The National Basketball League, or NBL for short, is a league competition representing semi-professional and amateur basketball clubs from

England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is Eng ...

. It forms levels 2 to 4 on the British basketball pyramid, in line with the Scottish Basketball Championship, sitting directly below the top tier

British Basketball League The British Basketball League (BBL) is a men's professional basketball league in Great Britain and represents the highest level of play in the countries. The league is contested by 10 teams from England and Scotland. There are no clubs howeve ...

. For the 2021-22 season, the league will have teams split across three levels:
:Division 1 (14 teams) :Division 2 (24 teams across 2 regions) :Division 3 (67 teams across 7 regional leagues) The league also runs the English Women's Basketball League, with Division 1 and Division 2 North and South, and a junior structure with over 630 teams competing in Under-18s, Under-16s, Under-14s and Under-12s leagues. There is no

promotion and relegation In sports leagues, promotion and relegation is a process where teams are transferred between multiple divisions based on their performance for the completed season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are often called open leagues ...

between the National League and the

(BBL), which operates a

franchise Franchise may refer to: Business and law * Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business to franchisees * Franchise, a privilege to operate a type of business such as a cable television p ...

system. Despite this, several teams have been successful in making the step up from the National League to the BBL in recent years, most notably the

Plymouth Raiders The Plymouth Raiders was a professional basketball team based in Plymouth, England. The team competed in the British Basketball League, the country's premier basketball competition. The club was founded in 1983 through a merger between two lo ...

and the Bristol Flyers.

Competitions

National Basketball League : Each club plays the other teams in their division on a home-away basis. Two points are awarded for a win, zero points for a loss. From Division 2, usually the top 2 teams after regular season play will be promoted to play in Division 1 for the next season. For each of the Division 3 leagues, it is usually only the league champion who is promoted. Playoffs : The top eight teams in each division compete for the season's final showdown and last piece of silverware. The top four teams have home advantage against the lower placed sides in the quarter-final (1st v 8th, 2nd v 7th, 3rd v 6th & 4th v 5th). The Playoff Finals Weekend is conducted at a neutral venue, and brings together the Playoff finals for all Men's and Women's competitions. The Finals Weekend is now held at the

National Basketball Performance Centre The National Basketball Performance Centre (NPBC) is a 2,000 capacity, three-court basketball arena located in Manchester, England. Background Construction on the £11m Belle Vue Sports Village, including the 2,000 seat FIBA-standard arena, b ...

in Belle Vue, Manchester. National Cup : The premier Cup competition in England and Wales, the National Cup is open to all NBL teams and played on a straight knockout format at club venues, with the final being held at a neutral venue. Until 2003, all British teams competed in this competition (including BBL teams).

History

1960–1972

In 1960 a National Basketball League was introduced with nine members – Borehamwood Bullets, Watford Royals, Nottingham Dodgers, Aspley Old Boys (Nottingham), Birmingham Athletic Institute, Birmingham Dolobran, Doncaster Panthers, Manchester YMCA Comets, and Billingham Tech. Watford Royals won the first National league in 1960-61. Two of the strongest teams in the country at the time were London Central YMCA and London Poly. Neither of these London based teams felt it necessary to join the National Basketball League when the local competition in London was so strong. A change of format in 1965-66 produced three sections, with a total of 16 teams, including two from Scotland; with a change of name to the British Basketball League known as the ‘Rosebowl’.
By 1972, the Scots had their own thriving National League, though also competing in the "Rose Bowl", but when a London team, Sutton, defeated Edinburgh's Boroughmuir Barrs in the 1972 Final, the Basketball Association decided that it was time to relaunch the idea of an English National League.

1972–1986

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using mean solar tim ...

the National League truly took off. The first season comprised just six clubs, plucked from regional and district leagues around the country, and was run in effect as a trial league. The six teams consisted of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

-based teams Avenue Leyton and Sutton, Sheffield YMCA Scorpions and Liverpool Bruno Roughcutters from the North, Midlands club Loughborough All-Stars and touring team RAF Fliers. After several successful seasons, expansion was implemented to 10 teams, and 1975 saw the addition of Division 2. The 1978–79 season was the first to adopt the post-season playoff format, while a year later the National Trophy was created.

1987–1993

In 1987, there was a breakaway by the league's elite clubs looking to formulate a fully professional league in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. The new league, operated by a new body,

, was established as the country's top and only fully professional basketball league. The National League became the country's second tier competition. Initially, there was promotion and relegation between the BBL and the National League. The new league was sponsored by Carlsberg and was known as the Carlsberg League.

1993–2000

In 1993, the NBL restructured once again after the top division reverted to the name

BBL Championship The British Basketball League Championship, often shortened to the BBL Championship, is the top-level men's professional basketball league in the United Kingdom. Established in 1987, the competition is administered by the British Basketball Leagu ...

. Because of this, the lower divisions were renamed and restructured to fit accordingly. From the 1993-94 British Basketball League season, Division 1 was renamed as the Budweiser Basketball League (BBL), thus having a domino effect where the previous Division 2 was rebranded as NBL Division 1 and Division 3 became Division 2, forming the bottom of the three-tiered National League structure. That season also saw the last relegation between the top-two divisions (BBL and Division 1), as last-placed

Oldham Celtics Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, whic ...

were demoted into the new Division 1 for 1994–95. Their replacements were

Sheffield Forgers Sheffield Forgers RLFC is a rugby league club in Sheffield, England. It has an Open Age team that plays in the summer in thy Yorkshire Men's League. The genesis of the club dates back to summer 2004, when a group of Sheffield Eagles supporters d ...

and

Leopards The leopard (''Panthera pardus'') is one of the five extant species in the genus ''Panthera'', a member of the cat family, Felidae. It occurs in a wide range in sub-Saharan Africa, in some parts of Western and Central Asia, Southern Russia, a ...

, which signalled the start of the current 'buy-in' policy operated by the BBL, whereby teams can only buy a place in the league, operating a

system. 1997 saw the addition of Division 3 to the structure, welcoming new teams such as Reading Rockets, Taunton Tigers and the Manchester Giants B team.

2000–2003

In 1999, the BBL restructured with a north–south conference system, and the following year the National Basketball League replaced Division 1 with the eight-team NBL Conference as the second-tier after the BBL. Subsequently, Division 2 became Division 1 and Division 3 became Division 2, with the addition of a new Division 3 forming effectively the fifth-tier of the structure. However Division 3 only lasted for one season, as another reorganisation took place the following year, in 2001, which saw an expanded NBL Conference and Division 1, while Divisions 2 and 3 merged to form a regionalised format, with Division 2 North and Division 2 South. In 2003, after three seasons, the BBL ditched its North-South Conference format, and reverted to a single league of ten clubs. During the same year, the National Basketball League was rebranded as the English Basketball League, and once again was restructured with a new format.

Since 2003

The Conference was disbanded, and EBL reverted the National Leagues to EBL Division 1, Division 2 and a regionalised North-South Division 3, with Division 4 (a reincarnation of the one-time old Division 3 of 2000) returning to the fold in 2006. In 2019–20, a regionalised North-South Division 2 was introduced, with Divisions 3 and 4 merging and the latter disappearing once again.

References

External links

* {{English and British National Champions Basketball leagues in England

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Sports leagues established in 1972 1972 establishments in England Professional sports leagues in the United Kingdom National championships in England