Hoops

Gaze: NBL broken, Shutdown and Regroup

Gaze is on the BA board which gets the NBL rights handed back to it if the league shuts down......,

The A-League shut down did not work because of Lowy money as he only owned part of one club (controversially) for 3 years, it did not work because of government money. It was a loan and it was fully repaid with the 1st, very modest TV deal. It worked because of the very many things that differentiate football from basketball in this country (scale, scope and a million other to detailed to mention) and two other key ingredients (1) the right business model and (2) a unified vision and great leadership. A shut down was an option for the NBL a few years back. Not any longer in my view, however the current business model is a dog and as best I can tell the answer is staring basketball in the face but it's stakeholders are too scared to change.

That was a good listen

If it went to foxtel would they still put the games on NBL.tv??

Even if its on delay??

Roy Wards article today in the Age is indicating that its more likely to be NBL.TV and Foxtel as the front runners. I still hope they can get some free to air though.

"Negotiations include the league's live streaming with Perform Media, Fox Sports and possibly some of the free-to-air digital channels interested in showing games."

Hope you don't mind that I read your post anyway.

I agree that One/Ten's efforts with the NBL were piss weak. I will never understand why they put so little effort into making their own investment succeed.

Nah gotta go the NBL.TV model. They will broadcast portions of some games live and in glorious 16-colour CGA.
Sponsors will be queuing up knowing that the next 5 minute freeze might have their logo on it.

Gotta go FoxSports they actually care about the league, The will promote the league like no other. Will play everygame live and will play replays for those who missed them.

You clearly said only 1 team is making a profit which is clearly wrong.
Pretty simple.

Sorry for the tangent but it is staggering to me that the Cats didn't make a profit this season. Huge membership, attendance, and ticket prices somehow still didn't land them in the black? Wow.

Sorry for the tangent but it is staggering to me that the Cats didn't make a profit this season. Huge membership, attendance, and ticket prices somehow still didn't land them in the black? Wow.

NZ players are cheaper

And the segment on The Project was shit

Wortho got cutoff and Gaze had 2mins to toot his own horn

*spoiler alert*

My take on things at the moment is here - http://www.theroar.com.au/2015/03/11/nbl-one-problem-doozy/

Basically no matter what the league does from here, it needs to accept that even throughout the glory years the league has never truly worked as a TV product.

So it's simple. You either take a Fraser Neill esque approach and take a sledgehammer to the TV issue by coming up with a model that potentially does work on TV. Or you accept the obvious limitations and re work the current model to work around those limitations.

As it stands, the league is in neither camp and is in fact hoping that a dream TV deal will come without any structural change. I don't like that approach. But more importantly, investors in Brisbane and Melbourne seem to have rejected that approach and clubs in Wollongong and Townsville are quite evidently not thriving under that approach.

Are you on drugs koberules? Cairns are the only team making a profit? WTF.

Is that for real, koberulz? Are you saying that the Wildcats were not profitable this season? Because if so that is pretty damning.

I don't dispute that he has positive intentions.
I'll leave it at that.

Wortho will be on The Project tonight.


*prays his appearance does more good than harm*

I dont think imports are major the major cost, maybe the Childress types are, but in general you can get a good value for money import.

In recent years we have had imports such as Hurdle, Henry, on what was rumoured to be on minimum or close to salaries $40-50k, whilst there production matches (or is close to) many of the better Aussies who earn closer to $100-150k.

Also had guys like Rotnei Clarke, Kevin Lisch (first season) going back a bit further to say Ebe Ere (in first season), Willie Farley (in first season) rumoured to be on less than $100k whilst having MVP level years, which is excellent value for money.

For example the 36ers could probably have fielded a team of (the following) for similar price, (possibly cheaper) than what they ended up spending

C DJ/Schenscher
PF Motum/Petrie
SF Creek/Montreal
SG Gibson/Hurdle
PG Wilson/Henry

To me thats a much deaper team.

It also helps force the salary of some Aussies down, you could say to a Gibson or Schenscher that imports like Lance Hurdle and Scott Morrison gives us 80% of what you do for around 50-80k, so we are not paying you more than that, and give them a take it or leave it offer, as you can literally replace them with imports if there are no restrictions. Which is another way to bring roster costs down.

