The people who brought you fan-controlled football, the league where fans call plays, pick rosters, team names, and featured the likes of Terrell Owens and Johnny Manziel, are adding basketball to their portfolio.
Scheduled to launch on Feb. 7, 2023, Fan Controlled Hoops will be played on an LED floor that allows fans online to vote to illuminate a part of it, creating a zone where players get extra points if they score. The floor, topped with an acrylic surface, can also show the names of substitutions and statistics.
One of the initial four teams is owned by former NBA star Baron Davis, with yet-to-be-disclosed other owners from a background in basketball and entertainment. Former NBA player Mike Bibby is listed in league materials as a head coach.
An announcement about the new league is scheduled for Wednesday.
Fan Controlled Hoops is the latest quest to marry sports with younger generations who in many cases have turned off professional games, or are unwilling to sit idly for hours watching the action. Only 23 percent of Generation Z, roughly defined as those in their early teens to mid-20s, say they are passionate sports fans, according to polling cited by Fan Controlled Hoops.
Fan Controlled Football comes off almost like a video game, played on a 50-yard field in a massive studio with flashing lights and the action is streamed on Amazon’s Twitch, known for its gaming audience.
Fan Controlled Hoops will be played in the same studio on a court slightly smaller than an NBA version, said Grant Cohen, co-founder of Fan Controlled Sports & Entertainment, the entity that controls the leagues.
“You better bet there’s gonna be some changes (to the game),” he said. “So it’ll be four-on-four, not five-on-five, the court will be a little bit smaller. I always say it’s like an LA Fitness court, right, like a pickup basketball court.”
The league will have no free throws; instead, teams that are fouled get a point, and then the other squad gets the ball. Alley-oops will count for extra points, though how much will be voted on by fans. Players will not have traditional positions and the clock will run toward the end of the game to avoid the timeout foul-fests that slow down the end of NBA contests.
Advising Fan Controlled Hoops is Michele Roberts, the former executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, from which she stepped down in January. She pointed to the players getting the chance to get equity in the teams as the main reason she is involved.
“We needed to do better, and allow players to enjoy some of the equity in some of these teams, the value of which they contribute to, but that’s one feature of FC football and will be a feature of FC hoops that I learned about, I found particularly interesting and attractive,” she said. “Whether it’s this sport or any other sport, again, I’m a firm believer in player involvement in the ownership of some of these teams in some capacity.”
Like the founders of the Fan Controlled Football league, she cited the different ways younger fans consume sports as a reason for backing the new startup.
Amy Trask, chairperson of the BIG3, a three-on-three basketball league that launched in 2017, disagreed young people were tuning out traditional sports.
“We are attracting a far younger audience than many anticipated we would, we knew we would,” she said. “When you go to the team hotel, and this happened from the very first game we played in Brooklyn, and we walked in the team hotel, and lined up throughout the lobby waiting for autographs were young, young kids. And in the arena are young people and turning on TVs are young people. So might the Fan Controlled Basketball attract young people? Absolutely. Are we attracting them? Absolutely.”
Fan Controlled Sports raised $40 million in private venture money in January, some of which will go to finance the new hoops league, which will also rely on ownership payments. In the first two seasons of Fan Controlled Football, more than 29 million fans streamed parts of a game, there were 100 million highlight views on social channels, and 4.3 million times fans used the app to vote on team matters, according to the company.
Fan Controlled Sports is private so it does not release financials, but it’s still in early startup mode, Cohen said, meaning it is not expected to earn money at this stage.
“This is really the growth capital we are raising to put gas on the fire,” Cohen said. The first year of Fan Controlled Football was just about testing the concept, he said, and that will be true of Fan Controlled Hoops.
One of the key differences between the two is football lends itself to allowing fans to vote on calling plays, but basketball does not. So fans in-game can vote on what Cohen calls the lit zone, an area on the court that will suddenly light up, signaling to players that baskets from that area are worth more.
Like the football league, owners will include a medley of former NBA players and celebrities. Some like musician and producer Steve Aoki might even cross over and own in both leagues.
Players for the league will largely come from the Division 1 and 2 ranks, with a smattering of former NBA players sprinkled in. The season will stretch just four weeks in season one.
“Elite athletes who have not made the NBA perhaps playing in other pro leagues, internationally or in the U.S. … And then there will be a handful of former NBA players who are known for their basketball prowess,” Cohen said of the players.
The Fan Controlled “studio” is in Atlanta, and can accommodate roughly 1,000 spectators. During this football league season, several sports legends, from Dwight Howard to Michael Irvin, took in a game.
Discussions are underway with media providers to air Fan Controlled Hoops. Cohen said talks are beginning with the entities that have rights to Fan Controlled Football, which include DAZN and Twitch. Because basketball is more popular overseas than football, Cohen expects international interest to be greater.
From her vantage point, Roberts said she considers success is getting better numbers than the sibling football league.
“But if we can beat it, it will confirm what I believe about the popularity of the sport,” she said. “And frankly, I want to be able to have these enterprises serve as an example for why it makes sense and doesn’t destroy the league to allow players to have some ownership interest. So this was what I’d like to think we’re creating, a gold standard for player involvement in the ownership rights.”
Greg Moore, the former Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) commissioner, will run the league’s daily operations as FCH General Manager.
(Photo: Courtesy of Fan Controlled Hoops)
