07-30-2026, 02:05 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-30-2026, 02:06 PM by HoosierDaddyKid.)
No wonder Ice Cube appeared in a pleasant mood before BIG3’s recent games at the University of Southern California’s Galen Center. Ice Cube, otherwise known as O’Shea Jackson Sr., still spoke in a serious tone with me in an arena conference room. Then, Ice Cube declined to bask in BIG3’s accomplishments and proclaim that “today was a good day” as he did in his heralded song. Instead, Ice Cube focused more on BIG3’s upcoming goals. The BIG3 is valued at $290 million after becoming the first publicly traded professional sports league in American history last month by partnering with a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (Graf Global Corp.). In 2024, the BIG3 sold four of its eight franchises in Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit and Houston to various ownership groups for $10 million each. BIG3 has also partnered with the Prostate Cancer Foundation this year, which has included facilitating testing signups outside of venues and league-endorsed PSAs. “We want to expand,” Ice Cube told me. “To really unlock what this league can do, we want to have more than eight teams, even more than 12. The traditional way is just to sell teams and grow like that, which is cool. But it makes you make deals that you need to make instead of deals that you should make.”
Forbes.com
Forbes.com