Where is the UK's Michael Jordan?

18:19Gabby Logan:They created an illegal tender process to create a replacement league. these are what we say in the litigation. They've entered into an illegal licence with the GBBL. They've illegally rejected our requests to play under FIBA and BBS jurisdiction. They've been lobbying the Home Office to try to prevent our clubs from obtaining visas for elite overseas players. They've been blocking UK teams from competing in elite European competitions this season. And they've essentially put themselves in an intractable intractable conflict of interest position where their commercial interests conflict with their duty of sport.

18:56Gabby Logan:This is the reason we're where we are now, not the 40 years. This is the reason we're where we are now. Let me read the BBF statement and then we can bring Chris in. So the BBF sends a statement for the show. The BBF's vision is to see basketball in Britain fulfill its potential and it requires a long-term plan that continues to centre on players, coaches, officials, clubs and the basketball community. The ambition is for a sustainable future that has financial and operational stability, high-profile competitive opportunities, and consequential commercial value and social impact for all involved in the sport in Britain.

19:30Gabby Logan:Our goal is to ensure we continue to work with FIBA to find the right interim solution that will support the delivery of long-term success of our sport. We made it clear, Chris, you can't speak on behalf of the BBF anymore because you stepped down earlier this month, but I did notice you wince at several things that Sanjay said?

19:51Mark Chapman:Oh yeah I went courts don't like you to litigate in studios so there are lots of things I could say in response to some of the specific points that Sanjay's made but why are we having this conversation now? Well we shouldn't have been because the previous version of the league which was owned by these same clubs their license was meant to run till 2027 it was a 10-year

20:14Gabby Logan:license this is the british basketball league that collapsed yes yeah exactly exactly and it

20:21Mark Chapman:was owned by effectively by the same clubs one of them has since gone out of business uh plymouth so there were 10 at that point who owned it went down to nine they sold half of their league effectively to a group called triple seven who became famous uh in the last 18 months because they were trying to buy everton football club now triple seven uh i think i can say here you know if you Google them, you look at their Australian airlines, which had to, you know, couldn't take their planes off. You look at the standard Liège fans, one of the six or seven football clubs they own who are blockading their own team's bus in protest at the owners.

20:58Mark Chapman:And the deal which these clubs did with 777 basically fell apart last summer because the promised finances weren't there and other things. So at that point, you didn't have a league. Those same clubs worked very quickly and the federation worked quickly with them to try and retrieve the situation super league basketball has now existed for 15 months as a company i think five of the nine clubs changed ownership last summer and and the new owners who came in i think probably did see the nba arrival most of them came from the states they all came in after the federation had said as things fell apart that there would be an open process to see who might operate the league and the assumption the hope the conversation through last summer was that slb would bid as the incumbents they didn't the process was run very carefully and with very good advice so to say it's illegal or unlawful is is a matter of of sanjay's opinion i would disagree with that having been kind of around it when that incoming operator wrote to the club saying we'd like to talk with you about our vision about the future of the game about how we want to run it about where the benefits are the clubs actually refused even to talk with them even to hear what was in that offer for their own reasons but i think that's a really great pity and it's on public record now that the nba is coming so there's going to be an nba europe league in you know in conjunction with FIBA the International Federation of Basketball there will almost certainly be two teams playing in that league from Britain it's really really important that in that context that those two teams are also able to compete in a domestic leagues.

22:50Sanjay did why didn't you bid

22:53Gabby Logan:then and is there something about your product Super League that doesn't want to work with the federation it's a bit more nuanced than that and look i i i've come in in the last three months to try to help to find some kinds of resolution to this so i'm uh i'm also picking up some of the uh some of the history and my understanding is not aligned with chris's understanding of the history of the way in which the tender process was initiated and the timing of that and the timings of the investments from the new investors in the league. You're asking us to talk to the new owner of our house. You've kind of seized our house and tried to pass it on to someone else and saying, actually go and talk to them.

23:38Gabby Logan:You've assumed that we would want to be in that league. You haven't worked with us and carried the clubs along with us. My understanding is at the time there were concerns about the way in which that process was being handled. And for instance, things like the price for owning the licence to the league was way, way, way out of kilter with anything anywhere in the market globally. And our understanding is actually there wasn't the right level of due diligence done on the new partners. It's a question that we think ought to be raised as part of the governance review. We understand that, for instance, we've heard stories and examples of the board, not actually all members of the board even reading the license that was granted and only parts of it being read out to them.

