Slamball, which combines basketball and football with trampolines, snags big-name investors

Are you acceptable for immoderate ... Slamball?

A star-studded lineup of investors successful and astir sports are jumping into the sport, which is simply a mashup of football, hoops and trampolines that was buzzy for a abbreviated clip successful the aboriginal 2000s.

The concern comes arsenic Slamball plans to relaunch this summer, much than 20 years aft the alternate athletics was unopen down successful the U.S. arsenic ratings fell successful its 2nd season.

Slamball precocious closed an $11 cardinal Series A backing circular led by Roger Ehrenberg's IA Sports Ventures and Eberg Capital, a stakeholder successful MLB's Miami Marlins.

Other apical investors participating successful the backing circular see David Blitzer of Blackstone and laminitis of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, VaynerMedia laminitis Gary Vaynerchuk, Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils co-owner David Adelman and Blake Griffin, a six-time NBA All-Star who present plays for the Boston Celtics.

It took laminitis and CEO Mason Gordon and Mike Tollin – a producer down the popular Chicago Bulls docuseries "The Last Dance" who helped motorboat the league the archetypal clip – 9 months to unafraid their afloat roster of investors.

Slamball is acceptable to instrumentality arsenic a six-week series, positive a seventh week for playoffs, successful July. It volition beryllium played successful Las Vegas. Games past astir 20 minutes, and a acceptable of 3 are played per night.

"We ever said we wouldn't travel backmost until the marketplace conditions for alternate sports and we had the capitalist radical we wanted," Tollins said. The founders accidental Slamball is to the NBA what the UFC is to boxing.

Live sports remains 1 of the fewer mainstays connected accepted TV that continues to rake successful precocious ratings arsenic radical fly the cable-TV bundle and opt for streaming. Platforms similar Disney's ESPN+, Paramount Global's Paramount+, Comcast's Peacock and Amazon's Prime Video person besides been bulking up connected sports rights, adjacent securing alternate sports to pull much subscribers.

Slamball's founders are inactive successful discussions with imaginable organisation partners, but they program to person games aired connected a accepted TV network, a streaming work and a societal media platform. Tollins and Gordon said they are successful precocious talks with apical broadcast and streaming distributors, and conversations were continuing this week. They wouldn't remark connected imaginable partners.

Slamball primitively aired connected The National Network, which aboriginal became Spike TV, successful the aboriginal 2000s.

Disclosure: Comcast is the genitor institution of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.