Women’s 3-on-3 basketball league Unrivaled is now valued at $340 million after a new funding round that included tennis legend Serena Williams, the league announced Monday.
Williams’ Serena Ventures was part of a Series B funding round that was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and also included Warner Bros. Discovery
and Alex Morgan’s Trybe Ventures. Unrivaled did not disclose the size of the individual contributions.
Unrivaled’s latest cash infusion means a dramatic rise in its valuation from just one year ago when the league was valued at $95 million, according to a person familiar with the league who spoke on the condition of anonymity about internal matters.
The investment comes as women’s sports have soared in both popularity and valuations in recent years.
“To add arguably the most iconic female athlete to play sports, I think it exemplifies who Unrivaled is not just with our players on the court, but the number of investors on our cap table who had been icons in their own lanes,” said Alex Bazzell, co-founder and president of Unrivaled.
Other Unrivaled investors include high-profile names such as tennis legend Billie Jean King, NBA superstar Stephen Curry, tennis champion Coco Gauff and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps.
Bessemer has previously invested in ticketing resale site StubHub, as well as streaming services BallerTV and Twitch. The venture firm sees Unrivaled as a blueprint for the next generation of sports leagues, according to Caty Rea, a vice president at Bessemer.
“We always look for category-defining businesses with generational tail winds and really audacious founders who kind of have that product hard to fit,” Rea said. “We felt like we found that with Unrivaled.”
Unrivaled was founded in 2023 and offers women’s professional basketball players a league that runs in the offseason of the WNBA. Previously, many players went abroad in the offseason for extra compensation.
