That's the amount Brighton and Hove council are spending to make sure that the club have the best possible facilities when the Bears return to the town after 15 years in Worthing in September.

They are footing the bill for a wooden sprung floor, Olympic-sized goals and a state-of-the-art scoreboard at the 3,600 capacity Brighton Centre and David Fleming, head of leisure services, believes it will be money well spent.

"We could have done it a lot cheaper, but we decided that if Bears are going to return to Brighton then we'd make it look good," he said.

"When the kids watch NBA on the TV that's what they see, it's what we want them to see when they come to the Bears. If it's an inferior product they will stay at home and watch it on TV instead."

The council clearly believe their investment will be repaid by the publicity generated by a successful team playing in a town whose sporting profile has steadily declined since the early '80s when Bears first played in Brighton and Albion were riding high in the old first division.

Moving down the coast won't guarantee they are instantly transformed from a bottom-of-the-table side, who have lost 38 of their last 39 games this season, into a team capable of challenging the 'big six' arena-based clubs, but it will help.

It's no coincidence that this season's Budweiser League pacesetters Manchester Giants and Sheffield Sharks, whose title decider on Friday is likely to attract a 10,000 crowd, are based in purpose-built arenas.

So too are their nearest challengers: Birmingham Bullets, Newcastle Eagles and the London-based Leopards and Towers.

Already, co-owner Romek Kriwald has pledged that the budget available to new coach Charles Luke-Bannerman will be more than double this seasons as Bears make the most of the increased gate receipts and extra commercial opportunities the move to a bigger venue presents.

Discussions with the best of Bears' current squad including Jon Gaines, who has averaged nearly 30 points a game this season, are already underway and Bannerman hopes the new squad will be finalised by the end of June.

"We have an increased budget, including the opportunity to go to the States to have a look at players and we have already been in touch with several agents," said Bannerman.

"Moving to Brighton is going to help us get the best, it's a great opportunity for the club to take off and I think the players we bring in will enjoy playing here."

Bears have decided to make a clean break from Worthing, even though they had the option of playing some of their matches there when the Brighton Centre is unavailable.

Instead they will decamp to the 1,100 capacity Triangle Centre in Burgess Hill which was opened only last week by the Queen.

"Any venue we used as a fall-back needed to match as closely as possible which we will play in at Brighton," added Kriwald. "There is a brand new floor at Burgess Hill and the environment there replicates as closely as possible what they will be used too."

Bears believe they are moving into the big time and are anxious to enjoy the sort of success they had in the early Nineties when they were cup and play-off winners.

The bottom line is that they only feel they can achieve that in Brighton.

Added Kriwald: "The biggest criticism we have had from fans has been about poor results. The club would have survived with the sort of players we've got this season had to we carried on in Worthing, but we don't simply want to survive.

"We want to repeat the success we have had and there is very little prospect of doing that without moving."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.