Leeds dips toe back in basketball market by hosting Yorkshire Dragons' BCB game
Leeds will host a high-end game of men’s basketball this weekend for the first time since the demise of BBL club Force nearly a decade ago, when Yorkshire Dragons play Derby Trailblazers in the British Championship Basketball league, the semi-professional second tier of the game.
The event is a collaboration between the Dragons - who rebranded from Bradford to Yorkshire last summer and traditionally play at Calderdale College in Halifax - and the City of Leeds Basketball Club Foundation and Academy.
The game will be played at Leeds Beckett University and is already a 600-strong sellout.
Matt Newby, who took Leeds Force into the British Basketball League in 2014 and coached them for three years before they went out of business a year later, is director at City of Leeds.
“We’re basketball neighbours, we had a good conversation about the development of the game in the area and thought it would be nice to showcase the BCB in Leeds,” said Newby, whose Under-18s team have just won their Northern Conference without losing a game.
“It’s an exciting collaboration that just brings together two of the strongest programmes in Yorkshire for an event that will hopefully whet the appetite for the fans in West Yorkshire.
“It just seemed like an opportune moment to test the water back in Leeds.”
Newby hopes the venture can tap into a new basketball audience in the city and be the start of a partnership between the two entities.
“There’s an older generation of people who experienced watching Leeds Force and there’s a new generation of people playing basketball across the city, that haven’t seen a game,” he said.
“There’s the big clubs like Sheffield and Newcastle that are relatively close, but to have a game of that calibre in Leeds again is exciting.”
If this collaboration goes well the two operations could work together in the future. There is a gap in the basketball market for a team to be playing in the city. Leeds was mentioned as a target market for the controversial GBB League that is now dead in the water, and Super League Basketball and the second-tier BCB are looking to expand.