Unrivaled’s Philadelphia spectacle delivers not just a big crowd, but a profitable one

We hear often that it’s good to run things in life like a business. It’s said especially loudly about women’s sports, in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

So let’s do that.

The 21,490 fans who packed Xfinity Mobile Arena for Friday’s Unrivaled basketball showcase clearly had business on their minds. It was the largest announced attendance in arena history, helped by Unrivaled’s three-on-three court being smaller than regulation, and it was full of wallets.

They were opened often, to buy T-shirts, hats, hoodies, hot dogs, and all the fancier food and drinks on offer these days.

The crowd roared for hometown heroes Natasha Cloud and Kahleah Copper, but not just for them. Paige Bueckers, Kelsey Plum, Chelsea Gray, and Marina Mabrey also drew big cheers.

“I think it was awesome to see them come out and support us like that,” Mabrey said after scoring an Unrivaled game record 47 points in the Lunar Owls’ 85-75 win over Rose. “I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t realize it was going to be so much hype around it and so much support.”

» READ MORE: Natasha Cloud thrilled that ‘Young Tash’ gets Philly hoops homecoming with Unrivaled: ‘I carry this city everywhere I go’

There was celebrity wattage from Wanda Sykes, Leslie Jones, Freeway, and Jason and Kylie Kelce. Dawn Staley was in the front row, of course. The 76ers’ Tyrese Maxey, Kyle Lowry, Andre Drummond, Trendon Watford, and Dominick Barlow had courtside seats too.

They all helped answer a question that’s been simmering in town for a while.

At any business school, they’ll teach you that the most fundamental rule of economics is supply and demand. But how can you prove there’s demand when there’s no supply in the first place?

One way, for sure, is to not try in the first place. That was the case with women’s basketball in Philadelphia for 28 years, the time between the end of the Philadelphia Rage in 1998 and now. It’s mostly been the case with women’s soccer since the Independence folded in 2011, though at least the U.S. national team visits every few years.

» READ MORE: The NWSL still wants an expansion team in Philadelphia, if a buyer comes along

Another way invokes another rule of economics. In a free market, shouldn’t someone be able try something? If they fail, so be it, and if they succeed, they profit.

The people who brought Unrivaled here, and those who will bring a WNBA team here in 2030, went down the second road.

On the day in October when Unrivaled announced it would come here, Comcast Spectacor chief financial officer Blair Listino watched her phone light up with notifications of ticket sales.

“While we were sitting there waiting for the [announcement] event to happen,” she told The Inquirer, “7,000 tickets were sold within the first few hours of the event being on sale. So right then and there, I knew, ‘OK, there is demand.’”

Listino also is an alternate governor of the Flyers. She was the team’s CFO from 2019 to 2023 and has worked for Comcast in a range of finance-related capacities since 2011. So she has plenty of experience with measuring what Philadelphia sports fans want — and with making hard business deals.

» READ MORE: From Stateside Live! to the Xfinity Mobile Arena, fans kept the energy high for Friday’s Unrivaled doubleheader

“We worked with Unrivaled management, and we treated it like any other event,” she said. “It wasn’t a charity event; we didn’t give them a sweetheart deal. It was a true rental agreement where we said, ‘We believe in you, we think that you’ll be able to sell out this building, and we’ll all be profitable from it.’”

That made it, she said, “good business sense for both us and Unrivaled.”

It was not just based on Jen Leary, the founder of Watch Party PHL, holding events and selling out of “Philly Is A Women’s Sports Town” T-shirts for over a year. Or Chivonn Anderson opening Marsha’s, a women’s sports bar on South Street.

Or any number of people on social media, or in this reporter’s inbox, or so on.

No, this was Philadelphia’s biggest company believing that women’s sports can be profitable in its city. And now there’s proof.

» READ MORE: Basketball star Paige Bueckers is not afraid to use the platform her fame has given her

“I think when choosing a market that doesn’t necessarily have a team, but there’s demand, you take a leap of faith into your decision,” said Cloud, whose Phantom beat Breeze, 71-68. “And Unrivaled chose the right city, the right sports town, and the right fan base.”

The crowd returned the favor many times over Friday, bringing the Broomall native to tears in a postgame interview on court.

“You just give us the opportunity to actually do it,” North Philadelphia’s Copper said. She recalled playing a WNBA preseason game in Toronto with the Chicago Sky in 2023 in front of a sellout crowd at the city’s NBA arena. That moment lit a spark that led to the Toronto Tempo, an expansion team that will tip off this year.

“How they were able to kind of lead up and have that build up, I think it’s kind of the same,” she said. “And I think the city has been wanting it. So this is a good introduction, and we’ll give them something to look forward to.”

» READ MORE: Philly has long been a special place for tennis legend Billie Jean King. And she wants to see the WNBA succeed here.

It’s not just the local products who’ve felt that. Players from elsewhere who are used to big crowds at their games were excited to be part of a first here.

“Kudos to Alex [Bazzell], our president, and the whole league having ‘Tash’ and ‘Kah’ be spokespersons for this amazing city,” said Breeze’s Cameron Brink, who played collegiately for Stanford and is now with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks. “Kah has done so much for women’s basketball in this city and the resources that are now available. I’m just proud that we saw that this is a city that wants to cheer on women’s basketball — so hopefully there’s more of it in the future.”

Brink grew up in Princeton, N.J., and her parents played college basketball at Virginia Tech. She moved to the Portland, Ore., suburbs at age 8, but heard plenty of stories from her mother, Michelle, about the East Coast.

“I was talking with her the other day — she’s like, ‘I honestly can’t believe women’s basketball has gotten to this point,’” Brink said. “I mean, we’ve always believed, but it’s really special that we get to soak in this moment. So I just think back to the women before me, and I’m just thankful for how they paved the way.”

» READ MORE: Here’s why Unrivaled picked Philadelphia to be the first stop on its nationwide tour

Kate Martin of Unrivaled’s Breeze has played for Iowa and the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries, both of which draw huge crowds to every game. She knew Philadelphia doesn’t have that track record, so she was excited to be part of a first.

“I think it’s really important for young girls to be able to see people that they want to be like,” Martin said. “I think it’s important for them to be able to see if they want to be a women’s basketball player, to see that in their city, and be able to have access to going to a game.”

Friday’s spectacle undoubtedly will push Unrivaled to take more of its games on the road next season, and they may well come back here. There might not be another full house with the novelty factor gone, and one night in 2026 doesn’t mean the future WNBA team will sell out all of its games years later.

Nor does it mean that what’s true today was true in past years, when Cloud and Copper weren’t yet big names.

But it does mean there’s demand for a product right now, and that it can make money right now. Philadelphia finally got an opportunity, and took it.