Startup basketball league Unrivaled announced on Monday it’s closed a Series A funding round, raising an additional $28 million before its inaugural season.

“Our players haven’t even taken the court yet and the foundation we are building with our partners unites unparalleled expertise, strategic insight, and an incredible product,” Unrivaled President Alex Bazzell said in a press release. “Together, we’re setting the stage for Unrivaled for years to come.”

The 3×3 women’s hoops league already secured $7 million in a seed round announced in May, meaning the league has received $35 million in total funds in 2024. The latest round was led by the Berman family and also included NBA champion Giannis Antetokounmpo and 28-time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps, among others.

Unrivaled was co-founded in 2023 by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier and advertises that the player-owned organization will give every Unrivaled player “equity and a vested interest in its success,” according to the press release.

The league has signed 36 top players and said it offers the highest average salaries across any women’s professional sports league.

While the Women’s National Basketball Association has seen exponential growth in the last few years, superstar rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese received base salaries just over $70,000, compared with star rookies in the National Basketball Association who received millions their first year.

Unrivaled announced last week it had signed Under Armour as its official uniform partner. It’s also signed an exclusive, multiyear media rights deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to air its games on TNT and truTV, as well as streaming platform Max. WBD participated in the Series A funding round, the league said Monday.

The round also included private investor Marc Lasry, University of South Carolina women’s basketball head coach Dawn Staley, and USC guard JuJu Watkins. Previous investors include soccer phenom Alex Morgan and actor and investor Ashton Kutcher.

The inaugural season begins on Jan. 17.

CrowdStrike moved Monday evening to dismiss Delta Air Lines’ lawsuit around the July cybersecurity outage that led to canceled flights and stranded passengers, arguing that the airline’s litigation was an attempt to circumvent the contract between the two companies.

The agreement between CrowdStrike and Delta includes a clause limiting CrowdStrike’s liability and a cap on damages, which the cybersecurity provider says Delta is now trying to skirt. CrowdStrike also argued in its filing that Georgia law prevents Delta from converting a breach of contract into tort claims.

“As an initial matter, Georgia’s economic loss rule specifically precludes Delta’s efforts to recover through tort claims the economic damages it claims to have suffered,” CrowdStrike wrote.

Delta said the July cybersecurity outage cost the company more than $500 million in canceled flights, refunds and passenger accommodations. It is seeking to recoup those costs from CrowdStrike through the suit. But the damage done to Delta’s reputation as a premium carrier can’t yet be quantified, nor has the impact of a Department of Transportation investigation into Delta over the outage.

Delta continues to rely on CrowdStrike services following the outage, likely because it is extremely difficult to change cybersecurity providers in systems as large and complicated as Delta’s. 

Still, CrowdStrike said it moved quickly to try and help Delta — offers the cybersecurity company says were rebuffed. “We are good for now,” one message from a Delta executive cited by CrowdStrike read. The cybersecurity company said its executives were in close contact on the day of the outage.

“Delta repeatedly rebuffed any assistance from CrowdStrike or its partners,” CrowdStrike wrote.

CrowdStrike further argues that Delta’s own practices and systems led to the widespread delays and cancellations, unlike other industry peers who recovered much more quickly from the outage.

“Delta was an outlier. Although Delta acknowledges that it took just hours—not days—for Delta employees to” remediate the outage, CrowdStrike wrote in its filing, “cancellations far exceeded the flight disruptions its peer airlines experienced.”

The cybersecurity company’s stock took a sharp hit after the outage, plunging 44%. It’s since largely recovered from those losses, posting strong quarterly results even after lowering its guidance due to the incident. CrowdStrike has been helped by the relative stickiness of its products, especially at large enterprises.

A Delta spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Walmart has started giving store-level associates body cameras to wear as part of a pilot program at some of its U.S. locations, CNBC has learned. 

It’s not clear how many of Walmart’s stores have the recording devices, but some locations now have signs at entry points warning shoppers that it has “body-worn cameras in-use,” according to witnesses and photos posted online. 

In at least one store in Denton, Texas — about 40 miles north of Dallas — an associate checking receipts was seen wearing a yellow-and-black body camera earlier this month, according to a shopper who shared a photo with CNBC. 

“While we don’t talk about the specifics of our security measures, we are always looking at new and innovative technology used across the retail industry,” a Walmart spokesperson told CNBC. “This is a pilot we are testing in one market, and we will evaluate the results before making any longer-term decisions.”

Walmart, the largest nongovernmental employer in the U.S., is testing the technology after smaller retailers started trying body cameras at their own stores as a way to deter theft. Body cameras and the footage they gather are commonly advertised as a way to prevent shoplifting, but Walmart intends to use the tech for worker safety — not as a loss prevention tool, according to a person familiar with the program.

