Hoops

Will the Brisbane Bullets be back in season 14/15?

@ bear, thanks mate. It's a shame that Geelong can't get that stadium as Geelong do love the us against them mentality in national sports and it solves the problem of what the name the city ie Victoria or South.

Still no naming rights sponsor ? That sucks but maybe they should try getting Rio Tinto as mining companies love to get their name out there as helping Australians and the community!

Melbourne Heart broke even last year.

@Paul

Those are the final TV figures. I posted some basic ones on the nblwiki but didn't go in depth with game by game ratings or city averages.

@Anon, it has been broadly posted that the NBL could improve in many areas of media promotion or in fact any kind of promotion of our game.

Could take a leaf out of the books of other sports for mind, but cash is alway an issue as advertising isn't cheap and as HO as stated above we can't seem to find a decent, long term sponsor either...

Hurts to say it, but the current Boomers/Opals v Tall Blacks/Tall Ferns series is an example of how poorly promoted the game is.

I heard a show on SEN (Melbourne Sports Radio), where the comentator didn't even know we were playing, OMG!!

Goes without saying that marketing and connecting with your local community is important, not sure that Victoria needs to be a part of that, however if a second team enters the Melbourne market they will have plenty of supporters who are not into the Tigers I am sure...

Why not wait for the Geelong Supercats to build a shit hot stadium and return to the league so we have a second Victorian side and maybe have them involved with the Geelong FC and maybe share sponsors?

No way should Townsville and Cairns merge as we need rivalries.

I hope Bullets return soon and I look forward to seeing if they can get back to filling huge arenas again!

I don't think international games are an indication of how much support a city gives to basketball; went to Boomers vs. China at Perth Arena this year and it was completely dead, half the stadium was packed away and it had no atmosphere compared to a Wildcats game and I blame BA for that!

Would love to hear Newcastle and Hobart/Launceston wanting back in NBL

Sh*t I posed that too early.. Those are the averages per game per capital city for FTA only (no NBL TV included) for 2012/13.

Sydney Ten/One 5573
Melbourne Ten/One 10794
Brisbane Ten/One 6963
Adelaide Ten/One 6435
Perth Ten/One 5928

It's vital to a new TV deal that the NBL get another Brisbane team.

And yes Brisbane is 2nd in NBL TV ratings (in capital cities).

2012/13 season:
1. Melbourne
2. Brisbane
3. Adelaide
4. Perth
5. Sydney

NZ as a whole obviously rates higher than Melbourne but I don't have their city breakdown figures.

Some games last year Brisbane actually out rated every other capital city. So there's fans there it's just trying to re-connect with them and get them to become Bullets (or whoever they may be) fans.

Good one HO! hahaha

I went to the Boomers game in Brisbane and there was around 4,400 there. It was at the entertainment centre but you hsve yo remember in Brisbane the Entertainment centre is far away from the CBD.

Yeah, merge two passionately rival teams that are about 350km from each other into the one team... turkey...

Apparently (someone correct me if I'm wrong) Brisbane rates better on television than any other city in Australia, even without an NBL team. So on that basis, the support must be there

Community model works for me in Cairns because I can drive my car 10 minutes from home, park in the CBD for free and walk 2 blocks to get to a game. In Brisbane you would have to catch a labryinth of public transport which would probably be running late and have to buy rubbish and expensive food at the game, so a $20 game for 2 hours becomes a $60 outing for 4 hours, and that's just for one person, let alone a family!

It's pretty freaking hard to be a national league these days without at least a representative in each of: Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth (now that we are within spitting of 2m).

So one way or the other, they're going to need to get Brisbane moving again.

Sorry, can't remember the link, anon, I think it was one of the more later articles, possibly discussing the need of BA to step in re: tv deal?

The Brisbane situation is an interesting one, as there is clearly no significant commercial support for a team there, so long term, the NBL would have to keep putting good money after bad in, which we know is not good for the league as a whole, and to be honest, apart from the die hards online, is there really the community support? They've had pre-season up there, they've had Boomers games and from memory, none of those were very well attended...

If you can't get good attendance to an event with ALL NBL teams there and also with the national team, especially in a "city" that is supposedly starving for basketball, is it really viable long term? Don't get me wrong, I loved having the Bullets to go see games when I was growing up in that part of the world, but if it's going to require the NBL to fund it long term and there's barely any money for teams already in the league, is that really what we should be focused on?

no they wont, no one from the private sector is prepared to pull money out of their pockets in Brisbane atm. we have tried almost half a dozen times and tried different models from community based models, to wealthy individuals to most recently taking up to 60 $30,000 investor's. we got a quarter of the way there.

Didn't Steve Dunn say recently that getting a team back to Brisbane was their top priority for next season and they'll do whatever they need to do to make it happen?

Nobody knows