How to start a basketball club in England

1. Affiliate with Basketball England

Club affiliation is £120 a year, due 1 September. It brings Howden insurance and free administration on PlayHQ, with a 1.8% fee if you collect subs through it. Individuals then buy a licence: for 2026/27, Participant (local league) is £23 under-18 and £35 adult; Performance (NBL and Junior NBL) is £43 under-18, £78 adult and £40 for a coach; Supporter is £15 to £20. Licences run twelve months from registration, not a fixed year.

Your first contact is the Regional Management Committee for your region (ten in England), then the local league or association you want to play in; there are about 69.

2. Level 1 accreditation

Level 1 is the entry standard and it is mandatory to enter Junior NBL. It needs a constitution, a three-person committee, a bank account, a Club Welfare Officer, adoption of Basketball England policies, and published safeguarding policies. Do it in your first year; it is the same paperwork as affiliation with a website attached. The accreditation also asks for two social-media outlets and calls a website “desirable”.

3. The court

There are few purpose-built venues, so most clubs share school halls: weekday evenings for training and Sunday central-venue days for matches. Hall hire runs £35 to £55 an hour. For a registered home venue in the NBL you need a 7-metre ceiling, 500 lux, a full-size court and 50 seats for juniors; local leagues are less strict. Venue-cancellation postponement rules exist because school halls get double-booked; know them.

4. Table officials and referees

The home club appoints and pays two or three table officials per game (scorer, timer, shot clock), and in Junior NBL and Division 3 the referees too. Junior NBL pays up to £37 per official per game. Every club needs a pool of trained table officials, and most sell a “table officials sponsor” slot to fund them. Coaches need Level 2 to coach unsupervised, Level 3 for Division 1.

5. PlayHQ

Registration, payments, competition management and eScoring all run on PlayHQ, with the HoopsHQ app for licence cards and live scoring. Each season you register every member, enter teams with a surety (£100 to £630), allocate players to teams, confirm fixtures fourteen days ahead, and eScore every game or upload the result by 23:59. PlayHQ also sells club websites at £245 a year; you do not need one to use the rest.

6. Age groups and squads

Age is taken at 1 September. For 2026/27: U12 born September 2014 to August 2017 (minimum Year 5), U14 to August 2014, U16 to August 2012, U18 to August 2010. Boys and girls separate from U14; U12 is Girls plus Mixed. Playing up is allowed and under-18s may play senior. Junior NBL bans zone defence at U14 and U12, bans the press when twenty up, and has an All-Must-Play rule at U12 and conference level.

Clubs usually tier squads as Foundation, Participation and Performance; those labels are the club’s own, Basketball England’s licence tiers are Performance and Participant.

7. Leagues

Below the professional leagues, the NBL runs senior Divisions 1 to 3 and the WNBL, and Junior NBL runs U18, U16 and U14 in Premier, Conference and Regional tiers plus U12 regional leagues; 952 junior teams in 2026/27. Below that, local leagues and central-venue leagues run by county and area associations, mostly on PlayHQ now, September to May. NBL entry is £125 to £815 a team plus the surety. Local league registration opens in July with fees due at the end of July; the team-withdrawal deadline is 31 August.

8. Money

Monthly subs are the norm: £25 to £45 a month for ten or eleven months plus a registration fee and about £200 of kit is typical. Costs are hall hire, league entry and surety, officials, licences and kit. Income beyond subs is match fees, Gift Aid, sponsors sold per function, camps, grants (Sport England Movement Fund £300 to £15,000; Basketball England Development Grant £250 to £1,500 via the region, opening in October; Awards for All £300 to £20,000) and professional-club foundations.

9. The year

July membership opens; local league registration. 31 August team withdrawal and surety deadline. 1 September affiliation due. Mid-September season and National Cup start. 19 December to 9 January break. Late January Cup finals. End of April senior play-off finals. 1–2 May Junior Final Fours. June–August 3x3, summer leagues, camps, AGM.

10. Your first season, in order

1. Constitution, three-person committee, bank account, Club Welfare Officer trained, DBS verifier named.
2. Hall booked for training and a Sunday home slot.
3. Affiliation paid by 1 September; members licensed on PlayHQ.
4. Safeguarding policies published on the website; Level 1 application in.
5. Three table officials trained; Level 2 coach in place.
6. Local league entry in July; surety paid; fixtures confirmed fourteen days ahead.
7. First game mid-September; eScored on PlayHQ.