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Post by interestedridersfan on Oct 18, 2018 8:42:07 GMT
Also it's a better result for the BBL than the last time an Italian team played over here
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Post by inaminute23 on Oct 18, 2018 8:42:38 GMT
"Anyone got any answers on how to create core basketball fans overnight?"
It's hardly overnight. The club has been running for 30 years or so and had 10 years of success.
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Post by interestedridersfan on Oct 18, 2018 8:43:09 GMT
"Anyone got any answers on how to create core basketball fans overnight?" It's hardly overnight. The club has been running for 30 years or so and had 10 years of success. I mean we need to create some more core fans overnight!! Sorry you misunderstood my reply I always feared Wednesday nights wouldn't work for families And tbh this is the best one for families we will get as it's half term in Leicester at the moment |
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Post by inaminute23 on Oct 18, 2018 8:50:38 GMT
A big factor is media attention, not been given anywhere near enough. Realistically there just doesn't seem to be the appetite for it and that goes for clubs up & down the country. I think a couple of clubs can/will buck the trend, Bristol and Newcastle.
Back to the actual game, Riders will take great confidence in to their next game. I expect a couple of wins in this group after last nights showing.
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Post by interestedridersfan on Oct 18, 2018 9:00:07 GMT
A big factor is media attention, not been given anywhere near enough. Realistically there just doesn't seem to be the appetite for it and that goes for clubs up & down the country. I think a couple of clubs can/will buck the trend, Bristol and Newcastle. Back to the actual game, Riders will take great confidence in to their next game. I expect a couple of wins in this group after last nights showing. Think we will need to win almost all the Hungarian games The Italians when we play them next will still need a win to guarantee qualification I think Whereas the second time they play the Hungarians they will likely be qualified and starting to rest and protect players Wish we were playing them last in that respect |
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Post by blacknwhite on Oct 18, 2018 9:00:09 GMT
Well played Leicester. It was a great game to watch! If I wasn't heading to the states next week I would 100% have come down to watch one of your next games. All the best and I have everything crossed for you to secure 2nd in the group! If and when eagles play Europe I will get to one of your games in return! I think that's the biggest thing. When it comes to any 'Extra Curricular Activities' we need to get behind the league as a whole. It's just great to be able to see a British team at that level. |
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Post by interestedridersfan on Oct 18, 2018 9:03:10 GMT
If and when eagles play Europe I will get to one of your games in return! I think that's the biggest thing. When it comes to any 'Extra Curricular Activities' we need to get behind the league as a whole. It's just great to be able to see a British team at that level. But again we can't rely or expect fans from other teams to get to leicester midweek in any numbers even though it would be great It's down to our club to make it work I'm sure I actually believe with what we have done last 3 years we should be selling out every BBL game but we don't. Families love it when they come but the same families don't come back every week. I think they treat it like a trip to the cinema or theatre and pick and choose etc. |
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Post by inaminute23 on Oct 18, 2018 9:16:11 GMT
I actually believe with what we have done last 3 years we should be selling out every BBL game but we don't. Families love it when they come but the same families don't come back every week. I think they treat it like a trip to the cinema or theatre and pick and choose etc. This is so true. Maybe more is needed to target young adults |
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Post by raiders92 on Oct 18, 2018 9:53:48 GMT
I think the more accurate judge of larson is when he plays against MBA!!
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2NFR
Global Moderator 
Posts: 6,297
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Post by 2NFR on Oct 18, 2018 9:55:49 GMT
The interest is definitely there for BBall. Most teens play NBA on the XBox or PS or even online, and Watch it on Sky
The familiarity with there favorite stars of NBA means when the NBA come to town, they have no problem selling tickets.
The truth is young adults only ever get excited when they here those magical '3 little letters'
It's sad in some ways, because the quality and coverage of BBL has gotten better over the last 5-10 years
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Post by leamrider2 on Oct 18, 2018 10:47:24 GMT
Did the game get much pre-publicity in the Leicester/shire press?
