National Basketball Perfromance Centre, Manchester

I bumped I to Jeff Jones at a junior game and he was talking about its use by the juniors. Didn't mention the pro team.

There are no seating for the venue?

I've heard they are hiring them from the velodrome.

It's a shame that Manchester's so fractured. Giants really should be based at the Amaechi Centre as part of GMBC. Looking at their rosters, there's no philosophical difference between the clubs. Giants have given Manchester-born players the chance to play top flight basketball in their own city. I don't see how that's against what Magic stand for. As long as money from the juniors isn't being spent on the BBL side (or the D1 team for that matter) there's no logical reason why they can't work together.

If we're serious about improving the league, including facilities, the Giants need to move in here. The Soccerdome comes across as a bit of a joke, the Amaechi Centre is good but too small and the MEN is out of the question.

It is a major concern that BAsketball cannot seem to sustain operable franchises with crowd sizes of note in Birmingham, Liverpool or Manchester. 3 major cities and only one has a team that plays at a 5 a side football centre and barely gets more than a couple of hundred fans.

Seems Lions are doing ok in London but even there the crowds are not huge at the Copper box.

Even some of the other bigger cities, Sheffield and Leeds struggle to fill very small venues. Leeds get a couple of hundred at best and Sheffield 700-800 most weeks.

I am unsure if Basketball can ever properly take off in the UK if such big cities cannot see more than a few hundred go through the door when they have played - where have all those fans gone that used to watch the Bullets and Giants?

We can talk about infrastructure and faults with the league/product but if noone is interested in attending, it will be hard to take off.

Leeds have only been playing BBL for 2 years : they have to have the opportunity to build a fanbase. Drop off in Sheffield crowd is perplexing but capacity only 1100 so limited motivation to market (you arent going to employ a full marketing department simply to get a couple of hundred extra people in - those people wouldnt come close to paying the wages of the marketing department).

But of course very few get in without paying now. In Giants last season at the MEN they had some enormous crowds but they also played games (the ones which werent promoted with free tickets) with crowds of 200-300 (Tony Windless had 42 for Newcastle in one of those games) . Thats the reason the Cook group got out.

You have to promote to fill gyms : no team has more than 1000-1400 core fans. As arenas hopefully get bigger, club owned and more modern the financial benefits from secondary spend and tickets sales which create a financial imperative to market and crowds will follow. (Newcastle have had three 2,500 plus crowds within the last 4 games, but the late addition original trophy semi final date which was the plymouth game and wasnt marketed had a crowd which dropped to 1400.

"My sources"... bet I know who that is!!

Yes such a champ we are stuck in sportsdome.