3x3 powerhouse Team Lausanne launches innovative crowdfunding campaign

LAUSANNE (Switzerland) – 2017 FIBA 3x3 World Tour Finalists Team Lausanne reached out to the fans to fund an ambitious project to play at the Olympics and grow the game of 3x3 in Switzerland.

On February 1, the current 25th team in the FIBA 3x3 Team Ranking started a campaign on the Swiss crowdfunding website ‘I believe in you’, aiming at collecting CHF 45,000 in 50 days.

“We want to become a Top 10 3x3 team in the World and bring a Swiss basketball team to the Olympics for the first time in its history in Tokyo 2020,” the team featuring Nathan Jurkovitz, Marco Lehmann, Gilles Martin and Westher Molteni explained on the website.

“The way we want to do this is by creating a professional structure and by raising enough funds to compete at more events worldwide. That will allow us to earn more ranking points and therefore maximize our chances to achieve these goals.”

The spectacular Swiss team – which finished second at the FIBA 3x3 World Tour Lausanne Masters 2017 – plans to travel to 10 different destinations in 10 different countries this season to climb up the rankings. 

 
Importantly, the team unveiled its plan to organize 3x3 camps for kids in order to share the values and spirit of the young urban discipline.

This out-of-the box approach peaked the interest of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), which announced its intention to reward Team Lausanne and its fans if they were to reach the CHF 45,000 target.

“We tip our hat to Team Lausanne for their inventive approach,” FIBA 3x3 Managing Director Alex Sanchez said.

“We are thrilled to see teams making the jump to become more professional and create new ways to connect with the fans. To boost Team Lausanne’s campaign, FIBA officially announces that it will grant the team a wildcard to a Challenger (including travel costs) if it achieves its goal to collect CHF 45,000 in 50 days. We are currently working on a wide-scale crowdfunding project to enable the fans to send their favorite teams to more international 3x3 tournaments.”

After 5 days, Team Lausanne already collected close to CHF 10,000 and received support from Lausanne-born tennis star Stanislav Wawrinka.

FIBA