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Post by boshspice on Oct 18, 2018 11:20:40 GMT
First of all- big credit has to go to the Leicester Riders as a team for their on the court product. They battled well, and stifled Sassari as much as they could without Hampton and proved that they are worthy of being included in European competition. They gave a good account of themselves and once again proved to be good ambassadors for British and BBL basketball. For me watching the game on the ‘livestream’ there was one huge but that dampened the experience for me... Unfortunately the biggest disappointment of the night was lack of crowd and atmosphere. Riders held their own admiralby for 3 quarters. I imagine the club would've been very disappointed in thuis, too. What can be done? Absolutely agree with this. The attendance looked on a par with an unadvertised ‘Alpe Adria Cup’ game in Southern-Central Europe. When Guildford entered the ULEB Cup, they managed to get a packed house most games. I remember in mid-week against Siauliau from Lithuania, the atmosphere was electric, the local Lithuanians packed the Spectrum and it was a fun spectacle. There was a large crowd in watching the game against ALBA Berlin too- also a mid-week game, this time it was the Guildford fans making the noise. Regarding what can be done. Do the Riders openly advertise around the city of Leicester? Do they push the fact that they are up against some ex-NBA level opposition? How many people actually know they are in the Euro competition at all? If adverts for the game aren’t seen or heard, then how can potential new fans be expected to give up their free time after work to start watching a new sport? (I appreciate all this advertising costs money- but what was the point in building a new arena if you aren’t even close to filling it up and don’t have the means to advertise it’s existance?!). London Lions and Vince McCaulay do a decent job of advertising things like the Big Baller Brand exhibition games, and Guildford did a good job back in the day of making sure that people knew that they were in the ULEB Cup. What’s more, building a new arena and entering this Euro competition will have surely come at some expense- at the very least hotels, flights, food for players etc, so are the Riders going to see a decent return on their investment from the amount of fans that attended last night? A lot of the Riders players themselves will be using this competition to get noticed by bigger teams and leagues that pay bigger money (I got that impression massively from Burnett last night), so the ‘on court’ benefits of this European adventure for Riders may possibly only last for this season if key players move on at the end of the year. IMO the club has to pull out all the stops and do absolutely everything within their control to sell that new arena out, or at the very least, get a respectable amount of people in. |
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Post by massiveridersfan on Oct 18, 2018 11:35:47 GMT
Unfortunately the biggest disappointment of the night was lack of crowd and atmosphere. Riders held their own admiralby for 3 quarters. I imagine the club would've been very disappointed in thuis, too. What can be done? The atmosphere was great. It was buzzing and we got behind our team. Ticket sales were disappointing - can't deny that. I guess basketball on the continent attracts so much more attention and support than it does here. |
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Post by massiveridersfan on Oct 18, 2018 11:42:56 GMT
I think the more accurate judge of larson is when he plays against MBA!! I hope he does really well because it's important to the team. I don't have a downer on Larsson, I just haven't seen him as someone who'll dominate in the paint yet. We'll know soon enough. I'd be happy to eat my words. Rob trusted Gamble more than Larsson at times. Kinda worrying, isn't it? |
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Post by notoriousbigz on Oct 18, 2018 11:43:49 GMT
Ok so been watching through the game few thoughts:
Q1: Game doesn't exactly start at a blistering pace, does it? Sassari seemingly happy to just run through the motions of their offence and crash any misses. Couple of guys with some nice touches but they seem to get what they want at what I'd describe as "feeling your way into it" pace (arguably what you'd expect of an away team with somewhat of an unknown quantity in Riders) - and in true "feel your way into it" fashion a lot of looks don't go in. Sassari getting a few second and even third chance opportunities. Polar opposite to Bakken who came out all guns blazing.
Riders have to do a better job on the boards. Their containment defence was okish but wasn't exactly break neck swarming defence, Sassari got a lot of open looks they simply missed. Sassari offence contained a lot of screen and cut offence and I thought their movement from the screeners caused Riders a lot of difficulty. That said a lot of the help inside was good and I feel for Riders as they did obviously have a game plan to that effect - it just so happened that they could also hit a few shots outside - that's just tough and I cant really fault Riders' defence for that.
As for Riders offence (one of the things I think Rob falls down on at this level), I'm not sure if they were a bit nervous in the opening exchanges and as a result they made a lot of bad choices in the first 5/6 minutes offensively. Lot of one v one drives to the basket without too much going on off the ball (and I'll look to Larsson here because his screening is simply a token gesture, I think he may have gotten a body on someone once or twice but it wasn't much of a hindrance to a defender chasing the man around him) and against a team at the level of Sassari you cant simply beat them one v one. Its no surprise to me watching it that the shots that got blocked did get blocked. Anderson's release on the first three too slow, and the others came from 1 v 1 offence running down blind alleys.
As talented as he is, Burnett didn't make a lot of smart plays in the opening exchanges. Took a large volume of shots and a few of those were ill advised as far as I'm concerned, but there were one or two that were good looks just missed shots - that's okay and its a part of the game. He's a better player than that and you can see it in him, but theres a number of reasons for it. One of which is that the offence was a bit disjointed owing to not having a point guard (despite Douse starting relatively well he just isn't a point guard - doesn't set the offence up for me - more of a finisher).
