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A Record-Setting Crowd Showed Up for Women’s Hoops in South Philly
Published:
New records being set at Xfinity Mobile Arena:
Pretty dope. The arena configuration allows for more fans at basketball games and concerts, so that’s how they were able to stuff almost 21,500 in there.
Unrivaled is a 3v3 women’s basketball league that plays during the WNBA offseason. If you’ve never heard of it before it’s because it’s still relatively new, founded in 2023 by Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart. They’ve played primarily in Florida and so this was a special “tour” type of trip up here that obviously had a lot of people jacked.
Philly is getting a WNBA team in 2030 and you talk about people like Dawn Staley and Natasha Cloud and Kahleah Copper and there are plenty of local ties to the women’s game. It’s been ages since pro women’s basketball took place in the city, so the turnout reflects a population of fans who have been looking forward to something like this for a long time. It’s like your favorite band coming to your city for the first time in 30 years. It just doesn’t happen, which is why the juice for this product was off the charts:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com