Part 2 of The Yorkshire Post’s Q&A with Sanjay Bhandari MBE, the Harrogate-based chair of Super League Basketball.
For the final part, I asked Sanjay about the future governance of the sport in the wake of the financial collapse of the British Basketball Federation before Christmas.
Key: Nick Westby’s questions in bold, Sanjay’s answers in plain.
A rising tide floats all boats: Britain's guard #32 Patrick Whelan (R) against Germany last summer (Picture: Heikki Saukkomaa / LEHTIKUVA / AFP via Getty Images) / Finland OUTplaceholder image
A rising tide floats all boats: Britain's guard #32 Patrick Whelan (R) against Germany last summer (Picture: Heikki Saukkomaa / LEHTIKUVA / AFP via Getty Images) / Finland OUT
Discussions on future governance of the game began in Newcastle in February, how involved is the SLB in shaping this?
“In the conversations we’re having with those bodies (national governing bodies like Basketball England) we’re encouraging that dialogue because we need to be aligned on the mission across the whole sport. It’s no good us (SLB) just having our mission and vision, we need to be aligned with all the other stakeholders, asking what is it we’re actually trying to achieve as a sport, to give ourselves the best chance to realise the potential and the ambitions of the sport and for the GB team as well.
“We see it in other sports, if you have a successful national team and a successful league, it’s incredibly powerful.”
What role is SLB playing?
Sheffield-born GB player Quinn Ellis.placeholder image
Sheffield-born GB player Quinn Ellis.
“We’re a very active participant in those discussions. We want a successful sport because a rising tide floats all boats, so if we’re all successful; the clubs, the GB team, commercially, the development player pathways, facilities (and we’ve got those at the elite end), then everyone should benefit.
“I think we need to align thinking across all the groups and we’re encouraging everyone to do those conversations and get people excited about it.
“At Super League, don’t just focus on what we do, and for the home country associations, don’t just focus on you and what you have historically done, let’s focus on where we need to go, where do we need to be as a sport by 2032. How do we serve our public the best so that we can realise the ambition for this sport.
“Let’s start with where we want to go and work backwards from that.
Super League Basketball chair Sanjay Bhandari MBE (Picture: Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty Images for LTA)placeholder image
Super League Basketball chair Sanjay Bhandari MBE (Picture: Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty Images for LTA)
“I don’t have all the answers, but I have quite a lot of questions.
“It’s my role to ask intelligent questions, like let’s start with our target goal. We’re having conversations with the home countries and with FIBA, having that same conversation; where do we want to go, what’s our direction.”
What’s your role in it?
“I’m trying to bring in the experience I’ve had from other sports while acknowledging we’re not where those sports are, we’re at a certain maturity level but when you see how other sports can be successful…remember those sports haven’t always been where they are now, they started maybe where we are now.
What is the potential for the likes of Sheffield Sharks and for British basketball (Picture: Adam Bates)placeholder image
What is the potential for the likes of Sheffield Sharks and for British basketball (Picture: Adam Bates)
“So what are those things you need to get right now?
“You look at the Premier League now, that’s not where it was in 1992/93, that’s not where it was in the mid-1980s. It’s taken a long time to get there.
“Basketball is the second most popular team sport, it shouldn’t take us 40 years to get there.
“But having some alignment will give us a near-term focus. I’m trying to encourage people to think about 2032 because we go in Olympic cycles, you can tap into Olympic funding, and the pinnacle is the Olympics.”
Is this clean slate as good an opportunity as the sport has had to reset?
“It’s the best opportunity this sport has ever had.
“They always say don’t waste a good crisis and this is a good crisis, so we’d better not waste it.
“My fear is the natural human tendency is to try and fix it really quickly. If you do that, people tend to think within the four corners of the box they’ve always been in and you just end up reproducing the same thing with a different label, and I’ve expressed that fear to a number of people. Please let’s not do that, we don’t want BBF Mark II because it will just fail again unless we address what the underlying issues were, what our target outcomes are and how we work together effectively to focus on this amazing opportunity, with a sport that is effortlessly inclusive, the second most popular team sport from a participation perspective.
“You’ve got interest coming in from the NBA. What’s our growth opportunity here, what’s our growth story, how do we take advantage of this opportunity?
“My business head says strategy doesn’t follow governance, governance follows strategy. You start with a strategy. I’m trying to encourage people to move away from starting with what the governance model is, start with where we want to go; let’s get aligned around the vision and the mission. There’ll be natural pockets of ‘we’re more experts in this, let us take this on, you’re expert in that, you pick up that’.
“In a way we’re blessed with having a slightly smaller sport because the number of really skilled experienced people is relatively small but it means if you get them focused on the bits they are brilliant at and aligned around the mission, it gives us a greater chance of success.”
For years basketball has been plagued by disparate factions and opposing vested interests. How are you finding/combatting that?
“What you have is, whether professional or amateur, they operate in silos and maybe they do their own thing, like many sports, they can be low-trust environments and maybe that trust has broken down, but you can only build that by encouraging an open conversation and trying to encourage what we’re all trying to achieve, and what do we have in common. What we have in common is we all want the same outcome, we all want basketball to be incredibly successful, we all see the potential, we just need to get out of our own way and how do we work together better as a team.
“What I’m trying to encourage is us to work more as a team.”
It’s looking like NBA Europe is coming to London and Manchester in 2027. Those two teams will play in the SLB. How involved is the SLB in the discussions?
“We’ve had some conversations but the reality is we know it’s going to be great for British basketball. It creates the driver for us to work together across the sport because there’s this amazing behemoth sporting giant in the background that could really unlock the change that we need to create.
“If NBA Europe is going to happen, we welcome that, but how do we make ourselves ready as a sport to get the trickle down benefits from NBA coming to town. We have to make sure as a sport as a whole, not just SLB, that we’re ready to receive that kind of investment and the governance is ready to receive that kind of investment.
“It’s a great opportunity to get our house in order.”
There is a concern that it will skew parity - if and when London and Manchester have rosters built for NBA Europe?
“That’s the nature of sport. There’s a different culture in Europe compared to US sports with the draft system, salary caps, they’re closed leagues as well. It’s much more likely in our sporting leagues that you’re going to get asymmetry where some have more resources and some with fewer resources. But then those with fewer resources become more attractive to new investors who might see an opportunity. You see that in other sports like football - look at Bournemouth, Brentford and Brighton using a different model in order to gain success.
“That’s the nature of sport in Europe, there is going to be those asymmetries of resources.”
What do you see as the potential of SLB and basketball?
“I don’t have a specific endpoint, one of the benefits of being an outsider is I don’t have all the answers but I do have all the questions, or a lot of the questions.
“So it’s a question I’m posing across the sport - where do we want to be in 2032?
“What would be stretching but ambitious, achievable goals. It can’t just be something that’s easy to achieve. Where do we want to be from a GB team perspective, where do we want to be as a league, as a national sport, on the player pathway?
“All of those things we need to be setting targets for.
“I think the sport will have those answers, part of my job is to say: ‘is that ambitious enough, is that fast enough, could we do more?’”