Thought a bit changed for Riders and they managed to claw it back when Lascelles and Washington were allowed to run the point. Instantly Lascelles can be seen setting up the offence (and got a nice layup out of it as a result of the spacing) as soon as he got in the game and I thought it was more conbasketball kited, and also coincided with Burnett not trying to put the team on his back, and it showed because they ended the quarter tied. Trayvonn Wright's helpside defence was really good to be fair as was Anderson's and if the plan was to stop the big fella then they did that, but sadly it isn't the LDN city royals - they have a good system and a good set of shooters/slashers off the ball who can punish too much of a collapse - and when Tommo came in they had to take that extra step because hes out of position against a woolly mammoth of an inside guy.
Having Thomson out there offensively did help though, he stretches the floor and the D cant collapse as much on him as they could with Anderson and Larsson on the floor.
Sadly that's as far as I was prepared to go this lunch because of my crappy work internet stream - if I get the chance I'll have a look a bit later at the rest of the game - but overall thoughts of the opening quarter were that if Riders do feel they have the depth to really go at teams then they probably could have taken advantage of Sassari not starting as intensely as we'd all expected, but were probably a bit nervy and a bit cautious for my liking. I'd have said should they have really upped the intensity and pushed hard, they could have gone up by 5-10 by the end of the first. Also need to start a true PG. Lascelles is good enough to make a difference.
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Post by gloryeagle on Oct 18, 2018 12:46:11 GMT
If Leicester only had a 1,000 seat arena as Surrey do then to be fair they'd fill it as well, that must be taken into account with that comparison.
Wednesday night games are something that we have struggled with on the few occasions that we have had to have one due to rearranged games etc. Very small crowds in comparison to our usual Friday night games. Paul Blake eluded to this in the brilliant interview that Sam Neter conducted on hoopsfix a couple of years ago how the crowds at Euro games in our new arena would probably be poor until we could get the message out about Wednesday night basketball etc. Wednesday night fans and Friday night fans are as IRF mentioned a different demographic unfortunately. But in some respects I blame the BBL clubs for this. They and they alone have chosen the family orientated path to create game night attendances and I genuinely do believe it is at the expense of a more vocal Birtish style crowd. Don't get me wrong of course I understand the reasons behind it and of course it's great to see families and in particular young kids at games getting hooked on this great sport but a number of people I have taken to games have been put off by the playground atmosphere that is generated up and down the country and most BBL venues. European games could be a great opportunity for the likes of Riders, Eagles, Lions and whoever else competes in Europe to push a proper game night experience, but it will take time. Leicester's crowd last night was disappointing but probably not altogether surprising, out of interest was this game included in your season tickets and if not how much was a ticket?
Bigz, what an interesting and in depth analysis that was. Puts many of the British Basketball reporters to shame, looking forward to reading your views on the rest of the game. As my far more uneducated eye saw it, whilst I genuinely mean to take nothing away from the Riders despite my distain for pretty much everything involved with the club, and it was a top performance, Sassari seemed to be paying well within themselves, I'm not sure if they ever got out of second gear. But then they shouldn't really need to the disparity in budget that there is between the two sides. I don't think it's any coincidence that when the gap was cut to 4 points they accelerated away from Riders in the closing stages. Nobody played more than 27 minutes for them and they started the game with their top scorer sat down.
As for where Leicester are at the moment it's almost impossible to judge on these games, we'll need to wait until they have got their teeth into a few BBL games before any real comparisons can be made. Suffice to say they should destroy the Royals on Saturday.
Shout out to Vince as well actually who was in a lead commentary role for the first time that I've heard I think, and he did a fantastic job, actually preferred him to Dan Routledge. Was nice to have a change.
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Post by Solly on Oct 18, 2018 13:41:35 GMT
Shame about the attendance.
Respect to Riders for giving it a go, but has to be massively hyped up if not on a usual gamenite.
Went to all the Bullets euro games and the crowds for some were pitiful. Of course that was before the advantages of using social media. One game they had the Mayor there n a marching band parading in probably no more than a hundred people.
Having said that, this was in the Bullets leisure centre days - at the NIA a match was automatically a big event.
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Post by billybadknees on Oct 18, 2018 13:54:16 GMT
Was the 7pm tip a FIBA thing? Makes it a struggle for me to get from work (as a casual but interested observer).
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2NFR
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Post by 2NFR on Oct 18, 2018 14:02:30 GMT
That's a good point.
