Dallas Wings' Arike Ogunbowale To Debut in New Women's Basketball League, Unrivaled

It’s hard to truly sense a moment as it’s happening, but women’s basketball is making it impossible to miss theirs.

At the tail end of the Women’s NCAA Tournament, a 2023 title rematch between Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes and the LSU Tigers with Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson averaged 12.3 million viewers on ESPN, breaking the record for women’s college basketball. After a dominant Clark performance and win, yet another record fell with a game against Paige Bueckers and the UConn Huskies, watched by 14.3 million viewers on ESPN.

Just two days later, the sport set its third consecutive record in the championship game between Iowa and the South Carolina Gamecocks, averaging 18.7 million viewers and peaking at 24 million combined between ESPN and ABC.

Buoyed by Clark and Reese’s ascension into mainstream crossover stars and transition into professional play, the WNBA recorded a 155% increase in viewership from its 2023 season to 2024.

In every sense of the word, 2024 was a moment for women’s basketball. Backed by Clark’s meteoric rise to stardom and unprecedented buy-in from professional and collegiate stars, it’s one of the most popular sports in the U.S., outpacing the National Hockey League's regular season ratings on ESPN.

At the turn of the year, the sport is taking a big swing, or perhaps a big shot, that’ll test just how long this moment could last.

Unrivaled is a new 3-on-3 women’s basketball league featuring 36 of the WNBA’s most popular stars. Presented in part by Micky Lawler, president of the Women’s Tennis Association, and Alex Bazzell, basketball trainer and husband of WNBA star Napheesa Collier, the league offers a new variant of 3-on-3 basketball played on a shortened full court. It's composed of six clubs with six players on each team.

The league debuts Friday, Jan. 17, with a doubleheader on TNT. All games will be played in Miami and broadcast exclusively on the network. With the exception of Clark, nearly all of the WNBA’s marquee stars are set to participate, including Brianna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and the Dallas Wings’ Arike Ogunbowale.

Ogunbowale is a bonafide star, named to the WNBA All-Star team and All-WNBA 2nd Team. The 27-year-old guard averaged 22.2 points per game along with career highs in rebounds and assists per game. Despite her best efforts, the Wings did not fare well in the 2024 season, finishing with a 9-31 record, the second-worst in the league.

Unrivaled announced her inclusion in the league via Instagram on July 12, and she was declared Club Captain on Dec. 4. She was assigned to the Vinyl Basketball Club just a few days later, where she’ll get another chance at glory in the Unrivaled playoffs, set to begin Sunday, March 16.

Ogunbowale will play in the league’s debut night, in the second game of Friday night’s doubleheader. Vinyl faces off against Rose Basketball Club, with Reese and point guard Chelsea Grey at 7 p.m. on TNT.