Seven hours after Unrivaled announced its return to Philadelphia on Thursday, the city’s diehard women’s basketball community was lined up around the block at Dock Street South for a celebratory block party. The event was hosted by Unrivaled, the women’s professional three-on-three league that serves as a second season for several WNBA stars.
After a record-setting first go-around at Xfinity Mobile Arena, Miami-based Unrivaled is expanding its presence in other cities. Philly will be the third stop on the league’s 2027 bus tour, and one of eight cities outside of Miami that will host games next year.
“Obviously, tens of thousands of people are going to buy tickets, but to see the people pull up in their Unrivaled gear, waiting in line, it speaks to how diehard their fandom is,” Kirby Porter, chief brand officer at Unrivaled, said. “For us, we want to do things that are engaging fans in digital, but especially in real life, which is I think even more long-lasting.”
Porter said that Unrivaled’s internal data showed that the Northeast is one of their strongest markets, and all three of the announced stops — in Boston, New York, and Philly — are in the region. Unrivaled wants to “fill the gap” in Boston and Philly, two cities that are not currently home to WNBA franchises, which leads to a large fan appetite for live women’s events.
Unrivaled, in collaboration with Xfinity, handed out freebies, including fan passports, which could be completed with an Unrivaled trivia game to win a free poster.
Ticket sales for Unrivaled’s return are already trending above the 2026 stop, according to Ashley Lunkenheimer, the vice president of the Philadelphia Sisters. In addition to helping bring a WNBA team to Philly in 2030, the Sisters helped secure the city as Unrivaled’s first tour stop and bring it back. After setting a venue record and a record for pro women’s basketball, they’re setting their sights on raising the ceiling even higher.
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Thursday was a huge start. About 250 fans came out to celebrate the league’s return, including Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, one of the biggest supporters of bringing Unrivaled to Philadelphia. She led a spirited cheer of “Philly is Unrivaled” to kick off the evening.
“People that I didn’t know — man, woman, young, old, didn’t matter — were coming up to me and saying that Unrivaled was one of the best sporting events they’d ever been to,” Lunkenheimer said. “Everybody who didn’t go, they had FOMO.”
Last year’s games brought out celebrities like Dawn Staley, Kylie and Jason Kelce, Kyle Lowry, Robin Roberts, and Leslie Jones, while big-name players like Paige Bueckers, Marina Mabrey, and locals Natasha Cloud and Kahleah Copper were on the court.
If you want to avoid any FOMO after next year’s event, you can get tickets here.
Before the three-on-three professional women’s basketball league returns to Philly, catch up on our coverage of last year’s stop at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
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- 📸 Photos from Philly is Unrivaled