Ice Cube’s Big3 league is heading to Houston, TX, and Miami, FL.
With a unique feature that lets fans purchase stakes in the league, the 3-on-3 basketball league remained open to new investors and achieved a $10 million sale of its first team in May 2024, as AFROTECH™ previously reported. The team was sold to a group led by investment firm DCB Sports as part of the Big3’s plan to move from a touring league to a city-based model with the sold team based in Los Angeles, CA.
“We need to plant our roots in cities so we can be more than a rolling all-star game coming through,” Ice Cube told Bloomberg at the time. “It’s really about growing the sport and the league.”
The Big3 league aims to sell all 12 of its teams and is now one step closer to that goal as it expands to Houston, TX, according to new information released by Bloomberg. Eric Mullins, a former Goldman Sachs executive now leading equity firm Lime Rock Resources, and Milton Carroll, the minority owner of Major League Baseball’s Houston Astros, are listed as investors in the deal, reportedly valued at $10 million.
The Big3 league also sold a team in Miami, FL, to real estate executive Heath Freeman in another deal reportedly valued at $10 million, the Miami Herald reports.
“Big3 is shaping the future of basketball; the game play is dynamic and nuanced and the product on the court appeals to the audiences in this incredibly fast-growing region,” Freeman said in a press release, according to the Miami Herald. “Basketball fans across South Florida can rest assured that this franchise will soon add to our great region’s winning sports pedigree.”
Big3’s overall strategy is to allow teams to build their own local fanbases. The league brings in roughly 14,000 fans per weekend event and had more than 500,000 viewers on Paramount Global Inc’s CBS network during the last season, AFROTECH™ previously reported.
“Connecting with teams with cities we believe will unlock a great fan base, loyal fans who will probably follow their teams from city to city. Miami is a beautiful city,” Ice Cube commented, per the Miami Herald. “It’s amazing. It’s a destination for a lot of people. A lot of people dream to come to Miami. It’s a town that if you’re winning, they really, really get behind you.”
Looking ahead, the Big3 league is considering scaling to 16 teams by 2025 in places like London, England, and Toronto, Canada.
