3ICE is back, but how does the business actually work for a 3-on-3 summer league?

I caught up with 3ICE founder E.J. Johnston this week to ask that question.

I was on vacation and while flipping through TV channels last Thursday I stumbled upon Week 1 of the re-launched 3ICE League.

For those who don’t know, 3ICE is a 3-on-3 summer league that first launched in summer of 2022 as nine-stop touring league. Each week features a mini tournament with 16-minute games of 3-on-3 hockey, with a weekly champion crowned and points earned toward the postseason.

The league completed its first two seasons in 2022 and 2023, with games being aired on CBS Sports Network, before going dormant for a summer to evaluate best business practices.

The league then re-launched with new backing, a new TV deal, and a single-site concept where all games this season, a five-week schedule, are being played at the Florida Panthers practice facility in Fort Lauderdale.

Admittedly, 3ICE had fallen off my radar until I stumbled upon it while flipping channels. So on Wednesday this week, I connected with 3ICE CEO and founder E.J. Johnston to try and better understand where the league is now and try to understand the long-term business vision after a dormant season.

“It was taking half a step back to take three steps forward,” Johnston said. “There were things with 3ICE that we needed to do, find some of the right partners, and really taking a year off was necessary to do that.”

The things that made 3ICE intriguing to players haven’t changed, like in 2022 and 2023, it’s an opportunity for players either in Europe or North American minor leagues to make a considerable chunk of cash in a short period of time.

The league runs on what Johnston calls a “PGA Tour model,” where winning teams earn prize money and individual players can make extra money for winning league awards or scoring the goal of the night.

This season, over a five-week season, Johnston said there is close to $300,000 in prize money that will be given out to players and coaches. In a shortened season, Johnston said the top players will probably make $25,000 to $30,000 based on their performance, while he expects that number to expand back to close to $50,000 in 2026 when the league expands back to a nine or 10-week schedule.

3ICE also covers full cost for players flying in and out of Florida each week for the games, and with full usage of the Panthers practice facility, Johnston said he’s proud to call this a “white glove” service for the leagues participants.

Most importantly, according to multiple players who play in the league that I checked in with, the checks clear and arrive on time.

So, from the minor-league player perspective it makes a ton of sense — why wouldn’t you take a weekly trip to Florida and get paid to play hockey? Especially when you consider most players on an AHL contract make close to $60,000 per season and in the ECHL there’s a weekly salary cap of $14,600 that has to cover 20 players.

But from a business perspective, you can start doing some of the math yourself. Between a combined prize pool of roughly $300,000, five weeks of flights and hotels for players and coaches, other league expenditures — facility rental, broadcast costs, ect… — you have to wonder how Johnston and his investors will ever turn a profit on this concept.

No matter how much you love hockey, you don’t just sink money into a 3-on-3 league for minor leaguers without some plan, right?

“One-hundred percent, we believe in it as a business, I’m a businessman at heart and it’s a nice bonus to be able to do this through my love letter to hockey, but if I’m not able see this as a viable business, I’m not bringing it back like I did,” Johnston said. “You have to look at it that we are a media company in the shape of a hockey league, we are building a media property here, and we are only about to hit our growth cycle … but to answer that important business question, I view us as a $100 million a year business in five to seven years.”

That’s a lofty number, a very lofty number. So how is Johnston going to do that?

According to Johnston we have to start by looking at how 3ICE came out of its one-season hiatus. Johnston said the new TV partnership with FanDuelSports Network is better financially for the league than the old one with CBS Sports Network, and he also noted it’s a multi-year deal.

This time, perhaps most importantly, Johnston has the support of the NHL. Games are being replayed on NHL Network and the league is being covered on NHL.com.

If you go to the NHL website right now, 3ICE is featured with full game replays, highlights, and articles.

“We’ve gone from being something that was hockey related to something that’s being co-signed by the biggest hockey league in the world,” Johnston said. “That makes a huge difference in pushing us forward into people’s minds.”

Johnston said there’s been some tangible proof of that when it comes to sponsorship, 3ICE has been able to secure ad buys and partnerships from brands that he pitched, but turned him down in 2022 and 2023.

But Johnston said the strength of 3ICE, in the long run to reach that lofty financial goal, is how it can be used to launch other 3ICE elements, including 3ICE Kids and international events.

3ICE Kids, Johnston said, will be a tournament series building out 3-on-3 tournaments and competition for youth players, while 3ICE is also making plans for a European circuit and international events.

“Some day we’ll be able to roll into a country with four or five properties all at once, take over for a bit in Sweden, Finland, Germany, the UK, for example,” Johnston said. “When we are able to do that, that’s when we’ll be getting close to that $100 million a year mark I talked about.”

Johnston is also very quick to not rush the timeline on this. While he has lofty goals to hit, he said he’s remained focused on the next steps to grow the league’s profile and portfolio as a media company.

For example, he said he’s working on partnerships for next season with notable hockey influencers, Johnston is also weighing the pros and cons right now of the single market format as opposed to going back to more of a touring circuit.

“My investors see this as a business that will work and they see it as something that we’ve got time to build properly,” Johnston said. “The NHL sees it that way too, otherwise they wouldn’t be promoting us and putting us on their platforms.”

I’m not sure whether Johnston is right about the business model or not, that’s for time to tell.

But it is intriguing to have the conversation about some realistic business of 3-on-3 hockey when roughly a year ago there was a rather public, and false, claim that there was going to be an a new 3-on-3 league called Major League Hockey that featured a $30 million salary cap and 16 teams across North America.

That Major League Hockey announcement, which was put into the world by hockey YouTuber Steve Dangle, and who later apologized for being misled, was a good informal media lesson in asking “how is this going to work?” and “where is the money coming from?”

For 3ICE, it’s an expensive play right now to ideally build an impactful business within the next decade. A media company hiding in plain site as a hockey league currently trying to prove it’s worth current and future investment.