24:30Gabby Logan:These are basic governance failures for a national federation to be doing this kind of stuff. so our position is this was unlawful from the start so what why would we engage directly with someone that's seeking to benefit from a process that's unlawful and a license that we say is

24:49Mark Chapman:unlawful can i just jump in quickly because this is really important so around the time that the clubs started using words like unlawful to describe the tender process what the federation did was to offer the government, DCMS, UK Sport, a complete open book on the process. But the other thing was to test the market. Basketball is massively underdeveloped in this country. I can say it now from my position as an ex-chair, there's been a poverty of vision, a poverty of ambition. And actually, I think, speaking personally, that the numbers that are in the new licence are actually pretty low but the test ultimately was were there going to be credible funders and there was there was strong due diligence done about where the money was coming from and was it real money and legally binding commitments to put the money on the table not to fund this through debt which is the kind of mechanism that people like triple seven use all of that was done but the point of it was the main point was they chose to pay that money they saw the value of a british of a strong British Men's Professional League.

25:57Mark Chapman:So in a way, you could say it was testing the market. And one of the great things about basketball, genuinely, it's easy to get dewy-eyed about these things. But we're sitting here talking about this. Basketball in Britain is thriving. Basketball is the second most played team sport in the country. The work that is going on, including in some of the clubs in SLB, but many, many, many other clubs too, which have social impact the entrepreneurialism of young people kind of straddling the arts music fashion basketball kind of embracing this new form street basketball 3x3 this is all hugely vibrant and brilliant and successful and this whole notion of basketball with a british accent which doesn't have to kind of be a faint replica of what happens in the nba it is actually happening

26:44Gabby Logan:Hang on, hang on, hang on. It's vibrant, it's grassroots, it's popular. No, I know. And it's fashion, it's music and it's young people. And John Amici has just said, think of the number of people, talent that has been wasted over 40 years, over 40 years. The fact that it's still John Amici that is coming on a podcast and that there haven't been not just another 10 John Amici, but in his words, tens of John Amici's that come through. right so in 2025 i am a young boy or girl in the thick of grassroots basketball and i am listening to you two and i'm thinking what the bloody hell are you doing sort it out for me and my future and get on with it because at the moment you are a leisure center sport with all due respect when it comes to media coverage and tv coverage and you talk about nba and you talk about this you talk about that look at netball look at netball and the rise of netball and what they have done

27:45Mark Chapman:and talk to them and learn from it chappers you're completely right something something once again i need to say by way of understanding so england scotland wales look after the grassroots and the and the kind of the middle of the sport and british basketball federation looks after the elite i thought when i came into the role of chair three years ago that the big problem because it had been a tug of war ever since 2012 was the relationship between the home countries and the britain bit which meant that for example there wasn't a joined up way of identifying talent and knowing what was good there wasn't a joined up tracking of young professional or potentially professional players all that stuff wasn't going on all of that stuff has been fixed you know there are about a hundred young british players playing at the top level of u.s colleges right now one of the huge challenges is and and i'm not saying that the slb clubs don't want to help or address this will be part of the problem is that most of those players won't come and play in britain because it is a letter center sport at the moment because the standards around strength and conditioning around nutrition around how much they get paid the economics of the sport aren't sufficient to bring them back you know our men played in the european championships this summer only two of the 12 i think were actually playing in British clubs.

29:01Mark Chapman:They're all playing overseas. So, Chappers, I see the, and I felt that you can feel the frustration, all of those generations of young people, huge. We've never had a problem with talent, never had a problem with talent. The problem is with the structure. So things in the new licence, which I wish SLB had bid for, including things like a joined up academy system. So already, you know, the home countries are pulled together with GB funded by uk sport and sport england and wales and scotland to get a proper academy system i worked a lot in professional football around around the academies and around coaching in professional football and one of the brilliant things that's happened it didn't wasn't always the case in english professional football is that the professional game is absolutely joined up with the football association the new license that's coming in the new operators have agreed within that license to co-fund an academy system.

29:52Gabby Logan:I feel we need to finish with a word from Sanjay. At the heart of this are people. At the heart of this are fans. At the heart of this is the potential growth of a sport that could capture the imagination of so many, as John put it, kids to give them a different opportunity in life. How are you going to change that, Sanjay? How are you going to move on from this and get to a place where the sport doesn't just thrive behind kind of closed doors to niche areas. It becomes something that we have another John Amici sat in that chair in a couple of years time. I hope as we go for, we can find some solution that works.

