Eastern Canadian Basketball League owes thousands to players, coaches and businesses

The Eastern Canadian Basketball League racked up more than $180,000 in debt by the time its inaugural season ended abruptly in May, according to a league official, and nearly two months later, several players, staff, and vendors are still waiting to hear when — or if — they'll get paid.

David Tingley, former manager of business and basketball operations for the Moncton Motion team, says when the league started, everyone was excited.

He said they were told that the owner, New York-based Ravi Verma, was "financially viable and had big plans."

After the first couple of weeks when people didn't get paid, they chalked it up to "regular first-year issues," said Tingley.

He alleges explanations ranged from delays because the money was based in the U.S., to arenas being behind on their payments.

But as he and the Moncton coaches pushed for answers, those "quickly evaporated into … serious financial problems."

When the league announced in May it was cancelling all remaining regular season games and the championship tournament, it said it was to restructure and come back stronger and more secure in 2024.

The affected teams included the Moncton Motion, Saint John Union, Bathurst Bears, Truro Tide, the Valley Vipers, and Charlottetown Power.

"We don't want the city, the vendors, the sponsors, the fans, the volunteers to feel like it was in any way their fault for the end of the league," said Tingley.

"What went wrong here was a terrible business model," which he alleges was to rely on ticket sales and sponsorships. Ticket sales started strong at about 2,000 per game, then "waned a little bit," at around 700, he said, which he described as natural for a first year.

Tingley alleges he has not been paid a cent for the roughly eight weeks before the league ended and is out an additional $1,000 because he never got reimbursed for food and equipment he bought for some players.

Most players across the league have received only two of the eight weeks they're owed, according to Tingley.

Most of the coaches haven't been paid either, he said, and three businesses in Moncton alone have outstanding bills totalling about $86,000.

"If [the league] collected money from sponsorship, which they did, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if nobody got any money — vendors, players — where is that money?"