These are three professional sports that are definitely having hard time making an impact in the capital. Rugby League is probably doing the best and its a bit of a mystery to me why its not more popular.
There’s one pro Rugby League outfit in London, Harlequins, known up until the summer of 2005 as the London Broncos.
Rugby League is the 13 players a team game as opposed to the 15 man game of Rugby Union. In the UK Rugby League has stayed a resolutely northern English sport for historical reasons, centred on a narrow strip of land running from Liverpool on the west coast to Hull on the east. Most of the teams up there are based in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire.
In the 1980’s Rugby League tried to launch in London again with a team in Fulham. They had moderate success and changed their name in 1991 to London Crusaders who in turn became the London Broncos in 1994 when the Australian giants Brisbane Broncos bought the Crusaders. A few years ago the Virgin Group invested in the London Broncos but then sold out and the club became Harlequins Rugby League, a sister club to Harlequins Rugby Union and they play at the same Stoop ground in Twickenham.
Finding a regular home has always been a problem for London’s rugby league team, they’ve moved about various football stadium’s including Fulham, Brentford and Charlton. If they can stay in one place long enough they may build up a regular fan base.
Rugby League used to be a winter sport but in 1996 SkySports launched the Super League and changed the season to run from February to September. There are currently 12 teams in Super League and they play 28 regular season games, then the top six go into playoffs and the two left contest the Grand Final. Harlequins finished seventh this season so just missed out. They also play in the rugby league Challenge Cup, the premier knockout competition in Britain.
With the sport switched to a summer schedule where it can get out of football’s shadow for a while, tons of promotion and live coverage from Sky and a large expat southern hemisphere population in London you’d think the Super League and Harlequins RL would be a big draw in London, but I hardly know anyone who’s into it and its certainly not a sport you hear people talking about that much. Which is a shame because its a tough, athletic sport and the players always seem to give a 100% effort.
Basketball’s never made that much impression in London, at the moment there’s one pro team here called London United. There used two be two different ones in the 1990’s the London Towers and the London Leopards but it doesn’t seem they’re fully professional anymore.
The sport’s got an up hill battle to get a fan base because most people have almost zero experience playing the game as kids or in school. I was never shown how to shoot a ball at school or even played in a game and I think that goes for 99% of people in this country.
Kids are into it a bit more now because the NBA’s on satellite tv, but I think they’re aping hip-hop video’s more with there basketball images rather than the pro game itself.
London United play there games at the Hackney Space Centre, somewhere I’m not familiar with. It’s in the Shoreditch area directly north from Liverpool Street.
They play in the British Basketball League and their season runs from September to May. There are 10 teams in the league and they play each other four times in the regular season, 36 games in all, then play playoffs.
Tickets for their home games are £8 adults, £4 children or they do afamily ticket of 2 adults and 2 kids for £20.
Ice Hockey is doing the worst of the three in London. The main competition is the Elite Ice Hockey League and the pro team in London was the London Racers until 2005 but they had to bizarrely cease operating due to the lack of an adequate venue to play at in London. They were playing at the Lea Valley Ice Centre which can only seat 900 and is apparently very basic. During a game an oppostion player suffered a serious face injury after hitting an object sticking out of the boards, another game had to be abandoned after some plexiglas shattered hurting a fan. A few days later the same thing happened in training and the place was declared unsafe. With nowhere to play the team had to withdraw from the league.
Unless Britain gets awarded the Winter Olympics I can’t see the powers that be spending any money on ice rinks with the spectator capacity a pro team would need to survive. It could be a while before professional ice hockey returns to London.
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