Luleå Basket – top level in the North

STOP #1 – Luleå, Sweden

First stop on my quest to ‘find Nordic basketball identity’ – took me to northern Sweden and Luleå.

To find out what Luleå Basket is all about, and how their game night works and looks like.

Arena

OK – what can I say??

Walking from the city center to the Arena, it is easy and takes only few minutes. Something that is really convenient, you can spend the day in the town – and then walk to the game.

The Luleå Energi Arena looks just GREAT from the outside. Like a proper venue for professional sports – from the windows you see the team offices and trophies, etc.

You feel like you are coming to a big time event!

Inside

Through the doors, and you are in a lobby kind of area, ticket sales, snacks, few racks of fan merch.

For the merch, I kinda would have liked a hoodie – but wasn’t quite sure if there was anyone there to sell the items?? And felt a bit rude if I would just have taken one.

But the lobby area is nice – you can hang around for a while, and on the night in question. I could watch the Olympic Ice Hockey game on big screen.

Talking with Kadri-Ann Lass

After the game, had few minutes to talk with Kadri-Ann Lass, she is Estonia National Team player and has played in Finland (BC Nokia) and Sweden (Luleå Basket) – as well as in southern European leagues.

Listen to the audio below to hear how she describes the differences between the Finnish and Swedish leagues, how she sees the current situation in Women’s basketball in the North, how things are in Luleå for her and much more.

AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH KADRI-ANN LASS :

3 1/2 minutes that are definitely worth listening to !!!

Game area

Walking up the stairs, you get to the venue proper.

There is a VIP restaurant right there, and 90 minutes before the game, it was pretty full and looked like the Head Coach of the team was chatting to diners.

The seating and court – from a photographers point of view – these are laid-out very nicely. It all looks sleek and professional… a good mid-sized venue. (well – big for domestic games!)

Talking to staff – Luleå normally gets around 1000 spectators to a women’s game in regular season. But this season has been a bit less apparently (tonight there was 883 spectators).

Photo desk/Positions

I was guided to the place where I can leave my bags – and there was a table for us photographers.

Local photographer was friendly and we chatted about photography.. (SURPRISE!!)

As a photographer you really appreciate that the place where you leave your stuff is sort of away from the spectator area. Makes you always feel a little more comfortable that your stuff is safe, etc.

For photo positions – it was very free to move around, with-in the normal rules for us. Good amount of different angles as well, under the basket, baseline, in the stands.. NICE!

Game Experience

Nice intro show, player entrances with little pyro-techs, good use of music and lights. Definitely something I will talk to some Finnish teams about – it really worked nicely in my opinion.

During the game, a little more ‘commentary’ from the announcer that I personally like, but it fitted nicely to the game/mood/etc.

There was few ‘special occasions’ on intervals – one proposal on the center court, then some ‘heart thing’, tennis ball throwing competition… just nice few bits to fill the breaks.

Fan appreciation

This I LOVED!!! to see – as soon as the game was about to end. Volunteers started to fold out tables and gather chairs. And after the final whistle – tables/chairs on the court, posters with players pics there, pens.. and after players give High5’s to the fans.

The fans go and get the players autographs on the poster – or on their arm.

Just what you want to see – not a huge outlay of financial costs to print few hundred A3 posters for the season. And then to have players sign them after the games… nice little memory for the young fans .. which they can hang on their wall back home.

Then again – I did see a game which Luleå won, so… I am not sure how this goes if they lose a game???

Catering/Snacks

As mentioned earlier, the lobby had some pop corn, etc snacks being sold. And inside the venue there was a similar kind of snack sales booth – did not try/test anything myself. As I think the payment was with Swish .. a sort of mobile payment app they use in Sweden.

But the usual, crisps, chocolate, buns, sweets, soft drinks.. nothing special.

Then again – there is the proper restaurant so….