British basketball crisis: Full scale of governing body's debt revealed
The British Basketball Federation (BBF) went bust owing nearly a half a million pounds, The Yorkshire Post can reveal.
A total of 61 creditors are due £475,390 between them, according to the creditors list seen by this newspaper that will be published on the Companies House website in the coming days.
The solicitors employed by the BBF to defend itself against a claim brought by Super League Basketball over the awarding of an exclusive licence to run the professional league to a group of external investors known as the GBB League, is the second biggest creditor, owed £64,620.
The largest creditor is a luxury travel group owed a little over £90,000.
The governing body goes under owing more than £30,000 combined to the Basketball England and Basketball Wales governing bodies.
Incoming funds that include what the controversial GBB League claim to be “significant” as part of their agreement, and from UK Sport which a year ago pledged nearly £3m to the sport, have not yet been confirmed and will not be known until the new year, when the liquidators, Begbies Traynor, begin their investigations.
The contract between the GBB League – the controversial league that threatened to “disrupt traditional structures” and sparked the civil war in the sport – and the BBF is now dead as part of the liquidation of the governing body, with whoever takes the sport forward in this country under no obligation to honour it.
Chris Grant OBE, the former chairman of the BBF who awarded the licence to the GBB League before resigning in October, has been approached for comment.