AHC : Basketball big in the UK

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to with a POD of your choice, to make basketball a major sport (on the level of rugby union) in the UK by 2010. Extra kudos for post-1967 (formation of the ABA, with the three point line) POD.
 
If you'd had said rugby league and not rugby union, I'd have been pleased!

It's a pretty tall order I'd say. You'd somehow have to shrink the number of sports. In which case, no schism in rugby would help- there would suddenly be room for a fourth major sport to develop, and that could be basketball.
 
Rugby league is a special case as - to slightly oversimplify - everywhere in a line from Manchester to Hull is a crazy fan, apart from there no-one cares. Although I agree that rugby union is probably a bit too high. Let's say ... snooker (assuming it's a sport)?
 

Thande

Donor
Trying to get basketball established in the UK is arguably even harder than establishing baseball, and for similar reasons: both bear a strong resemblance to what are considered children's sports in the UK, baseball to rounders and basketball to netball. The latter is considered exclusively a women's sport, and primarily in a school context...so basketball has a bit of an upward battle. I do recall back in the Nineties when basketball stars like Michael Jordan and Shaqille O'Neil were very big in the US, they tried to export the moichandize over here and it was received with bewildered indifference by kids.
 
That is a factor, something that would kill off netball in British schools would help. However, it appears basketball is on the up at the moment, the national team are doing very well but the media for some reason aren't caring.
 
Wasn't basketball making a big push back in the 90s?
I remember going to a few games of the basketball team in Newcastle, they'd been around idly for a while but I'm pretty sure they'd just stepped up their game and got some decent players along with the rest of the league.

I think basketball has the best chance of all American sports in the UK. Its indoor, it doesn't require the big special outdoor facilities of the others. And our weather sucks.
I suppose the problem with it is it isn't too egalitarian- too much focus on people built a certain way.
 
Wasn't basketball making a big push back in the 90s?
I remember going to a few games of the basketball team in Newcastle, they'd been around idly for a while but I'm pretty sure they'd just stepped up their game and got some decent players along with the rest of the league.

There was a push with televised games, but it went flat. The BBL is a joke that's stuck in a vicious cycle - it's rated as the worst domestic league by ULEB*, so doesn't get any spots in European competition. That makes it impossible to attract decent players (only one or two of the national team play in the UK), means that they won't get any better, meaning they won't get in to ULEB competitions and won't get a standard of hoops that is enough to build a big a fan base to make the money to invest in the standard ...

I suppose the sport is on the up at the moment, as the national team is no longer a joke (GB has been reformed as opposed to England/Scotland/Wales), with two NBA players (OK, one of which is injured), one former NBA player (the Raptors were stupid to release Pops, but he'll surely get more court time in the ACB) and a number more in Europe and some in the NCAA system.

* It's hard to explain, but it's the club basketball equivalent of UEFA - but it's a federation of the leagues, not the national associations. It runs the EuroLeague (the Champions League of basketball) and the EuroCup (the UEFA Cup/Europa League sort of thing), and FIBA Europe (who run the national team bits) run the third tier EuroChallenge. It's the legacy of a messy situation in 2000-2001. That squashed some areas where ULEB strayed towards NBA rules like junking the possession arrow (not that particular one is a bad thing, mind).

I think basketball has the best chance of all American sports in the UK. Its indoor, it doesn't require the big special outdoor facilities of the others. And our weather sucks.

I have to agree there (baseball would have a huge problem, there just aren't the diamonds, there are issues with gridiron football that makes it a challenge but not an insurmountable one to hold it at football stadia), the only proviso being indoor arenas. Now it isn't so much of a problem, although previously they weren't really there.

I suppose the problem with it is it isn't too egalitarian- too much focus on people built a certain way.

There is that to an extent, but it's not really that different from some other sports.
 
