Thoughts On New British Basketball Association (BBA)

[FIBA Europe Basket]

NBA execs and a group of wealthy business investors are creating a new basketball league in Britain called the British Basketball Association or BBA. The league will consist of clubs owned by the same owners of the English Premiere League football clubs and they will carry the same names.

So there will then be basketball clubs like Manchester United BC, Aston Villa BC, and so forth. The goal of the new league is to create a high level basketball league in Britain with a big operating and marketing budget and with clubs with big budgets and big arenas that will overtake the ACB of Spain and the A1 of Greece and become the top domestic league in Europe and to gain a couple places for Britain in the Euroleague.

[Billy Bounce]

A little more details:

Premier League club owners could set up professional basketball teams to play in a new British league under their football brand names as part of a US-led $25m (£15.7m) plan being launched today.

US owners such as Manchester United's Glazer family, Liverpool's Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and Aston Villa's Randy Lerner are investor targets of the new British Basketball Association, led by a group of former US National Basketball Association executives and US businessmen.

The BBA said it had tried to co-operate with the British Basketball League but now intends to set up its own league - initially of eight teams in big cities playing 42 games a season - to start in November 2010.

The $25m would enable BBA clubs to pay between five and 10 times the wages paid in the BBL and to market the game in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.

Really good news, although $25m/8 = $3 m kinda small budget even by European standards , but it's just the beginning

What about arenas, is there ~ 8 of them in big cities ?

[FIBA Europe Basket]

The way I understand it is that the $25 million budget is the league's budget. The club's would have their own budgets once the they were integrated with the football clubs.

So at that point then for example Manchester United BC would have a budget, etc. The $25 million would then be the league's operating budget, which would make it the biggest domestic league in Europe I would assume. I doubt the ACB has such a budget.

As for arenas, they said 8 large cities so taking that into account and some of the arenas that can be used for basketball in the larger cities these are some venues that could be available.

(basketball capacities)

o2 - London: 19,000
MEN Arena - Manchester: 18,500
Leeds Arena - Leeds (2010): 12,500
Olympic Basketball Arena - London (2012 -it will be moved to another city after 2012): 12,000
LG Arena - Birmingham: 12,000
Sheffield Arena - Sheffield: 10,000

National Arena - Birmingham: 10,000
Wembley Arena - London: 8,000
Liverpool Echo Arena - Liverpool: 7,500
National Ice Centre - Nottingham: 7,500
Metro Arena - Newcastle: 6,500
Arena MK (2010) - Milton Keynes: 4,500
Brighton Centre - Brighton: 3,600
National Sports Centre - London: 3,500



So I assume London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Nottingham, and Newcastle are strong candidates because they have nice arenas available. So it looks like it would be something like,

Arsenal BC - 8,000 or 19,000 arena
Manchester United BC - 18,500 arena
Aston Villa BC - 10,000 or 12,000 arena
Liverpool BC - 7,500 arena

plus 4 other clubs.

[Alyosha12]

Well its a smart decision to pair the teams with Soccer clubs so as to get a fan base off the bat and a nice little rivalry from the get go. They will have to put all those 25mill to advertising use if they want to see those huge arenas at least half full IMO.
IMO this league could be like the Russian league, where clubs a few years ago payed double for every player they were courting to come to them and eventually the Russian league got stronger. However the clubs did lose alot of money because they overpaid for their players and i see the same happening in this league.
I bet Bertomeu however is already sporting a boner reading the idea for this league.

[Billy Bounce]

After a quick googling , I found that previous attempts weren't very successful :

Manchester United has already had one attempt at breaking into the basketball market, after buying the the Warrington Vikings team in 1985 and renaming it as Manchester United. Although it won the 1985 Chanpionship Final and the 1985-86 National League title, it failed to attract the type of attendances it expected and the franchise was sold to a group of local businessmen in 1988, who renamed the team Manchester Eagles. It then became the Manchester giants, but ceased to exist in 2001.

It would be interesting to check if there will be any roster restrictions ( number of locals, EU passport holders, etc ) in this league.

