Tracy McGrady
Source: Basketball League
This time, Tracy McGrady trusts his ideas.
The Basketball Hall of Fame funded real estate projects, backed a sports and entertainment agency, and committed to a crypto partnership before the sector lost billions in value. Now, McGrady is investing in his own company, Ones Basketball League, or OBL, which will premiere in New York this weekend.
“I’ve always been invested in other people’s ideas and seeing others,” McGrady told CNBC in an interview. “I never once trusted me. I never had the confidence to believe my thoughts were good enough. I didn’t trust my thoughts or my decisions when it came to my vision.”
“This is the first time that I really trust and believe that I can achieve it,” he added.
McGrady, 43, is funding the OBL, an over-18 league during those seven-city tours from April through July. It brings players together in one-on-one games, and is a staple of basketball on the court. Big 3 League image of Ice Cube, but with fewer players and no former NBA stars.
McGrady will pay out just under $10 million, including a $250,000 prize for the Ultimate OBL Champion. He’s partnered with longtime sports executive and former XFL president Jeff Pollack to assist with operations. Pollack says the costs associated with the league are “not significant” so far.
“This means that we will have an opportunity to grow this business and do it in a way where the economics are, at first, very favorable,” Pollack said.
McGrady wants to attract an audience of Generation Z, meaning those born after 1997. ThenAnd the He believes media and sponsorship fees will follow.
Action during the OBL game
Source: Basketball League
While OBL is new to the secondary sports scene, he notes other amateur leagues like Cornhole and bowling that attract a niche audience on networks and believes OBL could do the same.
“There’s no disdain for what these other things are putting into their programming — it’s a lot more fun,” McGrady told CNBC earlier this week at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan.
OBL has already found a prominent media supporter. It has entered into a digital distribution deal with Paramount-owned network Showtime that allows the network to display OBL content on its YouTube channel as well as cross-promote.
The terms of this agreement were not disclosed, but OBL confirmed that it would split advertising revenue.
McGrady gets the keys
Drafted in 1997 by the Toronto Raptors, McGrady played 16 seasons in the NBA, including a long stint with the Houston Rockets, and grossed more than $160 million, according to Spotrac, a website that tracks sports contracts. McGrady’s earnings include a $92 million deal with the Orlando Magic in 2000. His last NBA season was 2011-12.
Compare OBL and his tenure with magic. It only lasted four seasons, but it marked the start of the All Seven in a row and McGrady’s transition to a “familiar name” in the NBA.
“I finally got the keys and thrived on this [All-Star] McGrady said, “I’ve never seen that kind of guy. And I haven’t seen [OBL] This is going on.”
OBL was launched in February. The league plays 32-player regional matches in seven cities, including New York and Los Angeles. Players who win the regional games win $10,000. The top three players of the games can compete for a larger payout of $250,000.
Orlando Magic guard Tracy McGrady (1) drops the ball in front of Washington Wizards guard Rhode Strickland during the second period of the game at TD Waterhouse Center in Orlando, October 31, 2000.
Tony Ranz | AFP | Getty Images
McGrady praised his two teenage sons for sparking his interest in one-on-one basketball. He said they don’t watch NBA or NBA games live. “What they’ll watch: YouTube, short content, highlights,” McGrady added.
McGrady is not naive about the startup. He predicts that OBL will suffer from hiccups, and that profitability will likely not be at first. McGrady and Pollack did not discuss specifics about OBL’s money-making scheme, but they expect to eventually benefit from licensing, sponsorship and ticket deals, which will help create a return on investment for potential sponsors.
“It’s going to come from the audience we reach and eventually get involved,” Pollack said. “We have a long way to go.”
He added that OBL will eventually be looking for investors, but at this point, “we want to make sure we clearly understand what it should be, and then we’ll plan how to grow it.”
OBL joins a busy sports media scene. Among the competitors are Overtime, the media company backed by Drake and Jeff Bezos. This media company runs Overtime Elite, or OTE – the league that pays high school students $100,000 with its Generation Z affiliate.
Macroeconomic concerns, including inflation, threaten early growth. When asked about these factors, Pollack suggested that OBL play the long game.
“We’re going through a tough economic time and it could get worse,” Pollack said. “But we’ll get out of it at some point, and what we’ve all seen in the past couple of years is that consumer appetites for sports content aren’t as satiated as they ever were.”
In the event that OBL attracts its target audience to watch sports content on social media, McGrady plans to grow the company globally.
“I have the right team to make it happen,” he said. “I think we’ve set a model where it’s very entertaining.”