Gives a better balance of power to the players and clubs and makes it more affordable, whilst potentially increasing the talent pool of the league.

One issue is at the moment our better Aussies guys like Gibson and Wortho can demand big $$$ whilst providing good but not great production, and end up being over paid as teams cant let them go for an import as you are only able 2 per team so decent Aussies are rarer and cost a premium, which creates a imbalance in cost v production.

Allowing an unrestricted amount of imports would bring this balance back and you can simply get the best player you can afford.

Imports are the major cost, in the interim cut them down to one per team and include an Asian player in the squad, the level of Aussie talent will make up numbers and investors will see there is one eye on the future. Then bring in two imports once we have investor confidence back.

Excellent point Uwe - the ladies might be too rough. Terrible idea after all.

Marvin seems somewhat confident of an 8 team comp and Brisbane ? WTF

"I do believe Wollongong are very well managed and have good ownership backing.

I believe they will survive and there will be no issues with them participating next year.

If Townsville don't survive, then it is likely that we will still have an eight-team competition, with hopefully Brisbane in the mix for next year.

I don't believe there is any risk to the competition. It's business as usual over here."

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/sport/basketball/a/26591221/marvin-backs-nbl-survival/

Any idea that gets rid of Cairns is hilarious considering they're the only profitable team in the entire league.

A 6 team competition isn't the be all and end all, although less home games means less revenue from ticket sales. Marvin recently said in an article that they couldn't really afford to have any less than 14 home games or they run the risk of not breaking even. Or do we go the monotonous road of playing each team 5 times a year to compensate.

Maybe the NBL board are done with regional teams and don't see them as being financially viable and are going with less teams in big markets.

Merge Cairns/Townsville.... why? Why merge a successful franchise with one's that not working???
You know T'ville is 4 hours away from Cairns right? Why not merge the Hawks with the Kings - it's closer after all!

If the T'ville community can't support their own team, they're sure as hell no going to support a Cairns team.

This idea makes my multi-gender league idea look like rocket science - and i was taking the piss!

Sweet baby Jesus on an elephant........

HO: at the moment that's as good as it gets:)

Still a better idea than shutting the league down for a year!

HO: gender equality. Same sex leagues are outdated..............

Just out of interest, are BA doing anything to expand the SEABL??

Does the SEABL have any TV or online streaming for the upcoming season?? I liked when they had some games on youtube in previous seasons.

Maybe BA could pump a bit of $$$ in it and see if they could make it a strong winter league, and take advantage of the things that people say the NBL should go back to winter for, ie NBA/major Euro leagues are not being played, not many big $$$ leagues around so players can be gotten for less $$$, etc. But build slowly, mostly through reinvestment of any profits made, to ensure it stays sustainable.

I like Isaacs 2 tiered idea, i wonder if anyone at NBL HQ/BA has seen it/thought about it and would run the lower tier pretty much as he and Flinders80 have suggested, i like the idea of no import restrictions which insures you get best value for money you can within your budget on every spot on the roster.

I still reckon the NBL should go down the let Larry K run/finance/own the whole thing and see what he can do, couldnt be worse than whats happening now.

I loved Fraser Neills vision too, it was headed in the right direction, pity some of the power players didnt agree, i wonder if SEABL will run with some of the ideas, especially given they already have teams in tas, Brisbane, Canberra, etc. Could they go after the TV deal/play all week nights idea Neill was going for??

I still dont understand why the NBL hasn't looked at my suggest at combining the WNBL and the NBL and running mixed teams............................................

*sigh*

Regarding the TV deal, it's worth pointing out that the current deal is zero televised games on no TV channels, not a game on One and a game on Ten each week.

That deal is over. They have to sign a new one, and there's no reason to believe Ten are interested.

^Pretty much...

Remember this: http://www.botinagy.com/blog/independent-nbl-the-way-to-go/

And this: http://www.nbl.com.au/article/id/6zwo94u4iwgx1pxenbn5cfuc3

In 2013 we had a go at doing this:

Following three years of successful marketing and increased fan involvement through game attendance and TV viewership, Basketball Australia is preparing to take the next step to ensure the successful growth of the National Basketball League (NBL).

