3×3 basketball is preparing to take another step forward in the way fans experience a sporting competition from a distance. FIBA has reached an exclusive three-year agreement with L1VE to introduce immersive live broadcasts to its main events in the discipline, opening a new category of audiovisual rights focused on offering a closer and more interactive experience to those following games from outside the venue. The agreement will cover the FIBA 3×3 World Tour, FIBA 3×3 Women’s Series and FIBA 3×3 World Cup, expanding the ways tournaments can connect with their global audiences.
The proposal is based on a simple idea: bringing fans to the heart of the action without needing to be physically courtside. Through immersive technology, L1VE aims to recreate the experience of sitting in the front row, allowing users to see and hear what is happening during the game in real time and share that virtual space with friends anywhere in the world. The experience does not replace existing broadcasts and streaming platforms, but instead creates an additional way to connect with a sport characterised by its pace, intensity and proximity between players and fans.
An immersive courtside experience
L1VE, a company founded in 2022 and headquartered in New York, with a research and development department in Germany, has developed proprietary technology focused on direct communication between devices and connections with fans. Its system works across the main immersive headsets and is designed as software capable of delivering the same production to all users simultaneously. The company uses stereoscopic 360° capture to record the complete event experience, while a real-time system combines the footage into a single live scene and a customised distribution layer allows fans in different locations to follow the action while maintaining the feeling of being present at the same moment.
The model also incorporates a social dimension. Users will be able to invite friends to share the experience and watch the game together even when they are in different countries. The platform also offers tickets for individual competition days or passes covering an entire tournament, replicating in the virtual environment a model similar to attending a competition in person. In this way, someone unable to travel to the venue can access an experience designed to place them virtually in the front row, with a perspective focused on the action and the energy of 3×3 basketball.
3×3 as a platform for innovation
The debut of this new experience will take place at the FIBA 3×3 World Tour in Debrecen, Hungary, on August 29 and 30, 2026. Fans will be able to access the experience through the L1VE app and a compatible virtual reality headset. The platform has already been used at major international sports and music events and is scheduled to officially launch with the Detroit Lions on August 22, before joining the FIBA 3×3 calendar. Over the three-year term of the agreement, the technology will progressively be introduced at the discipline’s leading international tournaments.
For FIBA, the addition of this technology fits naturally with the characteristics of 3×3 basketball, a format created to bring the game closer to fans and defined by a smaller court, constant action and a direct relationship between the spectacle and the audience. Alex Sanchez, FIBA’s 3×3 Basketball General Manager, said the agreement will allow the organisation to explore new ways for audiences to experience the intensity and energy of its events. From L1VE, its Chief Commercial Officer, David Morgenbesser, sees 3×3 as an especially suitable setting for the technology because of its urban character, pace and proximity to the action, with an experience designed to allow fans to share every dunk, buzzer-beating basket and decisive moment with the people they choose, even when they are far from the tournament venue.
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