Playing profits

Like most things in Lebanon, it all began with sectarianism. Or, more accurately, with one basketball team’s efforts to break free from the yoke of patronage.  The year was 2001 — the Syrians were rounding up opposition activists in unprecedented numbers, the South was basking in its freedom and basketball was booming in Lebanon. Riding the crest of the B-ball wave was Hoops Club, an academy and sports center in Downtown Beirut, which took the opportunity to turn the sport’s new popularity into hard cash. “To have our competitive team be self-sufficient, and not reliant on any political party, our academy had to be money making,” says Yassem sKanso, founder and president of Hoops Club and previously a player with the Sporting team. “It took time for Lebanon to adopt the idea of the business of sports because sports games were usually subsidized by political entities, and this discouraged the