Loyd & Co's Early Investment in Unrivaled — Revolutionizing Women's Opportunities in the 3v3 League
Loyd & Co. Team · February 2025 · Article
When the founders of Unrivaled set out to build a new professional basketball league, they began with a different question: not how to pay athletes more, but how to let athletes own what they build. Loyd & Co invested early in the answer.
A League Built on Ownership
In January 2025, Unrivaled tipped off its inaugural season with a format built for the modern game: compact 3-on-3 basketball, six city-based clubs, and a schedule designed around the highest level of play rather than the longest possible calendar. The league was co-founded by Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart — two of the most accomplished players of their generation — and that fact shaped everything about how it was built.
The distinction that drew us was structural, not stylistic. Unrivaled was founded so that the athletes themselves hold equity in the league they compete in. The people generating the value on the court would share in the enterprise value that value creates. Loyd & Co's involvement predates the first tip. We invested early because the architecture matched a thesis we have held since the firm's founding: the most durable value in sport accrues to those who hold ownership, not merely contracts.
The Structural Gap in Women's Sports
Women's professional sport has been systematically undervalued by capital for a generation. Attendance records, television engagement, and cultural relevance have all grown faster than the capital allocated behind them. Historically, investors treated the category as a philanthropic gesture rather than an underpriced asset class — an error of framing that is still being corrected.
That gap between engagement and enterprise value is precisely where long-term investors look. When an asset's fundamentals outrun its capitalization, the return profile favors early, patient ownership over late, crowded participation. The question was never whether women's sport would command institutional valuations. It was who would hold the equity when it did.
"We do not invest in moments. We invest in structures that outlast them."
Why Early Matters
Forming-stage ownership in any asset class is a different discipline from buying established cash flows. You are underwriting the structure — the governance, the incentive design, the unit economics of the first seasons — before the market has priced it. That is where mispricing lives, and where conviction earns its return.
Leagues take a decade to mature. Media rights compound, franchise scarcity becomes apparent, and the early capital is diluted or rewarded depending on the quality of the foundation. Unrivaled's foundation — founder-athletes with equity, a format built for media, and economics designed to be shared — is the kind that compounds.
What Athlete Ownership Changes
Ownership changes incentives. When athletes are principals rather than hires, decisions about scheduling, marketing, and expansion are made by the people whose names fill the arenas. Revenue is not something negotiated for the players; it is something the players share in generating.
It also changes what an athletic career is for. Our firm exists to move elite athletes from brand ambassador to enterprise owner — converting career earnings into durable ownership. The network of athlete partners we represent has earned more than $11 billion over their careers. The measure that matters is not what those earnings were, but what they become. Unrivaled is a demonstration of what they can become: equity in a league that its own players helped found.
The Long View
We underwrite a league the way we underwrite a company: ownership structure, competitive moat, customer (fan) demand, and the discipline of management. On every measure that matters to a decade-long holding, Unrivaled was built correctly.
We expect the league's value to be proven not in a single season but across several, as media partners, sponsors, and the next generation of athletes converge on a league they can own a piece of. Our holding period is measured in generations, not seasons. We invested early because we intend to be there long after the story is no longer about being early.
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