The second appearance of 3×3 basketball at the Olympics was a roaring success. For that to matter, Emmet Ryan says that FIBA must seek to build around narratives
The 3×3 basketball tournament at the Olympics couldn’t have ended on a more stunning note. After a thrilling women’s gold medal game, Worthy De Jong hit the overtime winner for Netherlands to claim the men’s gold. Making people care about the sport over the four years between now and LA 2028 is a challenge for FIBA. Should they succeed, there’s enormous potential in the sport.
The Olympics is great but…
..is that really it? Just being there and having a bunch of people admire the sport being cool is great. FIBA pushed 3×3 basketball because of the urge to get more basketball in the Olympics. With more medals to be won and more nations represented, just being on the Olympic calendar is a win.
It gets better. With 3×3 basketball certain to be on the programme in LA 2028, the sport is effectively going to be fixed on the Olympic calendar. Once a sport appears at three consecutive editions of the Olympics, it’s basically a permanent fixture. Something absolutely awful has to go wrong for that to change. That’s how wrestling got in trouble a few cycles back and boxing is at risk of losing its spot at present.
That means FIBA can plan substantially for growth. It has enormous member buy-in for 3×3 basketball. That means there’s a lot of on the ground support, at executive and volunteer level, worldwide to push this form of the spot to a higher position.
Time to build
Marseille, Macau, Amsterdam, Ulaanbaatar, Lausanne, and Shanghai. That’s just a sample of the wide range of stops on the FIBA 3×3 World Tour. There’s a glamour to this that can be built upon.
Added to that is grit. There are few if any household names in the spot. If you visit this site, you know a few 3×3 players by name. The ones you know best are Worth de Jong and Jimmer Fredette. Even these two have stories to tell.
Then there’s the layers. As a sport, 3×3 basketball reflects tennis and golf in structure more than basketball with its challenger and satellite tournaments to make it up to the top tier of the Tour.
All that is before we get to the international events, continental competitions and, of course, the Olympics. This blend of approaches means there’s a lot for FIBA to work with in terms of assets. What’s missing are narratives, a crucial aspect for getting fan buy-in.
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Think beyond basketball fans
This may seem a counterintuitive sub-head but bear with me. Basketball fans, the existing ones, are obviously an audience. There’s an awful lot of regular basketball for them to consume at present. For them, 3×3 basketball is another layer to an already crowded plate.
FIBA needs to think beyond the existing regular fans and seek out more casual and potential fans to draw interest in this. While ‘do a Netflix show’ seems to be the go-to suggestion for every sport, there’s a logical argument for it with 3×3 basketball.
The sport could be sold as Last Chance U meets Drive to Survive. What made both of these shows work more than the meh efforts for other sports, is that the narratives within were compelling. This is a sport with fascinating personalities fighting for recognition while also participating in a clearly glamorous globetrotting competition.
Throw in the build to the Olympics around these characters and you’ve got a logical long-term story to tell. That’s in addition to the shorter term stories from event to event leading to the tour finals and international competitions. If I had the budget (read any budget), I’d try to produce the thing myself. There’s a compelling story waiting to be told.
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About Ice Cube
Any observation on the growth of 3×3 basketball can’t happen without mention of the Big3. The rules and format of the series run by Ice Cube are different but similar enough that it can appear to be an obstacle.
Here’s the thing, it doesn’t have to be. We’ve already seen with Formula 1 that a racing series that’s considered European by US fans can break through into their market despite auto sports having deep roots there.
The Big3 might technically be competition but, with work, the relationship could become symbiotic. Right now, there’s not a single FIBA 3×3 basketball World Tour event in the US. The only one in the Americas is in Edmonton, Canada. Getting hoops fans in a continent with tens of millions of basketball fans, and potential ones, seems an obvious growth opportunity.
With the LA 2028 Olympics in the near future, this cycle is an opportunity for FIBA to grow 3×3 basketball in that part of the world and aid growth elsewhere. To borrow a phrase from John Cena, the time is now.
