You Can’t Buy This!!! (Tip-Off)

Member Name: andimohr

Product:	Tip-Off
Date:	30/05/01 (103 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see article

Disadvantages: ditto

Well, it’s not in the shops anyway. Tip-Off is a mag about the wonderful game of British Basketball. So as such, it doesn’t exactly command a huge audience. Instead, Tip-Off employs vendors at most (if not all, I dunno) games around the country, kind of like Big Issue sellers but with a more interesting product (No angry comments about that- I buy the BI all the time).

So here’s a typical scenario. You’ve just shelled out £7.50 for your ticket into the game (no student discount, Grrrr) and as you walk into the main hall of the AVLC you’re collared by a woman and a lass clutching several copies of Tip-Off. (OK, so far this is hardly typical, it’s very specific to Bullets games but that’s what I know so I’m not apologising)

“Tip-Off?” They ask enquiringly.

“How much?” You reply, knowing the answer already, just trying nervously to buy more time.

“Two pound”

You hesitate, then before you know it you’ve said, “Uh…OK then.” You hardly notice your right hand fishing those two pound coins you just got as change out of your pocket and handing them over.

“Thank you” they say swiftly before heading off towards some other unsuspecting fool.

This is a very typical exchange in my experience. However, I do seem to have put a very negative spin on the whole affair, so before any of you start to think that Tip-Off is the work of the Devil, I better say something in it’s defence. (I have no evidence that it isn’t the work of the Devil, but it’s unlikely. He’s more interested in stuff like WWF).

First of all, as it says on the cover, it’s “No.1 for British Basketball” which is right. OK, so they have no competition and ergo have a monopoly on the market, but it’s still nice to see your team get a little recognition which is more than in every othe
r publication in the world.

The magazine feels very lightweight at first. It’s a measly 28 pages long, including covers. This is deceptive. In all fairness, they pack a lot of information into those 28 pages.

So what’s in Tip-Off? On Page 3, sensibly enough there’s the contents list with the Editors column. This is followed by about 8 pages simply labelled “News” by the contents list. Most of this is news about the 13 BBL teams, i.e. teams in the top flight, although there is some coverage of the lower divisions and Europe too. There’s also a couple of sections like letters, “fans eye view” and random competitions to win stuff like basketballs. There are quite a lot of items in here and there’s always something interesting.

Then you have what’s basically the magazine’s main features. There are usually 3 interviews of which one is normally an NBA player. The interviews vary in length from short snappy half side interviews to more in depth double spreads. The questions posed generally aren’t too probing so don’t expect fireworks. You’ll also get a poster or two usually. Lately Tip-Off has been devoting a regular page to the British teams in Europe (London Towers and Birmingham Bullets this year), but whether that item will be present when the season restarts remains to be seen.

“NBA News” is the magazine's lip service to the game across the pond. You get a decent amount of stats and standings as well as 3 or 4 short articles. Tip-Off has a tendency to orientate these short articles around the British trio of players (only one of these really counts as a true Brit: John Amaechi please stand up) in the NBA where possible. However, if you keep in touch with everything happening in the NBA this section is of little use. And NBA coverage isn’t hard to find really.

Pages 19-28 are pretty much all stats. British leagues only.
There are normally 3 or 4 pages of match reviews varying in quality and depth. One good point about these reports are that at the bottom it details all the game's scorers which to a sad sad man with no life like me finds very interesting. One bad point is that sometimes they don’t bother with the report and instead put “No match report received” so you have to wonder what the point is. There’s also individual player stats (points per game, rebounds pg, steals pg blah blah blah) for the BBL and tables and fixtures for every league in the country, including women’s leagues and to a limited extent the youth leagues. Finally there are contact details for every British basketball thing you can think of. But who cares what the address of the EBBA is? What does it even do?

Now the reason they fit all that stuff into the mag is that the use mostly very very ickle fonts. You can still read them (unless your eyesight’s really bad because you’re old) but it can get annoying sometimes.

Adverts. I don’t like adverts unless they are interesting. Adverts in Tip-Off are generally boring. So don’t read them. You only get 6 or 7 pages worth which is basically 20-25% advert content, far better than SLAM which I reviewed earlier (about 40% if I remember). But SLAM’s adverts are good sometimes. Nice and original. But that doesn’t matter. Go read that op after if you’re bothered. I don’t think you are. So thank you for wasting a small portion of your life getting to this point in the op.

Being a bit of a bball junkie, I’m fairly quick to find out news, mostly by means of the Internet. Which means that by the time Tip-Off comes out it’s no longer news any more. So basically it’s your call. Some people would say getting Tip-Off is a waste if you’re like me at all.

IMHO Tip-Off suffers from being too British. I just mean that articles are very bland,
you don’t get a lot of humour or originality. And then there are often a bunch of mistakes like sentences being left unfinished or player’s names being wrong and stuff. Not that that’s a British trait of course. It’s just annoying. And I wish somebody at TOHQ would discover the justified alignment button.

The quality of the photos is usually good. Only sometimes they aren’t and come out pixelly. Tip-Off is only half-colour too. The covers and some of the ads (typical) are in colour as are the posters and some other random pages. Some of the photos don’t come out too great in B&W.

So, do I think Tip-Off is any good? I’m undecided. I don’t think it’s worth a subscription. Especially at these rates:

£7.50 for 3 (taster)
£20.00 for 10 (half year)
£35.00 for 20 (full year)

That first one is pointless. They’re £2 each normally. What’s the point? An extra £1.50 for delivery? No ta. The most economical sub, a full year, still only works out at £1.75 per. Nope, think I’ll stick to occasionally getting one on matchdays. There’s plenty of room for improvement for Tip-Off but it’s not bad at all for such a minor publication.

Summary: