Rockets (Germany)

History

The Oettinger Rockets were formed as the first team of the club Gotha e.V., which was founded on 2 July 1998. The team began in the Bezirksliga and rose to the fourth-tier 1. Regionalliga in 2005. In the 2009–10 season, the Rockets reached the national third level, the ProB. They became ProB champions in the 2011–12 season and moved up to the second-tier ProA. From the 2016–17 season, the team played at the Messe Erfurt. On 3 May 2017, promotion to the Basketball Bundesliga was secured by defeating Niners Chemnitz in the ProA semi-finals. The team started the 2017–18 BBL season as the Oettinger Rockets, named after its main sponsor Oettinger Brauerei, but from January 2018 the sponsor left and the club became simply Rockets. The team finished 17th in its BBL debut and was relegated back to the ProA. In July 2018, the organization stated it could not play in the professional ProA. That same year, the second team won the 1. Regional League South-East and earned promotion to the ProB. Due to the loss of the main sponsor, the team sold its ProB licence to Basketball Löwen Erfurt and continued in the 2nd Regional League as BiG Rockets Gotha.