Did many Riders fans turn up at 7.30pm ?
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Post by mj2323 on Oct 18, 2018 14:59:51 GMT
If Leicester only had a 1,000 seat arena as Surrey do then to be fair they'd fill it as well, that must be taken into account with that comparison. Shout out to Vince as well actually who was in a lead commentary role for the first time that I've heard I think, and he did a fantastic job, actually preferred him to Dan Routledge. Was nice to have a change. From memory Guildford played a few of their games in the ice hockey arena at the Spectrum, and managed to sell it out with an attendance of around 2000-2500. Going back a few years so struggling to remember the exact numbers! I do always remember the club making a huge deal out of the European games and the atmospheres being great. It is a great shame that the whole European experience was marred by tragic events for the club and players. I still feel the Heat could have come up with some big shocks with who I regard as one of the best PG in BBL history at the helm. I also have to agree on Vince, he did a great job. |
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Post by bagger on Oct 18, 2018 15:01:10 GMT
It was Guildford not Surrey and it was at a venue that had a bigger capacity. The atmosphere was electric and full, but loads of away fans. Guildford Kings the first team in the town in recents time who played a Greek top team and had 3000 in the Icerink areana. Again loads of away fans. This problem has been around for years with teams playing in Europe. So well done Leicester please don’t go bust like Guildford did after their Trip into Europe.
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Post by mj2323 on Oct 18, 2018 15:30:28 GMT
It was Guildford not Surrey and it was at a venue that had a bigger capacity. The atmosphere was electric and full, but loads of away fans. Guildford Kings the first team in the town in recents time who played a Greek top team and had 3000 in the Icerink areana. Again loads of away fans. This problem has been around for years with teams playing in Europe. So well done Leicester please don’t go bust like Guildford did after their Trip into Europe. Going into Europe wasn't the blame for Guildford Heat going bust, the Owner at the time would have loved to had another go and I believe had talks of going into the Eurocup. Unfortunatly his personal circumstances changed and with so had to remove his backing. Leicester are a well established club and I hope they can continue to grow and progress British Basketball in European Competition. I think 99% of people are and should be backing the Riders in Europe, and I hope it is only the start of possibly more teams looking to join them. |
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Post by leamrider2 on Oct 18, 2018 17:12:27 GMT
7pm tip off on a Wednesday night is a proper pain. May be OK for really local folks but not for anyone who has to travel. I live an hour's drive from the arena - on a good, quiet time. Last night - 1 hour 40. And that is five minutes better than when we played Bakken Bears.
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Post by boshspice on Oct 18, 2018 17:20:35 GMT
If Leicester only had a 1,000 seat arena as Surrey do then to be fair they'd fill it as well, that must be taken into account with that comparison. Shout out to Vince as well actually who was in a lead commentary role for the first time that I've heard I think, and he did a fantastic job, actually preferred him to Dan Routledge. Was nice to have a change. From memory Guildford played a few of their games in the ice hockey arena at the Spectrum, and managed to sell it out with an attendance of around 2000-2500. Going back a few years so struggling to remember the exact numbers! I do always remember the club making a huge deal out of the European games and the atmospheres being great. It is a great shame that the whole European experience was marred by tragic events for the club and players. I still feel the Heat could have come up with some big shocks with who I regard as one of the best PG in BBL history at the helm. I also have to agree on Vince, he did a great job. The game against Joventut (the eventual winner of the ULEB Cup), was attended by around 2000-2500 like you say if memory serves me correctly, that was down to some clever and good marketing strategies and was also mid-week (Wednesday). And I agree regarding Guildford being able to shock the bigger teams had they had Brian Dux- he was an absolutely tremendous player, the best PG I’ve seen in the BBL. I’ll never forget the support that the club got from teams around the BBL and, by extension from the teams they faced in the ULEB that year. ALBA in particular were very supportive, as I believe their captain many years ago suffered a life changing event on the court whilst playing for them- so the competition actually formed new bonds and alliances, which is exactly what it should be about. Guildford almost managed to shock ALBA, were more than competitive against Siauliau and certainly didn’t disgrace themselves against Turk Telecom either without him. Joventut were just far, far too good to compete with though. |
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Post by interestedridersfan on Oct 18, 2018 17:27:15 GMT
I think the more accurate judge of larson is when he plays against MBA!! If I thought we would just put Larsson on MBA then I might agree with you Cant see it being as simple as that Personally I just think Royals will have way more problems figuring out how to deal with against us than we will have figuring out how to play against them |
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