Belfast

Ice hockey in Northern Ireland had no top-flight home until two Canadian businessmen, Bob Zeller and Albert Maasland, registered Belfast Giants Ltd. in 1997 and steered the club into the British Ice Hockey Superleague for the 2000–01 season. Teal became the shirt colour by design rather than habit, chosen as neutral ground in a city where colours carry other meanings; the nickname nods to Finn McCool, the giant of local legend.

The Superleague collapsed in 2003 and took the Giants' finances down with it; local businessman Jim Gillespie stepped in to keep the club alive. A decade later came a stranger crisis: new owner Chris Knight turned out to be on the US sex offenders register, and the Odyssey Trust tore up the tenancy agreement rather than let him keep running the team. The Trust has owned the Giants ever since.

What survived both episodes is the trophy count. Nine British League titles, the most recent in 2025–26, sit alongside three EIHL play-off championships and six Challenge Cups. Adam Keefe threads through much of that record twice over: as a player his number 47 was retired, and as head coach he has kept the club winning long after he stopped lacing up. David Goodwin holds the club's scoring record and wore the captain's armband for years, while Jackson Whistle was named the league's most valuable player in 2024–25.

Cardiff Devils remain the team Belfast measures itself against, the two having met in EIHL play-off finals in both 2022 and 2023. The Giants play out of The O2 in Belfast, a venue built to hold 11,200, and go into the current season defending the title they collected in the spring.