Ice Cube’s Basketball League Big3 Offers Team Ownership As NFTs

Key Insights:

• The BIG3 basketball league will begin offering NFT powered team ownership.
• These team-stake NFTs will be ‘most likely’ minted on Ethereum.
• BIG3 team ownership NFTs will be sold in two tiers – Fire ($25k) and Gold ($5k).

Ice Cube founded basketball league BIG3, announced an unconventional decision inspired by an already successful idea from Socios.com to involve fans with their teams. 

Bringing NFTs to Basketball

The BIG3 is different from other basketball leagues. It features 3-on-3 matches, and the league entirely owns all the 12 teams that exist at the moment.

Thus instead of selling the teams to outside investors, founder Ice Cube declared their plans of selling it to their fans.

Using NFTs, BIG3 will be distributing stake in the team’s ownership and make BIG3 fans involved with the league in ways different than any other league does at the moment.

Commenting on the same, Ice Cube stated to Decrypt,

“The NFT blockchain revolution hit, so to speak, and we were like: ‘Yo, do we want just some fat cats coming around buying teams that we gotta deal with? This is a great way for the fans to be owners. And so, it’s a no-brainer for me. I’m all about changing the game and shifting the paradigm.”

The NFTs are categorized into two tiers, the first being the “Gold” NFTs which are valued at $5,000, and only 975 of them exist. Whereas the second tier of NFTs, “Fire,” exists in a limited amount of 25 since each of them is worth $25,000.

But the higher the price, the bigger the benefits. Apart from the ability to vote on team matters and tickets to all BIG3 games and merchandise, Fire NFT holders also get the benefit of intellectual property and licensing rights to create merchandise.

Has It Been Done Before?

While the idea sounds unique and lucrative enough, Chiliz powered fan engagement platform Socios.com has been doing the same for a while now.

However, Socios.com partners up with teams and players more by selling their fan tokens to investors who also get the perks of voting on team matters and exclusive merchandise, and more.

Most recently, FXEmpire reported on their partnership with Football Legend Lionel Messi for the next three years, enabling exposure to Messi’s 400 million followers.

Thus, if BIG3 can pull off a similar feat, it will open a new door for sports teams and leagues when it comes to engagement and growth.