Hey, haven't posted on here awhile but thought I'd give an American opinion on this:

As Thande stated, basketball resembles a children's game and is more popular with women. This is exactly why soccer has never made it big in the United States but there are other reasons for soccer's lack of popularity here at least professionally. That doesn't mean basketball will never be popular in the UK ever and soccer will never be popular in the US.

Realistically, someone out of the UK would have to join the NBA and become a huge success story. Much like in Germany with Detlef Schrempf and Dirk Novitzki, or the Yugoslavia area with Vlade Divac.

I've heard of the whole country of Denmark watching NFL games because of Morten Andersen (Danish NFL place kicker for those not familiar with the futbol americano).
 
You'd have more chance of making Ice Hockey the 4th sport in the UK.
At least there, you have long established teams, (Streatham Redskins, Bracknell Bees or the Fife Flyers for example), plus newly formed teams like the Sheffield Steelers, Manchester Storm, Peterborough Pirates etc in the major cities and in Scotland, and at one point you had good media coverage.

In either sport though, I think you'd need something like a lock out from the PFA or the FA and a need for something to fill the sporting fixture list.
Football, (soccer for the colonials reading this ;)), would recover and be pretty much where it is now, but chosen AHC sport could make a good move to fill the gap and retain a lot of the popularity.
 

Thande

Donor
You'd have more chance of making Ice Hockey the 4th sport in the UK.
At least there, you have long established teams, (Streatham Redskins, Bracknell Bees or the Fife Flyers for example), plus newly formed teams like the Sheffield Steelers, Manchester Storm, Peterborough Pirates etc in the major cities and in Scotland, and at one point you had good media coverage.

I agree. It was surprisingly big in the Nineties. I doubt we could compete in an international league with hardcore countries like Canada and Russia though.
 
Funnily enough, that debate is doing the rounds on THF at the moment.

OK, Rather than hijack this any further, I'll run a BHL line on here and see how it goes.
 
Ice hockey? Pah!
Why not a true English game like bandy? :p

But ice hockey...hmm...troubel there is it needs more than basketball- a big court which is also icey. And all that equipment... It relies on skating from the get go which isn't a very widespread skill with Brits; its a weird novelty thing done in some big cities at christmas time.

Ice hockey in the UK never seemed as big as basketball to me...though Newcastle did have a team in the same place. IIRC the Newcastle Utd chairman owned them all as well as the rugby team, trying to make some big sports empire.
 
Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to with a POD of your choice, to make basketball a major sport (on the level of rugby union) in the UK by 2010. Extra kudos for post-1967 (formation of the ABA, with the three point line) POD.

OTL Basketball was popularised by the YMCA as a vigorous indoor sport for winter which didn't need much space to play; in Britain, we never quite had the same institutional need for something that could be played in gyms.

What you need is some sort of health drive in late Victorian Britain that includes compulsory indoor sport, at least at school; this would fit in nicely with the National Efficiency Agenda at the end of the Boer War too.

Actually, I suspect that the "Fight and Be Right" TL is a good candidate for one where basketball is popular in Britain; TTL sees a 'Health and Efficiency Corporation' set up along the lines of the YMCA specifically to improve the health of the nation, and I can see it adopting Basketball, promoting it vigorously in its network of indoor gyms, and popularising the sport that way.
 
Rugby league is a special case as - to slightly oversimplify - everywhere in a line from Manchester to Hull is a crazy fan, apart from there no-one cares. Although I agree that rugby union is probably a bit too high. Let's say ... snooker (assuming it's a sport)?

Well, Liverpool to Hull ;)

There's a strong case for arguing that in terms of domestic rugby union, it's really the M4 corridor (Swansea to London), the lower M1 (Northants and Leicester), with a few outposts, especially now that Scottish RU's domestic scene is struggling. Other than that, there's not a great deal of interest. In essence, it strongly reflects the schism lines of 1895, even now.

And just to think it all stemmed from a bizarre dispute about an amateurism rule which was only about two years old and had been flouted for years before, and would be for years after.
 
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