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LeBron James and Kevin Durant back a new under-18 league where $6 million buys a team and players can take NIL pay in league equity
The Futures Basketball League launches in April 2027 with 120 under-18 players on 12 teams. LeBron James' LRMR Ventures, Kevin Durant's Boardroom, Derrick Rose and Paolo Banchero are founding owners, teams have sold for $6 million, and players can take NIL pay in cash or league equity.
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LeBron James and Kevin Durant have spent years turning their names into holding companies. On Tuesday, their companies put money into the level of basketball they both came from. The Futures Basketball League, a new spring-and-summer circuit for the country’s best under-18 boys players, launched with LeBron and Maverick Carter’s LRMR Ventures and Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Boardroom Sports Holdings as founding partners and team owners.
The league plans to start in April 2027 with 120 players from the high school classes of 2028 through 2031 on 12 regional teams. They would play 10 weekends of games in big U.S. markets from April through August, ending with a national championship weekend. The players won’t get a salary. They will be paid through name, image and likeness deals, and each player can take that money in cash, in league equity, or in a mix of both.
Who owns it, and what a team costs
Teams sold so far have gone for $6 million each, and every team owner also gets equity in the league, chairman and co-founder Jason Stein said. He said the league is seeded with “tens of millions of dollars” between direct investment and team sales. Stein’s firm, SC Holdings, which he co-founded with Daniel Haimovic, is backing the league financially and will run any teams that haven’t been sold by the time the season starts.
| Founding owner or partner | Who is behind it | Role |
|---|---|---|
| LRMR Ventures | LeBron James, Maverick Carter | Founding partner and team owner; Carter on the board |
| Boardroom Sports Holdings | Kevin Durant, Rich Kleiman | Founding partner and team owner; Kleiman on the board |
| Derrick Rose | Former MVP | Founding team owner |
| Paolo Banchero | Magic forward | Founding team owner |
| Gary Vaynerchuk and Ryan Harwood | VaynerX | Founding team owners |
| Ezra Kucharz | Maximum Effort executive | Founding owner |
| SC Holdings | Jason Stein, Daniel Haimovic | Financial backer; Stein is chairman |
Banchero stands out on that list. At 23, in his fifth NBA season, he owns a team in a league for players only a few years younger than he is. “Futures has the potential to make a real impact on the next generation of basketball talent,” he said in the launch announcement. Rose, who came up through the Chicago grassroots circuit, said his brothers “built a wall around me” as a teenager. “Most young players don’t have that,” he said.
Stein said selling teams slowly was a deliberate choice, and he pointed to pickleball. “One thing that happened in pickleball is we bought our team for $1M with LeBron, and then six months later, teams were selling for $6M,” he said. “There’s an element of not wanting to rush too many team sales too early.” The league’s president, Samin Odhwani, is a former NBA strategy executive who later worked at Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures. He was commissioner of Major League Pickleball when that sport reached a $750 million valuation.
Why the pay is NIL, not salary
The pay structure is built around college eligibility. The players won’t be paid directly by the league or its teams. Stein said that is to keep their NCAA eligibility safe. Their NIL deals will go through the College Sports Commission to check that they reflect fair market value. Players can still sign their own deals with shoe companies and other sponsors.
The league hasn’t said how much players will get, and Rose called the amounts potentially “life changing.” Stein argued it is better for players to start small. “Better for athletes to begin that process with a smaller amount of money, at a younger age, than to receive $2M, $3M, $4M, $5M, $10M over the [following] couple years and then try to figure that out,” he said.
The equity option is the new part. A 16-year-old who takes part of his NIL pay in league equity becomes a small co-owner of the league, next to LeBron, Durant and Banchero. It’s the same kind of deal that has made LeBron’s business portfolio, from his Whoop stake to his stake in Fenway Sports Group, worth more than many of his contracts. The league says the equity option is still “subject to administrative approvals.”
The shoe company problem
The league’s April-to-August schedule overlaps with Nike’s Elite Youth Basketball League, the summer circuit that has been the top stage for elite high school players for years. That makes this an unusual bet for LeBron and Durant, two of Nike’s longest-running signature athletes. Stein said the league’s main focus is “July and August more than the spring,” when “TV is open, schedules are open, and it can be the least disruptive and most commercial.” The calendar is designed to protect the high school season, NCAA live periods, USA Basketball events and the NBPA Top 100 Camp.
Stein said the top 150 under-18 players currently play on more than 200 teams across seven leagues each spring and summer. The league’s argument is that bringing them together creates one property that sponsors and broadcasters can buy. It has no sponsor or media deals yet. Connor Schell, the Words + Pictures founder who co-created 30 for 30, is advising on media rights and production, and Stein said he expects “real coverage on network and streaming.”
Events will be run by MADE Hoops, the grassroots organizer founded by former Nike executive Chad Babel and backed by Durant and LRMR Ventures. They will start on grandstand courts at the convention centers that already host big youth tournaments, with “elevated” venues for the biggest weekends. The league also pledged $1 million to the MADE For All Foundation. Brooklyn’s HMBL Development will build training plans for every player.
What comes next
The league says it has already signed players in all four classes and will start announcing them in the coming weeks, along with team markets, more owners, the schedule, sponsors and media partners. It is a different kind of youth investment from the one that came when the Nets’ owners bought three Brooklyn gyms for their youth program. Those gyms feed one team’s fan base. This league is built to own the prospects’ first paid stage. Durant and LeBron rank third and fourth on the NBA’s top earners list, and they are the only two players in the top 20 who earn more from business than from salary. For both of them, this is a way to keep earning from the game after they stop playing.
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