Sport in England

Basketball[edit]
Basketball is a minor sport in England. As of the 2006–07 season the top-level league is the ten team British Basketball League and second league is the twelve team English Basketball League. The teams are professional or semi-professional but have modest resources. Great Britain men's national basketball team, which was formed by the national basketball organisations of England, Scotland and Wales on 1 December 2005, have not achieved any notable success. Great Britain qualified for the 2009 European basketball championship after 28 years absence from any major international basketball event for any of the Great Britain's countries' national teams. At Eurobasket 2011 Great Britain recorded their first Eurobasket win en route to a 2–3 record, finishing 13th out of 24 teams.
On 13 March 2011, Fiba voted 17–3 in favour of Great Britain receiving their host nation spot at the 2012 Olympic games with one condition, they have until 30 June 2012 to decide on whether to merge the three nations that make up the team or disband after the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.^[8]
Field hockey[edit]
Hockey is a moderately popular recreational sport in England. The Great Britain women's hockey team won the 2016 Rio Olympics with over 10 million viewers on TV, the men's team won the hockey tournament at the 1988 Olympics. Women's hockey at International, Premier League and Conference League level is sponsored by Investec. The Men's England Hockey League and Women's England Hockey League contain very high levels of club hockey ability and usually at least two clubs from both the men's and women's leagues proceed to European Competitions. Each week highlights of that week's games get posted on YouTube.
Hockey's popularity is rising fast with the women winning the Rio Olympics in 2016 and the men winning the Azlan Shah Cup in 2017.
Ice Hockey[edit]
Ice Hockey is Britain's largest indoor spectator sport. It has a long history in the UK and it is reasonably well supported, with the larger teams attracting thousands of fans to every game. The main league is the ten-team professional Elite League, which has featured many former NHL players, predominantly during the NHL lockout season. At the moment the Great Britain men's national ice hockey team is in division 1 of the Ice Hockey World Championships. The team is ranked 23rd in the world in the IIHF World Ranking system.
Media support for ice hockey has improved on a national level, although the majority of news is still found on the internet. Sky Sports has been covering the Elite league for a few seasons, and starting in the 2010/2011 season they will be showing 8 live games and a highlight show every week; the reason this deal happened was due to the elite league attracting very large viewing figures and Sky seeing the Elite Ice Hockey League as a potentially big and popular league.
The Elite Ice Hockey League is well recognised around the ice hockey world, so much so that on 2 October 2010 the Boston Bruins of the NHL took on the Belfast Giants at the Giants Odyssey Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland