Accelerating Sports For All
Neptune Basketball Club
Blackpool, Co. Cork
IRELAND’S OLDEST BASKETBALL CLUB. A STADIUM THAT BELONGS TO THE COMMUNITY.
There is a reason people in Blackpool talk about Neptune the way they do. Founded in 1947, it is the oldest and most successful basketball club in the country, and the only one with its own stadium.
Neptune Stadium has been their home since the early 1980s, and on any given week it’s the busiest building in the area: three courts, a gym, games, training, bingo, community events, a coffee dock, a physio room even the exam hall for the university up the road. Somewhere between 120,000 and 150,000 visits pass through our doors every year.
Neptune is a basketball club, but in truth it is much more than that. It is a local meeting place that happens to have hoops.
After four decades of that kind of use, the stadium had earned a proper overhaul. Their redevelopment is the biggest step the committee have taken in a generation: new flooring and seating, reconfigured and refurbished rooms, energy-saving retrofit upgrades and all the mechanical and electrical work works needed to bring the building forward.
“We’re a club run by volunteers, and we put our own shoulders to this, half the trades people on site are our own members giving their time for nothing. What we needed from a lender was someone who’d back that spirit rather than question it, and that’s Clann Credo to a tee. They’d seen us deliver before and they trusted us to deliver again. This redevelopment secures the stadium for the next generation of Cork kids and keeps the doors open for everyone else who calls it home.”
Ian O’Brien, Chairperson, Neptune Basketball Club CLG
This is about more than upgrading a building. It is about creating a better, warmer and greener home for every team, group and community member who uses it - and securing the stadium for the generations that follow.
The funding came together from several directions; the Community Sport Facilities Fund, a Community Recognition Fund grant, SEAI support for the energy works and grant aid from Cork City Council. But a project on this scale, much of it grant-funded and paid in stages, needs cashflow to keep the work moving and finance to bring the full project together.
Neptune had previously worked with Clann Credo, including capital works in 2021 and internal essential upgrading and refurbishment in 2024, so there was already a relationship, and an understanding of how the club operates.
Clann Credo provided a term loan to complete the funding and consolidate existing borrowing into one arrangement, alongside bridging finance against approved grants to keep cash flowing while grant claims came through.
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SO, WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR BLACKPOOL?
A stadium secured for the next generation. A warmer, greener and more accessible home for basketball and community activity, with more capacity for teams, groups and events. It means young people have somewhere to play, train and belong. It means families and neighbours continue to meet, volunteers continue to contribute and a much-loved community asset can remain at the heart of Blackpool for decades to come. When the work is complete, Neptune will have more than a refurbished stadium. It will have a stronger, more sustainable community hub - one capable of serving more people, supporting more activity and continuing to grow with the community around it.
1. Grant Aid
The Community Sports Facilities Fund, Community Recognition Fund, SEAI and Cork City Council provided the core grant funding for the redevelopment and energy works.
2. Impact Lending
Clann Credo provided the finance needed to bring the different funding streams together. Bridging finance kept cash flowing against staged grant payments, while a term loan completed the funding required for the redevelopment and consolidated existing borrowing into one affordable arrangement.
3. Philanthropy
The committee sought and secured local sponsorship from the business community, combined with pro-bono labour from the club’s own tradespeople, helping to deliver the full community ambition for the project - above and beyond what grant funding alone could deliver.
4. Earned Income
A strong and predictable calendar of activity - from memberships, events and facility hire to trading and other community services - creates the recurring income needed to sustain the organisation. The strength and reliability of this earned income is a critical indicator of financial sustainability and, importantly, of an organisation’s ability to service and repay impact lending over time.
