How FIBA 3×3 Basketball Went From A Business Case To An Olympic Sport

FIBA 3×3 basketball has evolved from a Youth Olympic experiment into a global professional sport, driven by Alex Sanchez’s business strategy, gender equity, digital engagement and a spectator-first approach ahead of LA28.

(This is part one of a two-part story based on a Forbes exclusive interview with Alex Sanchez on September 22, 2026. All quotes are taken directly from a transcript of the interview.)

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The White Paper

In 2010, Alex Sanchez was not trying to save basketball, reinvent basketball or even necessarily build a new Olympic sport. He was doing something much more familiar to the world of business. He was analyzing an investment opportunity.

At the time, FIBA 3×3 basketball was being played at the Youth Olympic Games, but the International Basketball Federation wanted to know whether the abbreviated version of basketball was something more than a novelty. Could three-on-three basketball become a legitimate sport with its own athletes, competitions, commercial potential and global audience? Sanchez, who had an MBA from the University of Chicago and a background in private equity, venture capital and consulting, was asked to find out.

Sixteen years later, that analysis looks remarkably prescient.

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Three-on-three basketball is now an Olympic sport, and it will arrive in Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympic Games with FIBA Managing Director Alex Sanchez still helping guide its global development.

“I did the analysis,” Sanchez recalled in an interview with Forbes. “At the end of it … my conclusion at the time was that there was a real business case to develop 3×3 as a standalone discipline.”

But there was an even bigger possibility. Sanchez concluded that 3×3 could become an Olympic sport if FIBA did the right things.

Unlikely Beginnings For An Olympic Sport

Sanchez’s path to FIBA was not the conventional route for a basketball executive. Born in Barcelona to a Spanish father and German mother, Sanchez attended a German school in Spain and developed what he describes as two cultural perspectives on the same things. Before joining FIBA, he had already lived and worked in several European countries, including Spain, Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. He eventually came to the United States to earn an MBA at the University of Chicago, attracted in part by the finance-driven approach of the university’s business program. After graduate school came private equity, venture capital and consulting.

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Then came FIBA.

The organization’s previous secretary general wanted an objective analysis of 3×3. The sport was appearing at the Youth Olympic Games, but FIBA wanted to know whether there was a sustainable business proposition underneath it. Sanchez deliberately approached the assignment without treating it as a basketball project.

“I analyzed it as it would be a new brand for shoes or a new engine for planes,” he said.

That distinction mattered. Instead of asking whether basketball fans liked three-on-three basketball, Sanchez was essentially asking whether a new sporting property could create a sufficiently differentiated product, audience and business model. The answer was yes. The next question was much harder: What would FIBA have to build to give 3×3 a legitimate opportunity to become Olympic? Sanchez and his colleagues produced a concept paper laying out what would have to happen.

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That roadmap would require much more than changing the number of players on the court.

Building 3×3 As Its Own Product

One of the first strategic decisions was gender equity. From the beginning, FIBA wanted men’s and women’s 3×3 to develop together. Sanchez said the organization was determined that national-team competitions would include men and women at the same time so the women’s side would have an opportunity to grow at a comparable pace. The strategy was straightforward: If women’s 3×3 were treated as an afterthought, it could fall behind.

Instead, gender equity became part of the architecture of the sport.

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The second major milestone was professional competition. FIBA needed to demonstrate that 3×3 was not simply something athletes played occasionally at a Youth Olympic event. It needed professional athletes competing year-round. That led to the launch of the FIBA 3×3 World Tour in 2012, less than two years after FIBA’s board decided to pursue the discipline. For Sanchez, this was critical.

“It had to have its own professional competition league tour,” he explained.

The World Tour provided something that a collection of exhibition events could not: evidence that 3×3 could support a professional sporting ecosystem. It showed that athletes could make 3×3 their sport rather than treating it as a side activity.

And it gave FIBA an increasingly visible international product.

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Creating A Sport That Was More Thrilling

The next challenge was perhaps the most fundamental: What exactly should 3×3 basketball be?

FIBA could simply have taken traditional basketball, removed two players from each side and played the game on a half court. Instead, Sanchez said FIBA deliberately adapted the rules. The goal was to bring the organized version of the game closer to the way people actually played street basketball. That philosophy eventually became central to the sport’s identity.

“The idea was to put the spectator in the center of all our changes or all our decisions,” Sanchez said.

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The objective was not simply to preserve basketball’s traditional form. It was to create an experience. FIBA eventually described 3×3 with a simple phrase: “most thrilling urban sport.” That phrase captured the strategy. The venues mattered. The rules mattered. The pace mattered. The presentation mattered.

And even the equipment became part of the product.

Why 3×3 Needed Its Own Basketball

FIBA developed a ball specifically for 3×3. It is smaller than a traditional men’s basketball but heavier, a combination Sanchez said was designed around the characteristics of the game and particularly outdoor grip and shooting. That might sound like a small detail.

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It wasn’t.

The creation of a dedicated 3×3 ball was another indication that FIBA was no longer treating the discipline as simply a modified version of five-on-five basketball. It was becoming its own sporting product.

A Sport Designed For The Mobile Era

Perhaps the most interesting part of Sanchez’s 3×3 strategy is that the sport was being designed for spectators before smartphones became the dominant way many younger fans consume sports. Today, that approach looks almost obvious.

In 2010, it was much less so.

A 3×3 game takes place on a half court with six players on the floor. The action is compact. The games are short. And the format naturally produces frequent highlights. Sanchez believes those characteristics make 3×3 particularly well suited for mobile viewing.

“You actually can see them everywhere,” he said, referring to the short games and abundance of highlights.

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That became an important part of FIBA’s digital strategy. The organization created a social-media operation specifically focused on producing clips, polls and other digital content for platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. The target audience was especially important. Sanchez said the core social audience falls largely within the 13-to-35 age range.

The sport therefore wasn’t simply being played for the audience sitting courtside. It was also being packaged to be consumed by the person watching on a phone.

Millions Of Followers And Billions Of Views

According to Sanchez, FIBA 3×3 now has more than 10 million social-media followers. Its dedicated social-media channels generate well above 1 billion views annually, according to Sanchez, approaching 2 billion views. Those figures are part of the story of how an experimental discipline became a global sporting property. But Sanchez believes another characteristic is just as important.

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The audience is geographically distributed.

Rather than being concentrated primarily in one continent, Sanchez said 3×3 has developed meaningful participation and interest across Europe, the Americas and Asia. That distribution is rooted in something deceptively simple. A basketball hoop and a basketball are enough to begin.

As Sanchez put it, “if you have a ball and you have a hoop, actually, basically everybody will end up” trying to play.

That accessibility may be one of 3×3’s greatest advantages.

The Pickup Game Goes Global

For many basketball players, three-on-three is not something they learned from a federation. It is something they discovered after school at a park, in a driveway, or on an outdoor court with friends. The rules may vary. The competition may be informal. The stakes may be nothing more than bragging rights. But the fundamental experience is remarkably universal.

The beauty of the game was its simplicity. You didn’t need a full roster, a coach or an elaborate facility. You needed a ball, a basket and somebody willing to play.

FIBA has taken that intuitive experience and built a professional sport around it without destroying the essence of the game.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com