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How to start a professional basketball league
How to Start an Adult Sports League
Bryan Nichols • Mar 21, 2019
Playing sports as an adult is an extremely rewarding activity. Not only does it provide great
exercise, it’s a way to connect and spend time with friends. Starting your own adult sports
league seems to be the logical next step. All you need are some players, some jerseys, and a
location, right? Yes, but there are several more steps involved in getting started.
While playing your sport is fun, organizing a recreational sports league will take time and effort.
We love the game as much as you do, and we want to help you succeed. We created this
how-to guide so you’ll know everything involved and the steps necessary to make your league a
fun and successful endeavor. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Gather Players and Determine Interest
Before a league can go anywhere, you’ll need enough players to create teams. A good starting
amount is 6 teams, but you may be able to get away with 4 if players are scarce (of course,
more is better).![]()
Ask around to determine people’s interest. You can even post some
announcements online or on bulletin boards. It may be hard to find players at first, but as your
league gets up and running it will generate more buzz. In this “research phase,” you need to
determine good days and times for games (when people are most available) and how much
your members are willing to pay. You can even establish a discount for signing up early to
encourage more people to join.
Step 2: Determine Your Budget
There are a lot of costs involved in having a successful league. Before crunching the numbers,
think about your why you want to do this. Are you playing for fun or for profit? When you’re
starting a league just for fun, you only need to generate enough money to break even. This is
usually accomplished through player membership fees. If you’re playing for profit, though, you
need a profit margin of at least 25% in order to be sustainable.
These are costs to budget for:
● Venue
● Referees
● Apparel/Jerseys
● Equipment
● Advertising
● End of league prizes (optional)
Do your research to determine your costs.
Then add 25% if your league is for-profit. Your final
number can be divided by the amount of teams/players you have to help determine membership
fees. You can also look for sponsors to offset costs.
Step 3: Find a Venue
You have several options when it comes to finding a facility for your games, but you should
always book early. Many leagues get put on hold simply because they waited too long to get
their venue. Your location should be secured several weeks before the season starts.
Here are some great venue options:
● Public schools
● Public parks
● Private schools
● Community centers
● Sports complexes
● Churches
When determining your facility, remember to factor in distance. No one wants to drive for an
hour every week to play a short game. Find a location that’s 15-30 minutes away from your
players.
Step 4: Hire Refs and Other Assistants
Good referees will keep your players safe and help them have a great time.
They will also be
assertive and consistent with their calls. If you’re lucky enough to know some refs who want to
donate their time, all the better. If not, you’re looking at $10-20 an hour. Just don’t overlook this
step. Refs are important to help maintain order in your league and they will make your players
view each game as more important and professional.
You may also need additional help like coaches and people to maintain equipment and fields.
This will depend on your type of league and location, so plan accordingly.
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Building an Empire: What it Takes to Start a Professional Organization in American Sports.
| by Michael Margulis
It’s week two of my sports business blog, and this week we are talking about what it takes to not only start and own a professional organization, but how some of the best organizations run their businesses from the top, down.
If there is anything that we can take from last week, it is that the entire sports world pretty much revolves around one thing. It’s typically in the form of green paper bills, and commonly known as money. Billions and billions of dollars are spent each year, and if anybody is looking to get started in the professional sports world, that’s pretty much the amount you will need.
Now, since sports have been around forever, it’s difficult to just go out and start your own professional sports team. However, instead of starting your own sports team, the more common occurrence is when a person simply buys an existing sports team. This method of entering the sports world will cost a pretty penny of course.
Let’s start with North America’s professional basketball league, the National Basketball Association (NBA).
The average price for an NBA team in today’s market is about 1.1 billion. However, the Los Angeles Clippers were recently bought for a whopping 2 billion by Steve Ballmer in August of 2014, and an article by Business Insider compared what every other franchise in the NBA would be valued at based on this ridiculous figure. They also compared this inflated price to the actual valuation as according to Forbes.com, and the comparison is shocking. As seen by the chart to the left, each franchise is almost three times over its actual Forbes.com valuation when based on the price paid by Ballmer for the Clippers. If price tags continue to skyrocket like this, then who knows what it would take to buy a franchise in the coming years.
As we all know, these outlandish monetary figures aren’t just in the NBA, they are in almost every professional league in North America. Especially the two other major leagues, the NFL (America’s most popular), and the MLB (America’s past-time). Both of these leagues feature some of the most well-known franchises is all of sports, not only on a domestic scale, but on a global scale as well.
Now, lets take a look at the NFL in terms of monetary value per team. Forbes.com keeps a tab on all the North American major sports leagues and keeps track of how much each team is worth. In the NFL, the highest ranked team is the Dallas Cowboys, who are valued at a massive 4 billion. This figure is actually the highest in all of sports. Yes, that includes every team in the entire world, in any sport. With that being said, the average NFL team is worth about 2 billion in today’s market. This average is almost 800 million more than the average of any other league in North America. However, this incredible gap may decrease overtime with many people in America looking to move away from football and toward other sports due to its violent nature.
