When Roger Mason Jr. left his role as deputy executive director of the National Basketball Players Association in 2016 and launched the 3-on-3 basketball competition Big3 alongside Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz a year later, NBA commissioner Adam Silver told the retired basketball journeyman he was in for a hard time.
“And boy, he wasn’t lying,” Mason said.
Nearly a decade later, Big3 is still chugging along. And while Mason is far removed from his time with the upstart, having departed in 2018, the crash course in how sports leagues operate and generate revenue informed another venture. In 2016, Mason and media executive Omari Ware co-founded Vaunt, a company that evolved into an incubator for alternative sports competitions and a developer of media content.
On Wednesday, the company will announce it has been acquired by Future of Sports Platform (FSP), a subsidiary of Dubai-based sports and tech holding company League Sports Co. Financial terms were not disclosed.
As part of the deal, FSP will add a trio of Vaunt’s sports properties to its portfolio: World Pong, the Quarterback Challenge and Rivals1v1 Basketball. FSP already owns World Premier Squash and the World Bowling League, which counts MLB All-Star Mookie Betts and legendary cricket player Virat Kohli as investors.
“I think this is a very unique portfolio mix, especially if you look at it from the lens of the tech company,” Adi K Mishra, the founder and CEO of League Sports Co., said. “Because what this does for us is it gives us a wide-spectrum demographic split.”
A broad audience is exactly what FSP is looking for. Rather than fighting for real estate in the $200 billion global spectator sports industry, the company wants to stake its claim on participation sports, a market Mishra said is worth $400 billion. Next month, FSP plans to launch an app that uses artificial intelligence to track gameplay and lets users compete against each other in virtual competitions.
Mishra, who built a fortune as an early investor in a slew of tech investments going back to 2011, spent a “significant eight figures over the last four or five years” developing the technology. He and Mason envision using the app in conjunction with a sports property, like organizing nationwide college tournaments for World Pong without the cost of dispatching operators to each location. Over the long run, Mishra expects the company to generate most of its revenue from high-engagement ads and competition entry fees on the app.
That’s a departure from how most traditional sports properties make money. Usually, leagues pursue broadcast rights, sponsorship and game day revenues, like ticketing, merchandise and concessions. Mishra said that structure will likely exist for the championships of each sports property that FSP owns. But in the grand scheme of things, each league is more or less a tool for customer acquisition.
Mishra initially had a different plan, weighing investment opportunities in the English Premier League, the Indian Premier League and Major League Soccer, but he concluded the return profile was not worth the risk. The presence of much larger players, like sovereign wealth funds, and the risk of relegation in some formats limited any financial advantages he might have had. “No matter how much money you drop, there’s no way to be in the top five of these leagues,” he said. Ultimately, Mishra realized he needed more intellectual property to bring users into FSP’s ecosystem, and he found his answer in Vaunt.
About five years ago, Mason’s business had started to focus on creating alternative sports properties. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdowns, the company netted a major victory when it developed World Pong with Grammy-nominated recording artist Post Malone and signed an eight-figure deal with Facebook to distribute a 10-episode series, which Mason said generated 1.4 billion impressions. Vaunt also created the property Baller Fest to produce FIBA’s AmeriCup tournament, a 3-on-3 basketball competition.
That success bred investor interest. Vaunt raised $5 million in Series A funding at a post-money valuation of $28 million in 2022, according to Pitchbook. Elysian Park Ventures, the investment arm of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ ownership group, Super Bowl champion Justin Tuck and former NBPA executive director Michele Roberts participated in the round. The company has raised $14 million in total since its founding a decade ago. Still, Mason saw a deal with FSP as an opportunity to realize Vaunt’s full potential.
Within 12 months of launching the app, the company expects to have 5 to 10 million users. It hopes to be profitable by year two. It’s a lofty goal, considering the checkered history of emerging sports leagues and how much is riding on the success of FSP’s technology. But Mishra is quick to boast about the company’s in-house expertise, like its chief technology officer who previously worked at NVIDIA, Salesforce, Electronic Arts and Apple.
The transaction is expected to close in the next few weeks, and Mason is still sorting out his future position with Vaunt. He and his investors will retain an undisclosed amount of minority equity in Rivals1v1 Basketball, which will feature what Mason called a “top-five NBA star.” That competition, along with squash, bowling and pong, is expected to launch in 2026.