Royals in turmoil

Doesn't sound good and not a good look for the league, I hope they can find a way through it although that statement is pretty clear. From the outside it looked like they were hosing away cash, also with my marketing hat on, two London Franchises is very hard work from a financial standpoint, Lions have developed a good brand whereas Royals feel more like a manufactured boy band, a couple of big hits, cash in quick and then the money runs out and it's back to the Saturday job at the filling station.

What absolute farce the London City Royals have descended into. As my local team, I’d been going regularly since January this year and had enjoyed watching top level British players such as Bryan-Amaning, Hamilton and Lawrence do their stuff.

There was a point towards the end of last season, where I made contact with the owner and was pushing for the club to adopt a sustainable PR strategy. It obviously never happened and any press coverage they received was one off pieces about the doomed Lav Twins experiment. But having met Nhamo and Junior Williams, I was confident the club was in the hands of people who cared, even if it wasn’t reflected in the attendance figures...

That changed this season. The mass exodus/clearout has not only financially contributed to their seemingly inevitable demise but ripped the heart out of the club. The cracks were papered over by big attendances and phenomenal atmospheres for the Flyers and Lions home Cup fixtures but it has been downhill since then. I’d hoped they would be able to turn it around - after all, the quality on the court was there. But it was just never a professional outfit off the court and that, coupled with a now obvious lack of understanding of how to build a community basketball club in the BBL has cost them. For example, the game day MC knew little about the league or sport and I’ve received the same marketing email selling tickets for an October fixture every week for months on end.

Literally months ago, the owner was talking about moving to Wembley Arena, getting big name music stars to perform at half-time and playing in Europe, with Euroleague participation earmarked in the near future. He said the best British talent across Europe wanted to come and play for them - apart from Lawrence, that didn’t materialise. Despite the lack of structure and continuation needed to build a fan base, I stuck with them as the match day experience rapidly deteriorated, still attending most home games.

However, it was the cock up surrounding the Glasgow fixture that did for me. The BBL investigation has revealed Royals could have fulfilled the fixture and made no attempt to postpone the game via the correct channels. I’ve seen plenty of unprofessionalism in the BBL but this comes close to topping it.

Ironically, I’ve now moved to Surrey and Scorchers are my local team again, having previously been a Heat supporter before the move from the Spectrum and their subsequent rebrand. So it looks like Scorchers have regained an old fan in me.

Pretty sad to see this happen, whatever you say they have mixed things up in the league over the past few months. It does look like they have been run without any kind of foresight at all.

Surely it would have been a good idea to look around the league and learn from example as to the clubs who have made it work and the ones that haven't? The well trodden route for all well run, sustainable clubs is to build from the ground up. Maybe help and advice was offered (from BBL/other clubs) but it seems like a huge amount of time and money have been flushed down the drain.

Why not plough some of that resource in to building the community aspect of the club first before spending on a high level of talent? As great as it was to see some of the top class talent coming home, this means absolutely nothing to your average punter.

Tell me about it! Plus my parents supported Kingston Kings, while I followed the Kingston Wildcats. At least Scorchers appear to live within their means and there is the tenuous Tigers/Heat link for me.

I feel for the Royals players - bad time for them to be without clubs as other teams budgets are probably spent.

Hey, at least Eagles won’t lose embarrassingly to Royals this season......

On a serious note, this is awful news but entirely foreseeable. All flash and no substance.

The sad thing is the guys behind the launch thought they knew best. Sad but expected day. Very glad for the sport that flyers beat them in the cup.

P.s. look at the franchises that have started in the BBL over the last 15 or so years and have done well.

Worcester
Plymouth
Bristol

All one thing in common. Ill let you work it out.

Agree 100%.

And if your main backer doesnt know about such things then your basketball man inside the club should. That was on Shire and he abused it.

Uhhh... What?

I said that don't you think if it was viable to get the likes of MBA and Hamilton in one season many of the top bbl clubs like Leicester and Newcastle would have done this long before now!! There's a reason that other teams aren't doing it!!

I was planning on buying tickets for Scorchers v Royals on the 5th and Lions v Royals on the 12th and had made plans to go to both games.

Any chance of the BBL or LCR confirming if they will be fielding a team?

I’m working on the assumption they are done but some sort of news would be nice.

Oh certainly not home tickets - I’d be worried about getting my money back!

But I trust Scorchers and Lions to make the right call on these things.