Now for the last of the major leagues in America, but certainly not the least, baseball. Commonly known as America’s past-time, this sport has offered entertainment to the public for over a century, and there is one team that rules the business world in baseball.
The New York Yankees.
The Yankees are valued by Forbes.com at a very lucrative 3.2 billion, and are also considered one of the most popular franchises in all of sports (similar to the Cowboys on a global scale). Although the Yankees are well and beyond the rest of the league in valuation, the MLB does boast a pretty pricey lineup, with an average franchise being worth about 1.2 billion. Out of all the leagues offered in America, the MLB is ranked 2nd in overall worth, in between the NFL and NBA. Now that you understand whats its going to cost just to get involved, let’s take a look at how everything works.
Now, considering we are looking at sports in a business sense, lets throw out the word sports for the time being. All of these franchises and organizations are all businesses. They have established a chain of command amongst their organization to create an effective way to carry out their business.
There are many different ways to go about the chain of command in business and you will see many different examples when looking at the different sports organizations.
However, there is always one person at the very top, and that is the owner. Now, the owner clearly oversee’s the entire operation in order to make sure it runs smoothly, but they may also feel that they need to take extra power. For example, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is not only the owner but he also acts as General Manager and Head of Football operations, this basically means that he is calling all the shots in the off the field negotiation.
So after you have the owner, you need to have somebody to run the organization to carry out the owner’s wants and needs. This is the position commonly known as General Manager. The general manager is essentially the CEO. They deal with all the off the field problems and negotiations, as well as working above the head coach and players. The General Manager is also normally the head of that given sports operations, which means they deal with trades, contracts, and other sport-related decisions.
After that is where the Head Coach and coaching staff comes in.
They do exactly what it sounds like, coach the players and produce an efficient product that will hopefully result to winning games.
Last but not least, the players. The players are the most important part of any sports business because obviously, without players there would be no sport and the entire industry would pretty much be irrelevant. All of these pieces working together in harmony are what make the most successful of sports organizations.
Next week in my sports business blog series we will be taking a look at the process in how these organizations acquire their talent, the players, in an article titled “Buy or Sell.” Stay tuned…
PBL - Professional Basketball League
History of PBL
The date of birth of the Professional Basketball League is the date of official registration of the non-profit partnership "Professional Basketball League" on August 6, 2010. However, the idea to create the League arose long before that, and they managed to move from words to deeds after the well-known scandalous events with the audio recording that stirred up Russian basketball.
On June 15, 2010, ten leading clubs of the country in a joint communique announced their withdrawal from the Council of the Basketball Superleague and their intention to establish a new, professional and independent league to hold a basketball competition among the best teams in Russia.
“We are convinced that only the independent status of the tournament under the management of bodies established by the clubs guarantees a high level of competition, fair play and contributes to the improvement of the level of Russian basketball,” was said in the now historic communiqué, which was signed by the leaders of the nine participants in the Super League A season 2009 -2010 and the winner of the Superleague B season 2009-2010 BC "Nizhny Novgorod". “We are fully aware of the necessity and importance of the decision we made, we are ready to bear responsibility for its consequences and will make every effort so that the updated League championship returns the respect and interest of fans in our country and abroad, attracts spectators to the stands and students to sports schools.
”
On June 21, 2010, the first Council of the Professional Basketball League was held in Moscow, following which the charter was adopted and the leadership of the League was elected. Andrey Vatutin, President of PBC CSKA, was elected Chairman of the PBL Council, and Ginas Rutkauskas, Sports Director of Dynamo, was elected General Director.
The result of more than two months of painstaking work of the league management was the draft Regulations and the Calendar of the First Championship, approved at the next League Council on September 2, 2010. It also announced the creation of the PBL Youth Championship.
The decisive event in the still young life of the PBL was the achievement of an agreement with the Russian Basketball Federation. On September 21, 2010, members of the RSE executive committee unanimously voted for the signing of a three-year agreement on the transfer of the rights to host the Russian championship to the Professional Basketball League.
It is worth noting that the day before, the meeting of the Chairman of the Council of the PBL Andrey Vatutin and the President of the RSE Sergey Chernov with the Minister of Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy Vitaly Mutko took place. From the moment the new league was created, the minister treated its formation and first independent steps with great attention and support, demonstrated deep knowledge of the situation and helped to come to difficult decisions on many key issues. Vitaly Mutko's personal participation in a new project for Russian basketball, as well as the constructive position of the RFB and PBL management, allowed the executive committee to carefully discuss the transfer of rights and make historic decisions that will determine the vector of development of professional basketball in Russia in the coming years.
