The Big3 basketball league, co-founded by rapper and entrepreneur Ice Cube, is moving toward a public stock offering with an eye on a $290 million valuation, a move that would make it one of the few professional sports properties available for everyday investors to own a piece of directly.
The league announced Friday that it has entered into an agreement with Graf Global Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, as the vehicle for its market debut. The target is to begin trading on a major stock exchange in the fourth quarter of 2026 under the ticker symbol TONT, a nod to the 3-on-3 format that defines the league’s brand of basketball.
A sports investment most fans never get access to
The appeal of the announcement is rooted in something most professional sports have never offered. Major leagues in the United States operate as private enterprises, meaning the financial upside of their growth, their media deals, their rising valuations, belongs almost entirely to team owners and institutional investors. Fans contribute through tickets, merchandise, and television ratings but have no mechanism to share in what they help build.
Ice Cube framed the public offering as a direct response to that imbalance, arguing that fans are essential to the league’s success and should therefore have access to its financial rewards. The structure of the SPAC deal provides a pathway to make that possible in a way that a traditional private fundraise would not.
The closest parallel in American sports is TKO Group Holdings, the publicly traded parent company of the UFC and WWE, which has been available on the stock market since September 2023. Major sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB remain privately held and inaccessible to retail investors seeking direct ownership stakes.
A league entering its ninth season
The timing of the announcement aligns with the opening of the Big3’s ninth season, which begins next week in Los Angeles. The league’s championship game is scheduled for August 22 in Charlotte, North Carolina, giving the organization a full competitive season to play out before shares become available to the public.
The Big3 was built around a 3-on-3 format featuring former NBA players competing in a half-court game with modified rules, including a four-point line and a no-zone defense restriction. It carved out a niche audience in the years since its launch and has built a brand recognizable enough that Ice Cube’s involvement remains a central part of its identity and marketing.
What the offering could mean for sports ownership
The broader significance of the move extends beyond the Big3 itself. If the public offering succeeds and fans demonstrate a genuine appetite for owning stock in a sports league, it could open a conversation about what fan ownership might look like at a larger scale.
For now the Big3 is a smaller operation compared to the major professional leagues, but the concept it is testing, the idea that the people who care most about a league should be able to invest in it, is one that the sports business world will be watching. A $290 million valuation is a significant number for a league of its size, and whether the market agrees with that figure will become clear when the ticker TONT begins trading later this year.
