Hoops

NH: A-League booming

Thanks HO, I do get the cultural bind we have with the bat and the ball, I played for years and actually love the game.

I tried to watch it on TV, but without that crowd atmosphere and to be honest even the commentators couldn't get excited about it, I found myself turning the chanel over, just couldn't get into it.

I am sure many did like it, but I just don't get the reason they play in places where no one watches, then they get all this great coverage, but it's so bloody boring!

We beef up our game to make it exciting, it only goes for 2 hours and we can't get anyone outside in the general media to drive it, just a shame that's all...

Sorry for the rant, my point is that who cares about such a series played in no mans land while the NBL is being played here?

Mr Packer, who else/??

Well, then explain this one for me please? Aus v Pak in the cricket is being played in Dubai or some place.

Absolutely not one fan of either country in the stands.

Massive state of the art stadium, TV coverage to die for, cricket shows during lunch and tea breaks, highlights, radio all over it and interviews with cricket super stars from yesteryear.

Not one person there to provide any kind of atmosphere whatsoever and we talk about the demise of cricket in some forms (West Indies cancel a tour to India and will lose Millions of $$$ because of this), yet the money they appear to have and the publicity of that sport compared with basketball here is ridiculous!!

WTF???

The lack of international competition hurts the AFL and to a lesser extent the NRL.

@Frederick, I agree with what you have posted, it may well be a slog for some time, but we are trying and with some luck and planning I think there is a future here for basketball.

The NRL is almost at a ceiling in Australia, don't get me wrong I loved the NRL final this year, far more exciting than the AFL final, so boring.

Basketball is a world game though, not like the NRL or the AFL, so while they hold market share at the moment, it is world games such as soccer and hoops that have room to increase exposure and grow their portion of the market I believe.

Yes, it will be a slog, but we have something the AFL and NRL don't, world wide appeal...

NBL suffers from same problem as A-League TV wise in that the stay at home punter can easily switch to watching a better international league such as NBA or EPL. Therefore NBL has to really concentrate on making the watching live experience as good as possible.

As for A-League closing in on NRL, I think someone alluded to it correctly above, the NRL beats A-League both in terms of viewers and TV deal by about 20 to 1. Standard club game viewers are about 1,000,000 to 50,000. Even last year's A-League grand final could only attract roughly the same amount of viewers as a meaningless rep trial game (City v Country) for NRL on the same weekend. NRL has 4 out of the top 5 TV shows in Aust so far this year, I think A-League's entire season viewers might not equal the NRL grand final on its own.

But back to most important point which is NBL, I must admit I don't religiously watch it as much as I used to, not sure why. I think like most people on this forum I wish the NBL had great success like early 90s but not sure exactly what the answer is.

I agree with the NRL v A-League comparison, no issues there, the A-League are in front. TV ratings are also something I would consider a fair comparison over sporting codes with all things being equal.

However, to put it into an equal comparison model would require analysis of those statistics based on what drives them.

Therefore we must be fair and compare the promotional dollars, the media hype, the amount of money being spent on sallary caps to attract marque players and drive the initial interest to a point where equally we can compare the sports.

It is here that we struggle (basketball), IMO this is where we need to improve before we can even begin to make comparisons. Can't put the cart in front of the horse here, we need to initiate the interest and build our sport from the ground up like the A-League di a number of years ago...

Yes, I don't think you can compare the two.

My comparative sentiment was more in regards to the NRL, whose attendances seem to be declining pretty quickly.

I love the soccer, I also love the basketball, gridiron, cricket, football, league etc... I guess I love sport!

Yes, the A-League is getting it right, however comparisons with the NBL can be decieving, especially if we are looking at crowd paticipation numbers.

You cannot compare stadiums and their capacity, the open air environment of a 25-50,000+ seat arena with that of an indoor stadium with up to 20,000 capacity.

Conceptually and the fact that they are both world games with huge potential in the market place, yes there are comparisons, but please make apples v apples, not comparing attendances.

Wellington will be gone by 2016 as well.

It's doing something right. I hate 'soccer' and found myself watching the last 15mins mainly because of Villa - great equalizer.