The Women’s
Premier League launches this weekend and live
BBC coverage provides a huge boost for the sport’s future
![Welcome to Britain’s newest televised pro league: wheelchair basketball](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d8210fec308200b57e85478adc905f35e369ab14/0_68_3893_2336/master/3893.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=4685c7cca35add3a8369b58fcbe080da)
‘I want it to be big,” says Jade Atkin of the Cardiff Met Archers. “I want people to be saying: ‘You’re on TV, we want to watch you’ and I want people to want to come and I want the sport to do well. We all want the sport to do well. And to be honest, I think that can happen.”
The sport is wheelchair
basketball and Atkin, a Great
Britain international, is going to be part of a revolution. When the Women’s Premier League taps off for the first time this weekend it will not just create a new professional league in women’s sport, it will be the first in women’s parasport in the
UK. Four teams – Worcester Wolves, Loughborough Lightning, East
London Phoenix and the Archers - will compete for the title and the BBC is committed to showing eight games live, including May’s final.