Sheffield Sharks and BBL target making digital footprint bigger in order to widen game’s appeal

Earlier this week, the BBL announced that an investment company is buying a 45 per cent stake in the league with an initial injection of £7m to deliver an ambitious plan that will span the entire sport, from community grassroots through to the overall infrastructure of the elite game.

Miami-based 777 Partners, who already own BBL team London Lions and European football clubs Sevilla and Genoa, want to introduce four new franchises into the league over the next five years, put additional resource into the women’s league, work with the governing body to improve the Great Britain teams and tap into the huge participation numbers that sees basketball as the second most played team sport in the UK, per the Active Peoples’ Survey.

The vast majority of those participants are children and young adults from a diverse cross-section of society, a demographic that consumes its content digitally, far removed from the traditions of the past.

For Yuri Matischen, owner of Sheffield Sharks and board member of the BBL who has lobbied long and hard for the kind of transformational investment the league received this week, that is the target audience they need to be aiming for.

“We’re going to start with a huge digital transformation of the sport. We want to be a huge technology-driven business, we know we can make an impact through that,” he said.

“Young people use technology increasingly and we think basketball lends itself to that really well.

“That means YouTube channels, really good content that young people want to watch. The old ways of doing things aren’t necessarily the way it’s going to be done in the future.

“We’re going to try and advance that into our club and league websites, and our digital technology to move us forward.

“So our digital footprint will make us look way bigger than 12, 13, 14 franchises in the men’s game and however many in the women’s game. We’re up against football, rugby union, cricket etc ... massive challenges. We’re going to bite off what we can do well and go from there.

“The younger generation is the starting point but we want all fans. It’s a sport that’s played by young people in higher numbers than other sports, and it’s an ethnically-diverse community so we are going to use all those advantages as best we can and we think digital technology matters.

“A lot of our audiences coming to games are families; so one group plays it, which is different from those that come to spectate.

“Attending games is family-friendly because it’s a non-threatening environment, it’s warm, kids can come and play, come on to the court, we do those things to make it family-friendly.

“But the people who play basketball are nearly 50 per cent ethnic minorities so we are a hugely diverse sport, and we’ve got to make that pay. We can do through our digital footprint.”

And Matischen insists the first tranche of the £7m investment will not just be blown all at once, it will be used to fund a business plan that the clubs, like Sheffield, have been working towards.

“We’ve got a plan, we’re not just chucking money in and saying do what you will,” he said.

“For us to make the best of this money it might take time for the benefits to come in, we’re not expecting it to be soaked up, we’re putting it in in such a way that it will generate more revenue into the league and the into the clubs.”