In the Men’s Basketball League, BC Nokia gets to the long-awaited new hall. Expenses will increase, but the arena is also expected to bring more fluid income streams.
Shiny surfaces, unseated benches, the smell of new things and bright lights.
The difference to the demolished old ballpark next door is perhaps more than night and day.
– Let’s start from the fact that you can breathe here, says BC Nokia’s captain, who lifted the Pantteri statue last spring Niko Mattila.
In addition to the arena, the European games are also new for Nokia in the coming season. The Champions League qualifiers start at the end of September in Turkey.
– That is also a new experience for me, so I’m looking forward to them. Even the last Yankees have been brought in, we will have time to train as a team for a month and then we will test where we will go, says Mattila.
Development of the match event in focus
The new arena will also bring higher costs with the European games. Last season’s Nokia played with a budget of less than 400,000 euros.
For example, the budget of the Karhu basketball league team in Kauhajoki doubled with the new arena to more than one million euros. A similar development is also ahead at Nokia.
– Yes, roughly, formulates the CEO of BC Nokia Näädät Oy, which runs the BC Nokia men’s representative team Nina Koskinen.
Advice on the new arena’s possibilities and growing income streams has been sought from neighboring Tampere, where ice hockey and soccer have been able to take advantage of world-class conditions.
– You have to focus on the match, that’s obvious. From the first game, it must not disappoint those who buy a ticket to the hall, says Nina Koskinen.
The spectator capacity of the new arena is 2,500 for basketball games.
Nokian Krp, who plays in the men’s F-league, and FC Nokia, who plays in the women’s Futsal league, also play their home games in the same arena.
Max Besselink returns to the marten shirt
If the starting season is in a certain way a new beginning for the club, that’s what it is To Max Besselink.
A few years ago, Besselink’s career was very much on the rise, but since then it has been quieter. Now the man is returning to Nokia.
– I have been injured for a year and a half now. Now I just want to get in shape, and I think Nokia is the best option at this point, Besselink points out.
Besselink does not set personal goals for the starting season.
– For me personally, the main thing is that we win games, nothing else.
The Men’s Basketball League season starts on October 4.