In a document titled “Providing great customer service while creating a safer environment,” staff are instructed on how to use the devices, according to a photo of the document posted on an online forum for Walmart employees and customers. It instructs employees to “record an event if an interaction with a customer is escalating” and to not wear the devices in employee break areas and bathrooms. After an incident occurs, staffers are told, they are to discuss it with another team member, who can help them log the event in the “ethics and compliance app,” according to the document. 

The body cameras at Walmart come during the thick of the holiday shopping season, when retail employees work long hours and face tough interactions with customers that can be more tense and hostile than usual. 

“There’s too much harassment that goes on throughout the year, but especially during the holiday season … it’s even worse,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “Everyone is stressed out. If they can’t find the item they’re looking for, they get upset and whom do they blame? They blame the shop worker.” 

However, it’s unclear whether body cameras actually help to deescalate conflict. Appelbaum, whose union does not represent Walmart employees but includes staff from retailers such as Macy’s and H&M, said the RWDSU is concerned that body cameras are more about surveillance and deterring theft than making employees safer.  

“Workers need training on deescalation. Workers need training on what to do during a hostile situation at work. The body camera doesn’t do that. The body camera doesn’t intervene,” said Appelbaum. “We need safe staffing and we need panic buttons.” 

Bianca Agustin, the co-executive director of United for Respect, a workers organization for Walmart and Amazon staffers, said the group has asked Walmart to provide more training for its employees but that the company hasn’t met those demands. She said body cameras could be part of the solution but cameras alone are “no substitute” for proper training.

“There’s a claim that the body cams are going to promote deescalation just organically. We don’t think that’s true,” said Agustin. “You see a lot of violence against workers already at the self-checkout kiosks when they even are attempting to [deter theft] … there’s a potential that this might hurt that [deterrence] … it also could provoke people.” 

Plus, “there’s already cameras in stores,” said Agustin. 

David Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations for the National Retail Federation, the retail industry’s lobbying arm, provided a different perspective. He said the retailers he works with have said body cameras have helped to reduce conflict because people act differently when they know they’re being recorded, especially when those cameras are directly in front of a person. 

“Many of these body-worn cameras have reverse view monitors on them so … there’s a little video screen that you actually see yourself on camera. That in itself can be a very big deterrent,” said Johnston. “The moment that you see yourself is probably [when] you’re going to change your behavior, and that’s what I think the use of a body-worn camera can do.” 

As customers complain about merchandise being locked up in cases, body cameras are another technique retailers are trying out as they look to deter theft and make stores safer, said Johnston. 

“Walmart’s got tremendous exposure,” said Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada and former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. “Walmart’s probably got a sales force that is very unhappy about what they’re exposed to … [and] feel like the store is not doing enough to protect the store and themselves. And this is a test to see whether it has any beneficial effects, both on deterring criminals and salving the anxiety and the irritation of their associates.”

Still, it’s not clear whether associates will feel better wearing body cameras. One longtime retail employee, who spent around a decade working at Hot Topic and has since left the industry, told CNBC that being threatened with violence was a regular part of the job, and they’re not sure body cameras would have stopped it.

“With these people, when they’re in our faces and they’re acting like they’re going to hit us or they’re making threats to meet us in the parking lot, they’re not thinking rationally,” said the former mall employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Even with a camera facing them, I don’t think they would care in the moment.”

The former employee said a body camera wouldn’t have made them feel safer in those interactions, either, but having a police presence nearby would have helped.

Last year, the NRF’s annual security survey found that 35% of retailers who responded said they were researching body cameras for retail employees or loss prevention staff. While no respondents said body cameras were fully operational, 11% said the retailers were either piloting or testing the solution. 

TJX Companies is one of them. 

Earlier this year, the off-price giant said it had started using body cameras in its stores, which include its TJ Maxx, Marshall’s and HomeGoods banners. On a call with analysts after the company reported fiscal first-quarter earnings in May, finance chief John Joseph Klinger said the devices had been effective in reducing shrink, or lost inventory.

“One of the things that we’ve added — we started to do last year, late towards the year, wear body cameras on our [loss prevention] associates,” said Klinger. “And when somebody comes in, it’s sort of — it’s almost like a deescalation where people are less likely to do something when they’re being videotaped. So we definitely feel that that’s playing a role also.”

In a statement, a TJX spokesperson said the loss prevention associates who have body cameras have gone through “thorough training on how to use the cameras effectively in their roles.”

“Video footage is only shared upon request by law enforcement or in response to a subpoena. Body cameras are just one of the many ways that we work to support a safe store environment. This includes a variety of policies, trainings, and procedures,” the spokesperson said. “We hope that these body cameras will help us de-escalate incidents, deter crime, and demonstrate to our Associates and customers that we take safety in our stores seriously.”