Bristol Flyers head coach Andreas Kapoulas is "very confident" the club can sell out a new 3,600-seater basketball arena set to be built by Ashton Gate and help the team realise its full ambitions, domestically and on the continent.
The venue is part of plans for a £200m ‘Sporting Quarter’ development - including a 232-room hotel, 125 apartments, offices, shops, a gym, a club museum, and a multi-storey car park, which were approved by Bristol City Council this week.
Coach Kapoulas said the larger venue would be a “gamechanger” for the British Basketball League (BBL) franchise, which currently plays to a capacity home crowd of 750 at the SGS College Arena in Filton. He added the move would allow the Flyers to achieve their ambitions of playing in Europe, and to be closer to their Bristol Sport affiliates Bristol City and Bristol Bears.
"It will be the third largest venue in the BBL and means we will be able to attract talent and extend our academy pathway and community provision of the sport," Kapoulas said. "The Sporting Quarter will provide a minimum of an extra 40,000 hours of community sport which is huge as we know how the much desperate need there is for community access to sporting facilities.”
Having coached in the city for around 18 years, Kapoulas said he had seen “a real appetite” for basketball develop in Bristol.
“You can see it with boys and girls in our community programme and all the outreach programmes that we’re running. You can see the junior club, the women's team, our second men’s team - the programme has grown so much, and there is a real appetite," he added.
“You can see it with our sell-out crowds and we’re very confident that we would be able to sell out the 3,600 seat stadium. We really believe in what we do here, and the city loves to see a very successful basketball team.”
Kapoulas suggested the Flyers wanted to confound predictions they’ll finish bottom of the BBL this year - and challenge for a championship. The team finished fourth in UK basketball’s top professional division last season, before bowing out in the semi-finals of the play-offs. They have tipped off the 2022/23 campaign with two home wins over Manchester Giants and Sheffield Sharks.
Asked whether the Flyers could reach even greater heights in the competition this season, Kapoulas referenced some pessimistic pre-season predictions made by some BBL “legends”.
Former BBL champion turned pundit Drew Lasker and Team GB Olympian from 2012 Kieron Achara forecast the Flyers to finish in dead last out of 10 teams, while recently retired Sheffield Sharks veteran Mike Tuck had them just one place better in ninth.
Kapoulas told BristolLive: "[Before the season started] there were some predictions by some legends of the BBL, and I think they had us at last spot. We don’t want to think too far ahead, one game at a time.
“Certainly last year was a great season for us, we finished fourth and certainly we have aspirations. We want to try and compete for a championship, but at the same time it’s a process, we recognise that. We want to focus on the next couple of games and see where we are.”
In addition to this day job with the Flyers, Kapoulas is also an assistant coach with the Great Britain men’s national side, which competed at EuroBasket this summer - for only the fifth time in the near 90-year history of the sport’s top European competition.
While the team lost all of their five games in the group stage, Kapoulas said it was still an “unbelievable achievement” to qualify for the tournament.
“In terms of British basketball, it’s on the rise. There are challenges for British basketball, funding being one, facilities being another one, but you can see basketball growing at the moment, with teams like London Lions and Leicester playing in Europe, you can see 777 has come in and invested in the league," he added.
“I think it’s a growing market. There’s a lot of pockets where good things are happening, Bristol being one of those pockets, and they’re all over the country. We’ve just got to keep on developing the sport. Certainly the national team making it to the EuroBasket was a great success and hopefully we’ll be in the next one as well.”
This year’s EuroBasket was one of the most anticipated in recent memory with three All-NBA First Team members representing their countries, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks and Greece, Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets and Serbia, and Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks and Slovenia.
Team GB were drawn in the same group as Kapoulas’ home country Greece, but Antetokounmpo - a two-time NBA MVP and champion in 2021 - was rested for the game between the two sides.
Kapoulas admitted it was “a little bit disappointing” to not see the ‘Greek Freak’ play against his side, adding the GB coaching staff has drawn up “a good game plan against him”.
“I would have liked to see the Greek team go and win the whole thing if Team GB could not do it. But they went out of the competition as well, which shows how difficult it is to win a medal at that type of level.
“It was one of the best European Championships in recent years, with a lot of NBA players, Giannis being one of them, it was just a great experience.
“Maybe disappointed a little bit that we wanted to see if our scouting plan would have worked against him, but at the same time, it was unbelievable to be around him, in the hotel and at the rest of the games as well.”
