In Virtual Reality News
What’s the story?
FIBA, the organization that steers 3×3 basketball, has announced an exclusive three-year deal with L1VE to bring the 3×3 World Tour, Women’s Series and World Cup to VR headsets.
Why it matters
Exclusive “immersive live rights” put FIBA 3×3 basketball into live VR for three years as a rights class alongside broadcast and streaming, via one app that runs on every major immersive headset, according to L1VE.
The bigger picture
Over the three-year deal, VR audiences for FIBA 3×3 basketball get a courtside perspective, seeing and hearing the action as it unfolds, across the World Tour, Women’s Series and World Cup.
August 31, 2026 – FIBA, the organization that steers 3×3 basketball, has recently announced an exclusive three-year deal with L1VE, a provider of immersive live event experiences for virtual reality (VR) headsets, covering the FIBA 3×3 World Tour, Women’s Series and World Cup.
According to L1VE, the deal covers “immersive live rights”, a new class of media rights created by L1VE that complements existing broadcast and streaming activities. The company stated that its ‘Social Presence’ platform is a ticketed experience that allows fans to enjoy immersive live sports and music events together, from anywhere.
For the FIBA events, fans can watch games live from a courtside perspective, seeing and hearing the action as it unfolds, and can invite friends to watch alongside them.
3×3 basketball is played by two teams of three players on a basketball half-court. The discipline was played for the first time in international competition at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore, and has since gained yearly professional circuits for men and women (the World Tour and the Women’s Series respectively). 3×3 also made its Olympic debut at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
L1VE stated that its technology runs on every major immersive headset and “scales like software.” The platform captures a full venue of live experience in stereoscopic 360° 3D, and a real-time pipeline fuses this into a single live scene. A custom delivery layer then ensures that fans worldwide are present at the exact same moment, according to the company.
Alex Sanchez, FIBA’s 3×3 Basketball Managing Director, stated: “3×3 basketball was built to bring the game closer to the fans. Working with L1VE over the next three seasons, we are exploring new ways for audiences around the world to experience the intensity and energetic setting of our events.’’
L1VE made its first FIBA 3×3 appearance at the World Tour event in Debrecen, Hungary, on August 29 and 30. Experiences are delivered through the L1VE app, available for compatible VR headsets at l1ve.com. The company noted that its platform has already been used for live sport and music events internationally, and pre-launched with the Detroit Lions on August 22.
David Morgenbesser, Chief Commercial Officer at L1VE, commented: “3×3 basketball is one of the most thrilling urban sports in the world. One court, non-stop, right in your face. That makes it a natural fit for L1VE. Over the next three years, we want to give fans a new way to be there, courtside, inside the atmosphere and sharing the real game with the people they want beside them, wherever they are in the world.”
For more information on L1VE and its immersive live platform, please visit the company’s website.
Image credit: FIBA / L1VE
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About the author
Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix, where he has spent years immersed in the XR ecosystem, tracking its evolution from early prototypes to the technologies shaping the future of human experience. While primarily covering the latest AR and VR news, his interests extend to the wider world of human augmentation, from AI and robotics to haptics, wearables, and brain–computer interfaces.