Monday that features a 22-page collectible book and 100-card set of the WNBA standout.
The book spans images of Clark on and off the court, and includes eight four-card packs and 32 randomly inserted trading cards, as well as autographed exclusives.
"I'm excited to launch 'Caitlin Clark Chronicled' with Panini America and share some of my favorite moments on and off the court from my first two years in the WNBA," Clark said in Monday's statement. "We wanted to create something different that combined great photography with trading cards, including some special exclusives. I am proud of this collection and hope fans enjoy it."
The WNBA superstar is an exclusive Panini partner in the trading card and autographed memorabilia space, with Clark making headlines last July when her one-of-one autographed rookie card sold for more than $600,000 — setting a new world record for a women's sports card.
How to buy Panini's 'Caitlin Clark Chronicled' card set
Panini's limited edition Clark collection is currently available for purchase at Target stores and Target.com.
Olympic swimming icon Katie Ledecky has done it again, becoming the first woman to break the 15-minute mile with a time of 14:59.62 at her namesake Katie Ledecky Invitational in Maryland.
Smashing her own US record of 15:01.41, Sunday's sub-15 minute mile gives Ledecky the 1,650-meter freestyle's eight fastest times, with US teammate Erica Sullivan earning the ninth-best in 2019.
"This is a special one for sure," Ledecky said afterwards. "This has been a goal of mine, to break 15 minutes in the 1,650, for probably eight or nine years. So, just putting in the hard work, believing that I could do it someday, and to do it at this meet, is really special."
The 28-year-old Washington, DC, product is the most decorated women's swimmer in the history of the sport, prompting Nation's Capital Swimming — where Ledecky got her start at age six — to name their annual event in her honor earlier this year.
"I definitely was a little nervous before the race, just knowing there were a lot of eyes on me and all that," she continued. "But I knew I could just relax and have fun with it, and whatever happened, happened."
How to watch Katie Ledecky in action
Ledecky's next major competition will likely be the TYR Pro Swim Series, which kicks off in Austin on January 14th, 2026.
The domestic competition series will be covered across NBC Sports platforms.
US runner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has done it again, winning the Women's World Athlete of the Year for the second time at the 2025 World Athletics Awards on Sunday.
In a pivot from her historic 400-meter hurdles dominance, McLaughlin-Levrone chose to master its flat counterpart this year, racing to an undefeated season in the 400-meter flat event in 2025.
"For me, 2025 was a year of stepping outside of the comfort zone and pushing the bounds of what was mentally and physically possible," the four-time US Olympic gold medalist said in a Sunday press release. "I want to continue pushing boundaries in 2026."
Already a winner of the 2018 World Athletics Rising Star Award, McLaughlin-Levrone snagged her first Women's World Athlete of the Year honor in 2022 following a first-ever individual world title in her signature 400-meter hurdles.
This year, the 26-year-old claimed a second individual world trophy in record-breaking fashion, winning the 400-meter with a Championships and North American record-shattering time of 47.78 seconds — the second-fastest of all time — at September's 2025 World Championships in Tokyo.
The victory cemented her as the first athlete to claim world titles in both the 400-meter hurdles and 400-meter flat, ultimately earning her Sunday's World Athlete of the Year honor.
"The culmination of the season in Tokyo was a really special moment. I'm so thankful for everyone who supported, watched, voted, and who was there throughout this whole process," McLaughlin-Levrone added.
The 2025 Women's Rugby World Cup culminates on Saturday, when host nation England battles for their first tournament title in more than a decade in a top-tier final against Canada, who are hunting their first-ever world championship trophy.
The Red Roses' long dominance on the Rugby World Cup pitch has led them to eight finals in the competition's nine editions, with England emerging victorious twice — in 1994 and 2014.
On the other hand, Canada will make just their second-ever appearance in the World Cup final this Saturday, as the Maple Leafs aim for a decidedly different outcome from their 21-9 loss to England in the 2014 championship game.
The top-ranked Red Roses will also be looking to avenge their narrow 34-31 loss to New Zealand in the tournament's most recent 2022 edition when they square off against No. 2 Canada in front of an sold-out crowd inside London's Twickenham Stadium — with another women's rugby attendance record on the line.
"You feed off of that energy, especially knowing what this game is going to be," England defense coach Sarah Hunter said. "It's a cliché, but [the crowd] almost becomes the 16th person in those moments where you need them."
How to watch the 2025 Women's Rugby World Cup final
England and Canada will battle in the 2025 Women's Rugby World Cup final at 11 AM ET on Saturday, with live coverage airing on Paramount+.
Star sprinter Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is reaching new heights, setting a new US record for the 400-meter race in the event's Tuesday semifinals at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
The four-time Olympic gold medalist finished the flat event in 48.29 seconds, shaving more than 0.40 seconds off the previous US record of 48.70 seconds set by track legend Sanya Richards-Ross in 2006.