No restrictions would probably lead to NBA Development League players going to UK in masses and to a loss of any interest from the British. Pro - UK restrictions would completely kill BBL teams, public interest , I assume, won't skyrocket ...

I dunno, from my view probably it's better to spend this $25m on building one good team within BBL framework . This team will get Euroleague wildcard and with some good results may draw British public attention

It could be British version of "Maccabi Tel Aviv"

[jramoyo]

what is the current basketball league in the UK?

[FIBA Europe Basket]

what is the current basketball league in the UK?

The BBL - British Basketball League. There are also lower level leagues, the English Basketball League and the Scottish Basketball League. But they are not connected with promoting and relegating. The BBL is on the franchise system just like the NBA and the new BBA league would also be on the franchise system.

[HIGHLANDER]

Sounds interesting.
I hope that they will blood the local talent better than the BBL.
For me (a former player of the BBL) i hope they bring through the young talent as the BBL is in my opinion a cowboy league. Basically you have a bunch of Americans stopping by and trying to build stats or stay long enough to get the British passport which means they can move on to better leagues.
It is such a cut throat league because the coaches are not willing to go with or give the local talent playing time because they know their job is on the line.
They must have a rule where 5 or 6 British players must be in the team, without the Dual nationals being counted.

Their must be at least one team from Scotland in this league or as usual we are being fu**ed in sports from a British point of view.

[Dtown]

Reaction from British Basketball fans

http://s14.zetaboards.com/WhatsBev/topic/6588712/1/

Not entirely positive

The BBA of course isn't new and discussions about it have carried on for awhile, so it's a believe it when I see it mentality.

Personally I'd love to see it work after all it can't get much worse for British Basketball at the club level. ULEB recognizes the BBL as the worst league in Europe.

[alermac]

(basketball capacities)

o2 - London: 19,000
MEN Arena - Manchester: 18,500
Leeds Arena - Leeds (2010): 12,500
Olympic Basketball Arena - London (2012 -it will be moved to another city after 2012): 12,000
LG Arena - Birmingham: 12,000
Sheffield Arena - Sheffield: 10,000

National Arena - Birmingham: 10,000
Wembley Arena - London: 8,000
Liverpool Echo Arena - Liverpool: 7,500
National Ice Centre - Nottingham: 7,500
Metro Arena - Newcastle: 6,500
Arena MK (2010) - Milton Keynes: 4,500
Brighton Centre - Brighton: 3,600
National Sports Centre - London: 3,500



So I assume London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Nottingham, and Newcastle are strong candidates because they have nice arenas available. So it looks like it would be something like,

Arsenal BC - 8,000 or 19,000 arena
Manchester United BC - 18,500 arena
Aston Villa BC - 10,000 or 12,000 arena
Liverpool BC - 7,500 arena

plus 4 other clubs.

Wow, they must be really optimistic about the attendance.

Anyway, does anyone else think that the billionaires that now control the football transfer market can turn their basketball clubs into the next CSKAs in a few years?

[robbe]

Well, I don't know if it's NBA-forced, whatever that is supposed to mean. All I see is that members of the advisary board have been in contact with NBA, like former Los Angeles Laker AC Green. But as I understand, it will - if it happens - be a closed shop, which is a characteristic of the professional leagues in USA. So it definitely goes into that direction.

It doesn't sound very promising, and when they say that they want to be "among the best in Europe", I'm not sure they're in touch with reality. Which is not so unusual.

For example, there was an interest by two American investors to build a strong basketball team in Hamburg one or two years ago, haven't heard anything since. Those guys stated that they intend to establish Hamburg as a EL Final Four calibre team in Europe, and in the same breath they mentioned they were going to do it with a 10-12 mio € budget. Extracting all sorts of club costs and German taxes, they'd have to do it with about 3-4 mio € in net player salaries. Good luck.

[mbenga]

Any update on this or is it as dead as it seems?

[Dtown]

you get the occasional rumor, or saying from those that are supposedly behind it but there's nothing to back it up really.

So yes dead as a doornail.