The history of the Professional Basketball League is just beginning and there is still a lot to be done. The League is open to new ideas and projects.
Everyone can contribute to the development of basketball, including you, dear reader! We are waiting for you at the matches of the Russian Championship among teams of clubs of the Professional Basketball League!
Breakthrough League. About the tasks of the United Basketball Association
In the new basketball season, the strongest amateur teams in Moscow will compete under the auspices of the United Basketball Association (UBA). Professional players under the age of 21 will also be able to take part in the tournaments organized by it. The founders of the association, Kirill Sadilov, Mikhail Gusev and Emin Antonyan, spoke to Bolshoy Sport about the tasks and ambitious plans facing UBA.
Who created the association and for what purpose?
Kirill Sadilov (K.S.): I would say that it was created by people who are not indifferent to basketball, who are tired of waiting for something to change in a positive direction in the development of this sport in our country in terms of its promotion and reaching a new level in all areas: amateurs, professionals, children, three by three, and so on.
Mikhail Gusev (MG): I think we all had a simple idea: to create a league in which clubs could participate with pleasure. Despite the apparent obviousness, the idea is not so easy to implement. And here the experience of all the founders and participants of UBA is important.
Emin Antonyan (E. A.): We wanted to create a league in which each club (at this stage of the championship) would have the opportunity to participate in the creation of the product. Because it's important to us that players and club leaders have fun and really take pride in being part of the league.
What are the benefits of joining?
K. S., M. G., E. A.: Spectators will see the game of the strongest Russian amateur basketball players, young professionals and star ex-professionals. In particular, the merited master of sports, European champion in 2007 and ex-captain of the Russian national team Sergei Bykov plays for BC Moskovsky, Amiran Amirkhanov, a master of sports of international class, a former UNICS player, plays for INANOMO, and master of sports Ilya Chernov plays for Motor.
who played for Arsenal.
Benefits for participants include the best Moscow Playground, the planned high level of league organization in general and media coverage in particular. Broadcasts, SMM, work with clubs and spectators, the launch of our mobile application - we want to do all this in accordance with the reference samples from professional sports and using the tools of big business. It is important that it be a beautiful story both internally and externally, understandable, including to sponsors.
M. G.: We all invest a lot in UBA. And it's not even so much about money, but about time, nerves, emotions. We are now investing all our combined experience in building successful businesses into creating a high-quality sports product, from which we want to get high ourselves, and give this opportunity to all those involved: club leaders, players, spectators.
E.A.: There is an important caveat: the number of places in the league will be fixed.
With a high degree of probability, we will expand the number of participants to 10, theoretically possible to 12. That's it. And when we manage to launch and maintain the planned level of quality, then the players themselves will want to play in UBA member clubs. And this will be of great value for the leaders of clubs with slots in the league: everyone will want to play in their squads.
Plus, as Kirill and Mikhail have already said, we are building an excellent product in which we invest a lot ourselves, and where there are many opportunities for everyone involved. I think club leaders will see additional value for themselves in the chance to take part in the creation of such a new product for Russian amateur sports.
How does the league plan to develop?
K.S.: Big plans! For me personally, it is important, on the one hand, to make an extremely high-quality "chamber" product in amateur basketball - an analogue of the Euroleague, only for the top teams in Russia.
On the other hand, on the basis of such a product and work with sponsors, to promote all areas of basketball, starting with children's. In fact, to build a certain model, as Germany once did with football. When, due to the mass character and competition, work from the earliest childhood, the opening of a huge number of training fields and gyms, really worthy representatives turned out to be at the top. This is what we want to come to. The main thing is that after that there will be someone to choose from - for example, the composition of the national team.
M. G.: I would like to organize top-level competitions based on all the options that have been and are in amateur basketball, and develop through this prism. That is, the task of the first season is to create a product that Kirill is talking about. In the future, you can go to a neat, pinpoint scaling, while maintaining the quality and high level of organization of the league. The main conclusions on possible development directions will be made after the first season.
What competitions, besides the Moscow Championship, are you planning to hold?
K.S.: Perhaps at the end of the first season or in the second we can arrange something like “Four teams from Moscow against four teams from St. Petersburg”. Naturally, with an emphasis on the quality of basketball. I would also definitely like to organize competitions and a training program for children in the future, because it will be extremely useful for them in terms of creating competition and development.
Does the Russian Basketball Federation support your undertakings?
K.S.: I am sure that we should try to be friends with everyone who wants to help. Therefore, I am for productive relations with the Moscow Basketball Federation and the Russian Basketball Federation.
E. A.: We have excellent relations with the RFB. For example, the Executive Director and General Secretary of the RFB Natalya Galkina took part in the draw of the first season, we are friends with both President Andrei Kirilenko and General Director Evgeny Ivanov.
