BSE Global's Brooklyn Basketball Training Center hosts a social uplift event, but mainly $65/hour youth classes, with murky info on financial aid.
So, is the Brooklyn Basketball Training Center, in the former Modell's store across Flatbush Avenue from the Barclays Center, a place for social uplift? Or for pursuit of profit?
Probably more of the latter, though BSE Global, which operates the center (and owns the arena company and the Brooklyn Nets/New York Liberty), surely wants to emphasize the former.
Consider: the Training Center last Dec. 6 hosted an event for more than 60 youths sponsored by Common's Free to Dream initiative, in partnership with the Brooklyn Nets and the Social Justice Fund established by BSE Global owners Joe and Clara Wu Tsai.
Probably more of the latter, though BSE Global, which operates the center (and owns the arena company and the Brooklyn Nets/New York Liberty), surely wants to emphasize the former.
Consider: the Training Center last Dec. 6 hosted an event for more than 60 youths sponsored by Common's Free to Dream initiative, in partnership with the Brooklyn Nets and the Social Justice Fund established by BSE Global owners Joe and Clara Wu Tsai.
(See NetsDaily's Common and the Social Justice Fund team up to help Brooklyn, which noted that some students came from Paterson, NJ.)
As one mentor and facilitator wrote, "Peer Leaders received sweaters, shirts, notepads, satchels, suite tickets to the Brooklyn Nets game, a courtside experience and free food."
Cross promotions
It involved "inspiring keynotes, interactive workshops, and a premium game-day experience at the Barclays Center," watching a Nets game. As the Instagram post shows, they got custom gear promoting both Free to Dream and the Nets.
Free to Dream thanked its partners at American Student Assistance (ASA) for "making this event possible." So what does that mean?
Maybe ASA paid the students' expenses, while BSE Global and the Social Justice Fund--which might be thought of as an alternative BSE Global "platform"--supplied the space, the gear, the tickets, and the public relations documentation.
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| Screenshot from Instagram |
About the clinics
Meanwhile, others are paying big bucks for access to the space. Brooklyn Basketball charges $65/hour for basketball clinics, while remaining cagey about how much financial aid might be available.
A reviewer on Google complained:
"Yes, we have a financial aid program separate from the payment plan," she replied.
A reviewer on Google complained:
They raised the prices by $130 from the first season to the next. In the summer, they had advertised on their website to ask “financial aid” via email and so I did. There is no financial aid, only payment plans to split the cost in two ($520 in the first season).I queried BSE Global and got a response from BSE Global's Marissa Shorenstein, Chief External Affairs Officer: "The winter semester is longer than the fall semester. Classes are the same price."
Indeed, it's ten weeks rather than eight weeks, so the extra two days account for that $130 cost, at $65/class.
I asked: "Is there any financial aid? If so, how much (as a percentage of cost, or range) and how many people get it?"
"Yes, we have a financial aid program separate from the payment plan," she replied.
I can understand why they might not want to be fully candid, but that non-response leaves a lot murky.
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