Leicester Riders: The basketball team taking on knife crime

Leicester Riders are about more than just basketball. The club has been around since 1967, and beyond the professional game, they’ve become part of the community. Their players don’t just hoop, they walk into schools to teach children financial literacy, how to stay healthy and how to protect their mental health. 

“The organisation is somewhere to go to enjoy, engage, be employed,” says chairman Kevin Routledge. Basketball is the vehicle. “You can’t win them all the time, can you? You have to wake up the next day in spite of the loss and do things positively. Give something back.”

Their charity, Leicester Riders Foundation, has done just that. It delivers a range of programmes focused on youth engagement, education, health and social inclusion, working closely with schools, local authorities and community organisations. 

“In 2016 the foundation set up a company to build and operate an arena, and we were the first to do that,” says Routledge. The 2,500-capacity indoor arena has become a community focal point. “It’s used by the college next door, for big basketball matches, darts, snooker, boxing, and other shows that come and go.”

Big Issue Invest (BII) has been a funding partner to Leicester Riders Foundation and a proud supporter of the organisation’s growth since 2019. 

Through this partnership, BII is helping to enable a sport-led model of community development – one that not only creates positive opportunities for young people but also strengthens the long-term social infrastructure of the region. In recent years, residents have been fighting to keep Leicester’s community hubs open as playgrounds and youth spaces have faced closure. A recent report in the Leicester Gazette highlighted a loss of safe spaces for young people in the city. 

Routledge believes that basketball can help young people bounce back. One after the other, he lists why basketball is the way forward. “It’s energetic, you can play indoors, it’s more comfortable, it’s a physical game, but it’s not like you’re trying to smash them over in rugby or kick them off the park in football.”

Most importantly, getting into a sport keeps kids busy, which he says is essential to keeping them safe.  “They don’t need to be great players, or even aspire to be,” says Routledge. “If you just keep them occupied, that alone makes a difference.”

From walking into schools, the foundation realised they could offer more than basketball coaching. Their anti-knife crime initiative, ‘Carry a ball, not a blade’ saw over 100 sessions over the three years it was running. Young people got to engage with the sport and the players would open up a conversation about knife crime: What do they know about it? Do they worry about it? 

Read more:

• How getting young people into sport could save the UK millions
• Most girls drop out of sport by puberty. Teenage athlete Issey Kyson is on a race to change that
• We started as a boxing gym – now we’re a whole community

Children wanted to hear life stories, schools wanted to teach them life skills, and the foundation wanted to inspire kids to work hard. This led to their two school programmes, Hoops for Health, where they tackle child obesity with primary students, and Foundations 4 Life, where secondary students are taught interview skills, budgeting and stress management. Both sessions are rounded off with a bit of basketball and tickets to a professional game.

There’s more need than ever to drag children off their phones and back into the real world. Routledge says: “It’s frying their brains, and AI is only going to make it so much worse. We use every opportunity to engage at whatever level. We want to be seen as a place where you can enjoy yourself, have fun. We want to be seen as an employer that looks after its people and is a good place to work and grow, to reach your potential in whatever area.”

Sustaining this work is a constant battle but Routledge wants people to see the benefits. 

“It’s easy to sit in the office and say ‘I’m too busy’, but actually, we’d be much better out there talking to customers, understanding their needs because it’ll just build a reputation for us as a good place to go to.

“I hope that people see us in a positive light, that when they engage with us, it’s a good experience and they come out feeling better as a result.”

Find out more about the Leicester Riders Foundation

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