The newly reformed British basketball league; Super League Basketball (SBL), has announced a new season-wide format for its upcoming inaugural campaign.
The debut SBL season will commence this September and introduce four competitions; the Championship, Cup, Trophy and Playoffs, with the Trophy format kicking off the 2024/25 season.
The SBL Trophy will see five weeks of group stage games, ending in November. The Trophy Final will take place on 26 January, 2025, at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham, pitting the two best performing teams against each other.
Featuring all nine SBL teams, the Trophy format will split the teams into two groups, one group of four and one group of five. Teams will play home and away games against each other in their respective groups. The winners and runners-up in each group will qualify for the two-legged semi-finals, with the winner of Group A facing the runner-up of Group B and vice-versa.
Following the SBL Trophy will be the Championship season. The round-robin league format will see all nine teams compete against each other four times over a 23-week campaign. The top eight teams will advance to the Playoffs, where they will compete in the quarter-finals and semi-finals for a place in the Championship Final.
Both quarter-finals and semi-finals will be played over two legs. Quarter-final ties will be assigned by Championship seeding, 1st vs 8th, 2nd vs 7th, 3rd vs 6th, 4th vs 5th. Semi-final ties will be assigned by the highest remaining seed facing the lowest remaining seed and the second-highest facing the second-lowest. In both rounds, the higher seed has the choice of home leg.
A single-leg Final will take place in London on 18 May with venue information to be announced at a later date.
Finally, the Cup competition is a bracket-style knockout tournament starting with the quarter-finals. Seven teams are randomly drawn against one another, with a single-leg qualifier between two teams making up the eighth and final team.
Much like the Championship Playoffs, the semi-finals are contested over two-legs and the Final being one leg. The Final will take place at the end of March with a date and venue to be confirmed at a later date.
The SBL is a newly reformed league replacing the old British Basketball League after Premier Basketball Ltd., a consortium of the previous teams competing in the British Basketball League, secured a new three-year licence to begin the SLB.
The nine teams competing in the inaugural SBL season are the British Flyers, Caledonia Gladiators, Cheshire Phoenix, Leicester Riders, London Lions, a team based out of Manchester, Newcastle Eagles, Sheffield Sharks, and the Surrey 89ers.
