When players for Unrivaled, the new three-on-three women’s basketball league, walked into Wayfair Arena for the first time, it was immediately obvious that this was unlike the WNBA’s traditional venues. Built inside a production studio in Miami, it has massive LED boards decorating the walls instead of a center-hung jumbotron. The court is about 75% as big as typical five-on-five layouts and houses only 850 seats surrounding the floor.

For TV purposes, a rail cam has prime position in the front row, allowing TNT Sports to shoot the action from closer range than most other sports broadcasts. More cameras have been set up around the baselines and backboards. The league also took inspiration from Madison Square Garden when determining how it would light its playing area.

It is, quite literally, a content factory.

“It’s like a stage,” Vinyl BC’s Rae Burrell said during a recent press conference. “It’s not very big, but I kind of like that, because then it’s just kind of more intimate for the fans.”

That’s likely music to the ears of Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell, a self-described theater lover. “I refer to our league as like a Broadway show on steroids,” he said in a video interview.

While the first game tips off Friday night, featuring Unrivaled co-founder Napheesa Collier’s Lunar Owls against fellow co-founder Breanna Stewart’s Mist BC, the league has been running gameplay tests of various kinds for years, honing its rulebook and later its broadcast strategy. 

The focus on video continues off the court as well. The 130,000-square-foot facility also includes an “athlete content creation hub” as well as a “glam room,” outfitted by league sponsor Sephora.

“We’re so content-driven in terms of the access—like the practice days, what the players are wanting to do to build their own brands—and obviously they want to look good,” Bazzell said. “So we were like, well, we need a hair and makeup room.”

Another $1.5 million was invested in an extension of the building to give players strength and recovery space. Like any modern production, Unrivaled knows keeping the stars happy ought to be prioritized. “Yeah, I love it here,” Rose BC’s Angel Reese wrote on X Wednesday, following up her post up by saying, “baby I could be here forevaaaa.”

Unrivaled’s media deal with Warner Bros. Discovery is worth up to a reported $100 million over six years, while the league will promote sponsors ranging from Ally Financial to Samsung’s Galaxy Z series phones. As at-home eyeballs and ad dollars make up increasingly large portions of growing leagues’ balance sheets, Unrivaled is not alone in designing its game from the ground up for the digital experience.

Last week, TGL premiered its golf 2.0 concept, with a custom-built venue where camera locations took precedence over seating spots and a space-age roving camera delivers close-ups fans can’t get at the majors.

Both leagues cite Overtime Elite as an inspiration. The youth basketball league created in 2021 by a digital media company plays its games in a 1,300-seat arena that hosts documentary-style crews alongside traditional camera operators. Without a center-hung scoreboard to interfere, OTE installed a cable cam to fly directly over the baskets and pivot the way NBA 2k players would expect. 

“From day one, I was like, we are playing for the internet,” Overtime CEO Dan Porter said during a recent phone interview. “Nobody understood it. They kept saying, like, ‘What’s the capacity?’ and ‘How much do you charge for tickets?’ And I’m like, ‘That’s not our model.’ … You’re building a soundstage for the internet.”

“If you launched the NBA or MLB today,” Porter added, “I don’t think you would try to make it as much of a multi-city, live entertainment business. You’d focus on media.”

Of course, some brands do both. The Savannah Bananas have hardly forgotten how to go viral on TikTok as they translate the experience into sold-out baseball park shows. And the NBA clearly had at-home views in mind as it experimented with an LED basketball court during last season’s All-Star festivities. Teams like the New York Liberty precisely curate their courtside guests, recognizing the way those faces contribute to the atmosphere in-person and often go viral online. Other times, the NBA invites famous creators to its marquee events and lets them go wild. 

Unrivaled won’t always call its production studio/arena in Miami home. Bazzell has said the league plans to move to a four-city touring model in 2026. “At some point we do want to go global,” he said.

No matter where they play next, though, cameras won’t be far behind.