John Feehan: This can be basketball country

PROMISING LANDSCAPE: Minister of State for Sport and the Gaeltacht Jack Chambers and Basketball Ireland CEO John Feehan. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie

Basketball can emulate the growth of Irish rugby in the professional era, believes Basketball Ireland CEO John Feehan. 

Feehan spent 16 years as CEO of the Six Nations and the British & Irish Lions and sees parallels with rugby’s growth over the past three decades and how he sees basketball evolving commercially here.

Speaking on All Net, the Irish Examiner basketball podcast, Feehan said: “Basketball is like what rugby was 30 years ago. In that it has the same level of potential, in my view, to develop into something really special.

"Not that it isn’t special already, but we need everyone else to realise how special it is. That’s our job, in a way, over the next while.

“I’m really enthusiastic about this. It has so much potential and we need to prioritise the right things.  

“We are in the process of signing off a new five-year strategic plan. I want some solid things we can deliver on. And I’m pretty sure if we achieve what we say we’re going to do, basketball will be in a much better place in five years' time.

“Perhaps in the past there has been a little bit of hopelessness, but that’s not the way I see it at all. Basketball will become very prominent in Ireland in the next few years.” 

Feehan, who took over the basketball top job at the end of last year, says more income from commercial partners will be key to the sport's growth. 

“It’s not a tap, you can’t just turn it on, but as a sport we are very attractive for commercial partners.

“We hit pretty much every demographic going, We have an almost 50-50 gender balance, pretty much most sports can’t say that. We are very good on inclusiveness and diversity. We have a great spread of the game around the country and we have the numbers. We have 41,000 post-primary school kids registered. 31,000 players registered in clubs. Big numbers in primary school. We tick loads of boxes, and there’s a lot of goodwill out there for us.” 

Part of Feehan’s vision will involve revamping facilities. 

“We have to look at the infrastructure. We need to do quite a significant overhaul of the National Arena. I want it to be top-notch, state of the art. There is a big job to be done there over a number of years.

“Certainly extra capacity, top class hospitality facilities. Better changing rooms, Making it four courts instead of two, possibly a gym in there, a cafe.

“I’d like it to be used 24/7/365. Primarily by basketball but sports like volleyball too. It should become a source of revenue for the sport and more particularly give us huge profile for the sport.” 

More revenue will help counter one of the criticisms levelled at the sport, that representing your country is often a pay-to-play scenario.

“Let’s be straight, we don’t have the funding at the moment to fund all the youth international sides. We do make serious contributions to them, both financial and in terms of staffing and support structures. To say we’re not supporting them would not be fair.

“Having said that, there is a financial burden on some parents and we are very conscious of that. We will address that as time goes on but that can only be really addressed when the funds start coming back into the sport.”