The new 3×3 winter basketball league, co-founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, is unrivaled and expanding before it even plays its first game.

In a sign of its strong interest among current WNBA players and its financial viability, the league is expanding its player pool from 30, the previously announced cap, to 36 players. There will still be six teams, each with six players taking part.

“We are able to do this because we exceeded our financial projections,” Collier said in a video Thursday. “So now we can do something we wanted to do in the future, which is give more people places on Unrivaled.”

A special announcement from our co-founder 🚨

We are expanding to 36✅ pic.twitter.com/HaAKUn30gA

– Unrivaled Basketball (@Unrivaledwbb) October 31, 2024

That the league, scheduled to begin play in January 2025, is already growing in size is further evidence of the legitimate position it is trying to carve out in the women's basketball market. In mid-October, the league announced that it had entered into a multi-year deal with TNT Sports and its games would be broadcast on TNT, TruTV and Stream on Max.

The games will be broadcast on TNT on Monday and Friday evenings and on TruTV on Saturday evenings. The deal allows TNT Sports to continue offering professional basketball beyond this season as the company enters the final season of its current media rights agreement with the NBA.

Last week, the league unveiled the names and branding of its six clubs – Laces, Mist, Rose, Lunar Owls, Phantom and Vinyl.

Angel Reese, Chelsea Gray, Kelsey Plum, Jewell Loyd, Kahleah Copper, Rhyne Howard and Arike Ogunbowale are among others who have agreed to join the league, which has promised to provide the highest average salary in the history of the women's professional sports league pay.

Players who join in the inaugural season will also receive full shares of the league.

“Women's sports are on the rise, and it feels like everyone benefits from that except the women in the sport, and of course we're trying to change that and then also create generational wealth for those women,” Collier said The athlete last spring. “From the beginning, (Stewart) and I set out to create a league based on the principle that players deserve compensation and ownership that reflects their value.”

The Miami-based league opens Jan. 17 and is expected to run for eight weeks.

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(Photo: Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)