The Basketball Lower Division Leagues will suffer a big set back due to financial difficulties organisers are experiencing at the moment.
The Lower League Management Committee (LLMC), which oversees the activities of the three Leagues below NBL that is Men Division One, Men Division Two and Women Division One have postponed this weekend games.
LLMC says that they can no longer go ahead with their schedule due to financial difficulties at the moment after most teams failed to complete their registration fees.
Brian Rugyendo who sits on the LLMC and also doubles as the Manager at Division One club Tropical Royals, says that the league is not ready to operate on a deficit again as it was the case last weekend.
“There are no games this weekend mostly because of the finances,” Rugyendo told The-SportsNation. “As LLMC, we rely a lot on registration fees. Because of that not all teams had paid full amounts at the beginning. Some had paid the initial 50% but had not cleared to zero balance.”
“The entire last weekend we operated on deficits, we as LLMC had to come and chip in. We had to give the defaulting teams until Wednesday evening (yesterday) to clear but had not responded so we decided that we are not going to chip in again for these guys otherwise they will take us for granted.”
The breakdown of the registration fees requires a Men’s 1st Division team to pay Sh1.475m, while Division Two men and Division one Women teams pay Sh1.477m and Sh2.031m respectively, each.
Rugyendo says that normal work will resume next weekend but with strict and tough guidelines.
He stated: “If by Friday next week, a team has not completed its expenses, that game will be a walk-over because we will not have guarantee that they will pay later on. Other teams have met their obligations so we cant let them keep waiting yet they keep spending a lot of money like on tests, maintanance of players, training allowances etc.”
LLMC uses these fees to run the league through venue hires, paying grounds men, Security, Match officials etc.
Rugyendo says that the money they get from the clubs is not enough while their efforts to reach potential sponsors has been restricted by the fact that many of the corporate companies are still recovering from Covid19.
He adds: “Some teams had paid last year before the league was called off due to Covid19 and they are not required to pay again. So we kept telling the other managers during the Covid19 period to start depositing registration in installments so that when the league starts you are covered but many did not respond, for them its like they like last minute things or may be they did not have the money due to Covid.”
The League’s Regular Season that tipped off on April 17 is expected to end on June 20 per the fixture but with games getting postponed, there will surely be an extension before the playoffs. Rugyendo says that unlike NBL, Lower division is not under any pressure to end the season on time due to international engagements.
This Thursday, the players of the lower division teams are going to receive their Covid19 Vaccines at Kampala International Hospital.
It was also earlier argued that the games should not be played few days after vaccination due to the possible side effects that comes after as the body tries to build the immune protection.
