Ice Cube’s BIG3 basketball league is being sued by NFT investors claiming the league broke promises about ownership rights.
Ice Cube is facing a class action lawsuit from NFT buyers who claim his BIG3 basketball league made promises it never kept, and the timing couldn’t be worse as he’s preparing to take the league public.
The suit, filed in California Superior Court last July but just publicized this week, alleges the league engaged in deceptive and fraudulent marketing when it sold two tiers of NFTs back in 2022.
Buyers of the Fire tier paid $25,000 each while Gold tier investors dropped $5,000, and both groups were promised something that sounded incredible at the time: actual ownership stakes in professional basketball teams.
Attorney Joseph Sakai, representing the plaintiffs, laid out exactly what went wrong.
“Our clients invested substantial sums based on representations that they would receive meaningful ownership rights, including team management decisions, season tickets, and financial participation in future team sales,” Sakai told Decrypt. “The league promised these rights would last forever. They barely lasted three years.” Back in 2022, Ice Cube himself hyped the opportunity, telling media outlets that offering fans ownership through NFTs was “a no-brainer” and that he was “all about changing the game and shifting the paradigm.”
In 2024, BIG3 sold four franchises to outside investors for roughly $40 million, and the plaintiffs claim they never saw a dime of those proceeds despite being promised financial participation in team sales.
The league essentially downgraded NFT holders from owners to regular ticket holders, according to the suit.
The league is pushing for private arbitration rather than allowing this to proceed as a class action, which would be far more expensive for BIG3 to defend.
BIG3 has been battling legal issues for years.
The league, founded in 2017 by Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz, has faced multiple lawsuits, including a $1.2 billion case against Qatari investors and a $250 million suit from the Champions Basketball League.
The league currently has eight city-based teams and features Hall of Famers and former NBA stars such as Joe Johnson, Mario Chalmers, and Dwight Howard.
The league announced last month that it’s going public through a S### merger with Graf Global Corp at a $290 million valuation, with the deal expected to close in Q4 2026 under the ticker symbol TONT.
The plaintiffs’ attorney has indicated he’ll amend the lawsuit to address the IPO announcement, which could complicate Ice Cube’s path to the public markets.
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