Unbeatable: How the British Basketball League plans to elevate its business to new heights.

On 14th September, the British Basketball League will tip off our 37th season. It will be my first full season as CEO of the league, having joined part way through last season, and I couldn’t be more excited about the prospects for the league and the plans we have to bring a new level of entertainment and excitement to our fans.

Before the season starts, I wanted to take the opportunity to outline the British Basketball League’s strategy for growing the game, the steps we have taken thus far to execute it, and what to expect this coming season.

The British Basketball League is an entertainment company and entertainment starts with content, which is so much more than the games played on the court. Last season, we greatly increased the amount of content that was created and distributed across television, digital, social and audio channels. This included more robust and timely highlights, interviews and in-depth stories about our players and teams. The results were extremely encouraging with our viewership growing by 200%, with over 20 million views of our content.

This year, we’ve grown our content team and are looking forward to providing the fans more content than ever before to help them learn about British Basketball. From new pregame and half-time shows, to a weekly magazine program "Unbeatable", all hosted from a brand new state of the art studio space, we are planning to take you inside the game and closer to the action.

There are two principal theses that are driving our strategy, prioritization and actions. The first is that there is a tremendous amount of interest in basketball in the UK and we have an opportunity to engage with those fans in a way that creates joy for them and value for our commercial partners. Second, with the growth of streaming as a principal way of consuming content, our production of live basketball content now has many more ways of reaching consumers.

The total addressable market for people who are interested in and/or play basketball in the UK is far larger than those who have yet demonstrated an affinity for, or connection to, the British Basketball League. Basketball remains the second most played team sport across the country, with 1.2 million people picking up a basketball each week, 80% of which are aged 16-34, demonstrating the growing interest in the sport. In order to convert these basketball fans into British Basketball League fans, we must find ways to build emotive connections with our players, coaches and talent, which we are focused on and confident we can do.

We are in the midst of a massive shift in how people consume video content. The evolution in viewing from linear television is accelerating. As a result, the companies that provide video content distribution are no longer limited to what’s on at 8, 9 or 10pm, but now have unlimited shelf space to present programming to their customers. This shift has created a huge opportunity for the British Basketball League as I believe there are three competitive advantages we have to help increase our distribution. First, we produce many hours of live sports. Live is critically important to distributors as viewers can’t fast forward through ad breaks and live sports routinely garners the highest advertising rates. Second, the demographics of our core audience is young. 70% of our viewership is between 13-34 years old, which is typically a very difficult audience for marketers to reach on television. Third, on a cost per hour of programming basis, we are relatively inexpensive. Of course, our plan is not to remain so. All of these assume that we are producing a level of production that is at worst table stakes level to be on air and at best, which is our plan, world class.

Everybody working at the British Basketball League is focused on driving us forward. For my team and I, our season really began on 15 May, the day after the sold out Playoff Finals at the O2 Arena in London. We started the process of planning and implementing a number of new initiatives designed to enhance our product and make it more engaging. There are multiple, significant changes to the way we will be presenting ourselves that we have already started to reveal with more to come. The first is a total rebrand of the British Basketball League. We believe the new art, culture, design and music reflect the excitement and dynamism we will share with our fans and help us attract a wider audience.

The major change we have made going into next year is we are bringing all of our content production, including our games, in house. My team will be producing 220+ games from our new state of the art broadcast facility in London. We will also introduce a studio show to provide more analysis and insight to help our fans become more familiar, and have more chances to connect with our players and teams. All of these are produced with a talent lineup that includes some new and familiar faces to British Basketball League fans, who will all have a keen focus on bringing you into the game as never before and also bringing you closer to the unique personalities that make up our players, coaches and even some league execs.

The production of the games and studio shows is all done out of a centralized facility based in London. This is different to how sports television has historically been produced, which generally required that a production truck and crew were sent to each venue. We believe that there are a number of efficiencies and best practices that can be realized from our new setup, but we are also proud that this is a more sustainable arrangement for the environment as we will have significantly reduced the travel of vehicles and human beings needed to produce the game telecast.

A big change you can expect to see this year is that we will be producing significantly more non-game related content. The focus of our content will be to create connections between our fans and the players, coaches and teams in the League. Developing emotive responses where people feel a connection, whether rooting for or against, is important to drive engagement.

One of the things that I have learned in my time in the UK where football is the dominant consumer sport is the reality of how fandom in that sport is formed. In football, most people are born into their fandom, they inherit it from their parents, much like they do their religion and to change who you root for is likely to defy your family, much as it is to convert your worship. I think, in part because of that dynamic, football is not presented as an entertainment property, but rather as a communal event. The fans wear their colours to the games, sing the songs, but there is very little in the way of team-supplied entertainment. The British Basketball League has neither that benefit or burden, we need to earn fandom and our plan is to use content and an extraordinary in-venue experience to create these lasting connections. The content will be delivered as part of the game attendance experience, watching our games, YouTube and social media channels.

After 37 years so much has been achieved, but there’s still so much more to do. The British Basketball League is an exciting place to be and it’s an exciting time to be a British Basketball fan. For now, on behalf of the Board and everyone else associated with the league, I’m looking ahead to this season with real excitement- inspired by the knowledge that together I know we can make a difference. I look forward to seeing you at a game in the new season.