It's All About The Money

Basketball is one of the biggest and most exciting sports in the world but its reputation in the UK is one of failure.

In this five part series, Alex Miller investigates British basketball's chances of surviving or thriving.

The British are involved in sport at the highest level. The mind most readily jumps to football, the World Cup, the Premier League, arguably the best league in the world or perhaps conjures images of Olympic gold medals, 6 nations rugby, ashes cricket, Wimbledon success. Whatever - chances are the image of basketball has not even fleetingly crossed your mind. Yet, in America basketball rules the world and it is alive (but alas not well) in Britain too.

The first article in the series starts with the sport's biggest problem - Money.

It’s said that money makes the world go round and one of British basketball’s biggest problems is that there simply isn’t enough to go round.

Former British Basketball performance director Mark Clark said: “You can’t have a bigger problem than having not having any money at all. At various points the British Basketball Federation (BBF) had absolutely zero finance.

“The issue that any British sport has, is that apart from successful Olympic sports, British sports don’t have any funding mechanisms. It's being reviewed and I hope they’ll change some of the rules in 2021. Until that happens sports like basketball are going to have rely on membership and commercial income to fund the programme.

“It’s not a surprise because government has made it very clear that basketball needs to look to other means of funding instead of just awaiting a government grant.

“Whether you agree with it or not we’ve become an incredibly successful Olympic nation. I personally think that the balance is a little skewed and there should be more money for team sports because of the impact team sports has on communities and across the board."

Sean Percival former, Basketball England employee, said: “The problem we have with funding at the top level is that realistically we’re not great gold medal prospects and we won’t be until we get the bottom right to bring people through.

“UK Sport won't fund a lot of money into basketball at the top level because they don’t see it as being a priority to get medals. If that was the drive to get gold medals you wouldn’t choose basketball and at the moment rightly so.

Mark Clark who recently resigned from his post with the BBF gave the reasons behind leaving: “I think there should be a different way a number of our countries fund and manage their national teams.

“We’re still struggling to come to terms with the decisions made by the various governing bodies. We became Team GB to compete in the Olympics and adopted a model to become Team GB the whole time without putting in place any of the structures needed to fund it. If you look back the only funding was through UK Sport. To say we were going to get funding from UK Sport going forward was a little short sighted.

“It's a difficult situation, where you have a competing women’s team with no funding, having to cut programmes at the same time have coaching staff work on a voluntary basis. For example, England have just sent an under 15s team to Paris meanwhile, you have a senior national men’s coach volunteering to coach the team for free! Those contradictions, on principle I couldn’t support.”

Duncan Smillie, co-owner of Glasgow Rocks, had his say on money problems in British basketball from an owner’s perspective: “There is no money in British basketball.

"The sport is underfunded, there's is poor management at National governing body (NGB) level and the BBL under performs commercially.

"There is not one single penny of funding from Basketball Scotland, who are our NGB, that comes to the Rocks. Where as in other sports like Netball there are consistent 6 figure sums going into the pro team in Scotland.

“It is crucial: we need a TV deal and we need a league sponsor. We have neither. Until we have both and money filters back to the teams then we will go nowhere.

"Basketball is the second highest participation sport in young men under 20 in the UK, we punch well below our weight and need to up our game.”

Sean Percival added: “(Money) needs to go in at grass roots, but we need a clear pathway through university, schools, colleges and links with BBL partners. You need to get everyone in a room together and say ‘how are we going to progress basketball?’

“Basketball has got a lot of potential but is in need of an influx of funds and a right structure and I think they’re getting there.”

With so much focus on the Olympics, a British Olympic Association spokesperson (BOA) said: “BOA is not a funding body, but we do recognise the difficulties for our national governing body members – such as basketball – who are not in receipt of significant funds to help support the sport at an elite level.

“It should be noted though, that UK Sport funding is targeted at supporting Elite performance. Sport England is a further funding body in place to support grassroots and participatory development. The BOA supports all sports and athletes – funded or unfunded – in taking them to Olympic Games, once qualified.”

Whilst recognising the problems with funding Investments advisor Rob Hartley of Sport England stressed that: “Sport England substantially fund basketball - both directly into Basketball England and the British Basketball Federation, and into projects around the country. Since 2009 we have funded £1,434,213 to the British Basketball Federation and £19,578,757 to Basketball England, with Sport Scotland, Sport Wales and Sport Northern Ireland funding activity taking place within their respective Home Nations too.

The issues here are clear if not blindly obvious. Funding is the main priority - without more money without more money Basketball cannot survive let alone thrive. It's more than just funding. There needs to be clearer and more cohesive management of funds from grassroots to the highest level.

The next article in the series will focus on recruitment in British basketball.