THE BBC has announced that eight British Wheelchair Basketball Women's Premier League (WBPL) games will be shown live by the broadcaster when the brand new competition kicks off this weekend.

The tournament will be breaking new ground as it is the first professional Para sport league in Britain and the first professional women's wheelchair basketball league in the world.

Worcester Wolves, Loughborough Lightning, Cardiff Met Archers and East London Phoenix are the four franchises who make up the league.

The games begin this weekend and Worcester will play their opening game at home against Loughborough in front of the BBC cameras at the University of Worcester Arena (1pm tip-off).

WBPL's chief executive Lisa Pearce said the broadcasting agreement was an important step to increase publicity for wheelchair basketball.

"Wheelchair basketball is an incredible sport," she said

"It is really important to us that as many people as possible are able to experience the thrill of the game - many for the first time ever as a domestic competition.

"With the new Women’s Premier League, the BBC broadcast commitment will help to profile elite women’s sport and create more opportunities for people to play across all levels."

Worcester head coach Simon Fisher, who led the British team at the Tokyo Paralympics last summer, is hopeful that after an initial settling in period, the game will start to get noticed around the world.

"It will take two or three years to really bed in, to make that impact and see how these players then feed into the GB team" he said.

"I think we could always make a good start and hopefully will this year by raising that visibility and showing the the programmes can work and can be effective.

"But I think in terms of the impact on the international stage, it does take time."

Captain Sarah Hope will be hoping for a winning start to the campaign on Saturday but also that people will come and "fall in love" wit the sport.

"You have that sort of, "it's a disability sport, I'm not sure about if" aspect," admitted Hope.

"But once you look at the chairs as just a piece of equipment the same as a bike or a canoe or anything else, you can see that it's a really exciting sport.

"I think this league is going to give people the opportunity to see the sport and once they see it, they will fall in love with it."