Both her personal best and the fastest time in the world for that event this year, McLaughlin-Levrone's performance also makes her the seventh-fastest woman of all time in the 400-meter dash — elevating expectations that she could challenge the long-standing world record of 47.60 seconds, set by then-East German sprinter Marita Koch in 1985.
Known for her dominance in the 400-meter hurdles, the 26-year-old made the decision to focus on the flat 400-meter event ahead of this year's competition.
"I definitely wasn't expecting that time," she said afterwards. "It just shows the fitness is there. I'm excited for the finals and grateful to have taken down a record by an amazing woman."
How to watch McLaughlin-Levrone in the 400-meter final
McLaughlin-Levrone will take aim at the 2025 World Athletics Championships' 400-meter podium — and, perhaps, another record time — during the event's final on Thursday.
The US star will race against 2024 Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino and silver medalist Salwa Eid Naser when the final begins at 9:24 AM ET.
Live coverage will air on USA Network.
The Orlando Pride hit the headlines on Monday, with the third-place NWSL club reportedly close to finalizing a deal to sign Tigres UANL star Lizbeth Ovalle on a world-record $1.5 million transfer fee.
According to ESPN, the reigning NWSL champions will sign Ovalle to a guaranteed three-year contract, with the transfer fee paid out in three equal annual increments to the Tigres — in part to help Orlando stay under the league's team transfer spending limit.
The Liga MX side reportedly also negotiated a 10% sell-on fee as part of the transfer deal.
Better known to US fans for scoring the first of in Mexico's two goals in El Tri Adelitas' 2024 Concacaf W Gold Cup group-stage upset win over the USWNT, the 25-year-old attacker made 58 international caps for Mexico, netting 20 goals in those appearances.
Suiting up for the Tigres since her professional debut as a teenager in 2017, Ovalle has helped her club claim six Liga MX Femenil titles as well as other domestic hardware, including a trio of Campeon de Campeonas trophies.
If the deal goes through, Ovalle's transfer fee will break the current women's soccer record set by Arsenal last month, when the Gunners shelled out over $1.3 million to roster then-Liverpool forward and Canadian international Olivia Smith.
The $1.5 million figure also dwarfs the Pride's previous transfer record, more than doubling the $740,000 Orlando paid Chinese club Shanghai Shengli to sign Zambian star striker Barbra Banda in March 2024.
The 2025 Prefontaine Classic shattered world records on Saturday, as a pair of long- and middle-distance runners showed their class in a historic track and field meet.
On a day that international governing body World Athletics called the sport's best-ever single-day of competition — with the 2025 Prefontaine Classic seeing more performance points earned than in any other one-day meet in track and field history — two Kenyan stars rose above the rest.
Saturday saw Faith Kipyegon hit a personal best of 3:48.68 in the 1,500-meter race to break through her own world record by a 0.36-second margin.
The 31-year-old, who holds the last three Olympic titles in the event, claimed the new historic time less than two weeks removed from her first attempt to break the four-minute mile mark — a distance just 109 meters farther than the standard 1,500-meter race.
The Prefontaine Classic also saw fellow Kenyan Beatrice Chebet become the first woman to race 5,000 meters in under 14 minutes, with the 25-year-old breaking the barrier by turning in a world record time of 13:58.06 — shaving more than two seconds off Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay's previous world mark of 14:00.21.
"I'm so happy," Chebet said afterward. "After [the June Diamond League meet in] Rome, I say that I am capable of running a world record so let me go back home and prepare… I told myself, 'if Faith [Kipyegon] is trying for a world record in Eugene, why not me too?'"
Along with the 5,000-meter mark, Chebet also holds the 10,000-meter record — as well as 2024 Olympic gold medals in both events.
Meanwhile, US hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone snagged sprinting headlines with a season-best time of 49.43 seconds to win the 400-meter flat race, continuing her progress as a flat runner after years dominating the 400-meter hurdles.
Three-time 1,500-meter Olympic gold medalist Faith Kipyegon fell just short of making running history on Thursday, as the middle-distance star clocked a time of 4:06.42 in her attempt to become the first woman to break the four-minute mile.
"It was the first trial. I have proven that it's possible and it's only a matter of time. I think it will come to our way," said Kipyegon following Thursday's race. "If it's not me, it will be somebody else."
Still the fastest mile-runner of any woman in history, the Kenyan icon did beat her own previous world record of 4:07.64 by 1.22 seconds, though the time won't count as a new record as the race came during Nike's unofficial Breaking4 event.
With full support from the sportswear giant — the 31-year-old's partner for 16 years — Kipyegon had the benefit of multiple pace-setters, as well as an aerodynamic suit, 3D-printed Nike FlyWeb sports bra, and spiked shoes made specifically for the much-hyped four-minute mile attempt at Paris's Stade Charléty.
"Faith didn't just make history, she proved the future of sport is faster, stronger, and more inclusive than ever," noted Nike president Amy Montagne after Kipyegon's race.
"It was tough, but I am so proud of what I've done, and I'm going to keep on trying, dreaming and pursing big goals," said Kipyegon. "I want to show the world, and especially women, that you have to dare to try."