30:28Gabby Logan:And I hear all the great things that Chris is talking about, about the game and the potential for the game. But all of those wonderful things remind me a little bit about someone else, right, who I'm sure would love to be remembered as the first ever female Lord Chancellor in a thousand years of the judiciary. military uh someone who helped to release secure the release of nazanin zagari ratcliffe and who helped to create sanctions on russia after the invasion of ukraine but that's not how liz truss is going to be remembered right sadly she's going to be remembered because of the mini budget and the market's reaction to it and still saying that the market doesn't understand her genius isn't going to change history's recollection and i'm sad to say that the history of the last few years of the BBF is probably not going to be remembered for all those wonderful things.

31:18Gabby Logan:It's going to be remembered for where we are now. Where are we now? The BBF has been suspended. The national team has been suspended. How does any of that help us? And I hope that we will get to a situation where the national team is not suspended, where the national team can play. And as we have done, we will play our part as the clubs, as we have done as part of the ecosystem, in providing the players and the coaches and the infrastructure but the bbf is not fit for purpose it is not fit to govern and it is to change there's a generational thing here as well and

31:56Mark Chapman:i'm 63 years old my generation needs to move to one side and there are i mean there's someone else who could be sitting here the captain of rgb women is a 2012 olympian temi fag benlay played the season before last in indiana with caitlin clark she's just become part of the first group in an expansion team in the wnba to get through to the playoffs temi is an extraordinary person she's the captain of our gb team still she'll go out of her way to come back and represent gb she will be playing in in manchester in a couple of weeks time in the first of the european she should be a household name and she wanted to play in britain she was playing in britain for the london lions one of these teams who at the point where they were about to win the first European trophy they cut that women's program I'll see and they were also owned by triple seven you know I think that maybe part of the solution to this is that there's a generation that needs to move aside and let those smart entrepreneurial people who love the game who know who have been successful let them be the stewards of those hundred young people in the states right now playing at high level and then we'll do what Germany have done and become world champions in 12 or 15 years feels like a

33:06Gabby Logan:positive way to end the chat uh not maybe on an answer that included I never thought I'd hear this in the sports agents Liz Truss uh so that was exactly my thought as well actually there we go brilliant Sanjay thank you so much uh for joining us Chris uh thanks Gabby thanks chapas and yeah this is this is anything but a kind of simple solution but I think you've you've both made your points.

33:31John Amaechi:The Sports Agents.

33:36John Amaechi:The Sports Agents.

33:38Gabby Logan:With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. I think, probably like you, Chappers, at the heart of all this, it just feels like there's talent that we could know about. There are players who could be making a really good living for themselves and a life for themselves in the NBA. There's, you know, there are so many kids who would benefit from a better, a better governing body let's just say it well a better governing body and well a better a better governance maybe rather than a governing body yeah i don't want to be pejorative and a sort of i don't know it came through from some of the stuff that john was saying and maybe it came through in the in the discussion that we then had with with sanjay and chris that there are a lot of as there are in all walks of life individual priorities it strikes me as coming through and rather than the greater good shall we say and also as we see in so many sports when we talk to people a sort of i mean to go down a cliche route trying to run before you can walk and which is why i kind of went with it's not i didn't mean it as a lazy comparison in that there are two hoops at either end of this court and you know you throw a ball into them and we've discussed netball on this pod and there have been episodes in netball recently where there's been pain you know with with team bath disappearing and so on and so forth but netball is thriving and they've worked really hard to take it out of the leisure center and into the arenas and bit by bit it is really thriving as it is at grassroots level one of the alarm bells that rang for me straight away in sanjay's first answer he mentioned the premier league and football straight away that that cannot be everybody's you know go-to everybody's holy grail everybody's direction of travel it can't be and i sat there during when when they were talking about the franchises and the different teams and do you know what embarrassingly i thought i'm not sure i can name any of them any of the ones that are still there bar manchester giants who are kind of you know when he talked about the 80s they're actually quite big in the 80s or manchester giant which is partly my ignorance but partly coverage of the sport.

35:50Gabby Logan:I occasionally catch it on one of the sort of more obscure sky channels every now and then. But that's it. OK, make sure you subscribe or follow so you don't miss Friday's episode, which is about the latest Formula One drama, which seems tame in comparison. Could we be in for a Hollywood ending to the season? It's kind of good news drama, isn't it, though? What's going on in Formula One in terms of the championship? Max Verstappen looking like he might be about to swoop in at the last moment and take the title from McLaren. Verstappen might have other ideas we're going to chat to 13 time Grand Prix winner and world championship runner-up with McLaren David Coulthard you can always get in touch sportsagents at global.com messages on social media or via the link in the show notes thanks for listening this has been a Global Player original production