When Ice Cube launched the BIG3 in 2017, he framed it as “changing the game.”
The three-on-three basketball league was meant to be a fast-paced complement to the NBA, giving emerging players a chance to shine, and to fill a mostly empty summer sports calendar in the process.
The league, which has a media rights deals with CBS and Fubo, ended up being a survivor: The rare startup sports league that has survived, not only COVID, which stressed the major leagues to their limits, but also a media environment where breaking through is challenging at best, impossible at worst.
“The vast, vast majority of leagues fail. I think since we started, it’s been over 100 leagues that have started and failed,” says Jeff Kwatinetz, who co-founded BIG3 with Cube. “I think the most important achievement is that the fans and the players love our sport, and it’s accepted as a real professional sport, and viewed as something that is worth people being fans of. It can’t be underestimated.
“Look at LIV [LIV golf] as an extreme example, in dollars, they couldn’t get people to really care about the sport. They had 150,000, 200,000 people watching the matches,” he adds. “We have 600,000 people watching. Ultimately, you could market to the fans, but if they don’t accept the sport and care about it, then you’re kind of dead in the water.”