In conjunction with the various NBL clubs, the board of Basketball Australia will produce a White Paper that examines options for the future strategic growth of the NBL.

The NBL White Paper will build on the previous NBL Strategic Plan which set short to medium forecast targets for 2014/15. The new White Paper, which will be endorsed by the board of Basketball Australia and the NBL, aims to define and evaluate longer term strategic options, with the aim of providing a positive course of action which will provide the league with the best opportunity at financial success.

Basketball Australia Chief Executive Officer Kristina Keneally said: “Since the NBL joined Basketball Australia as Members in 2008, the League has gone from strength to strength.

“The NBL is back on free-to-air TV with Network Ten; fans now enjoy for the first time in the League’s history access to every game live and on-demand through the NBL.TV digital platform; and the Sydney Kings have returned to the competition.”

Ms Keneally believes that the White Paper would help build on the NBL’s recent successful growth and will build a strong platform for future financial success.

“Put simply, the White Paper is about building a stronger National Basketball League,” Ms Keneally said.

Does anyone actually know what the 'White Paper' said? There was obviously a legitimate reason why BA and the NBL split, I can only conclude it was for the interests of the NBL owners, the franchises and not the league!

If I am wrong, fine, but the owners model is failing, it is not sustainable for many reasons...

Cut the season to just home and away and pay accordingly. Time the season so it dosnt clash with europe, asia etc. With shortened season the better players can go overseas and the rest play local. Might be incentive to better players to come home for a couple months playing holiday. Plus quick cash for imports.

Shut down ? Hanging off your tree mate

Put something on the table to help the league , stop flexing .

Gaze is also an administrator also - he sits on the BA board.

Naive of Gaze to say this. He is a basketball commentator, not administrator. Also disrespectful to all clubs still going.

Issac is spot on. You shut it all down and:

1) You lose corps to other sports and there is no guarantee they come back.
2) starting again like the A-League only works if you have million dollar private backers and Hyundai pumping in LOTS of cash.
3) there aren't alot of sporting teams in Oz making money (out side of league wide support from Tv deal $$). If the AFL can't find a model where each team is individually sustainable, how will the NBL?
4) starting from scratch is harder than it seems, you've got to resell your product from scratch in the local markets. As soon as you lose market share it's automatically going to cost you at least $3 for every dollar you make to grow that back.


You can find a better model while the league is still running - Neill found one that didn't require a 'burn it to the ground' approach.

Gaze is right in that the NBL is broken, and I can agree with his comments with shutting it down for a year. However he could also be just saying this as a tactic to try and spur the league to get into action and do something now to save it before it gets even worse (if that's possible)

When Gaze speaks, everybody listens, unlike anybody else involved in the league. His comments have made news headlines on websites that don't normally give 2 cents to the NBL. A bombshell comment from him could spark some good logical decisions to be made, while also bring to light the issues of the NBL to the non-basketball community of Australia, who would otherwise not have a clue whats happening right now.

I think a major issue would be costs for the clubs if the league were to shut down. You still have to pay contracted players, coaching staff under contract, front office staff. Where is this money going to come from if there is no income? Sponsors will not be handing out any money for no return.

I love the idea of bringing Wellington in, have thought they should have done it for ages,

It also helps with parity also as it would split the NZ national team between 2 NZ teams, which i know is besides the point right now with all the other issues going on.

NZ seem to have better TV deals than we do in Aus, so that footage could be streamed, shown on tv in Australia.

Nothing to lose, everything to gain, i say bring on Wellington Saints.

HO, I understand the commercial attractiveness aspect.

But if TVL and Wollongong go down, you have a 6-team league.

It doesn't really matter if those teams are located in major cities, 6 teams isn't going to be commercially attractive either to the media.

I do agree with you that the aim is to have a sufficient number of teams AND for these to be in TV-friendly cities. But the key is to have a good base of teams and six simply wouldn't cut it.

"We have been here before. Wellington might have a good venue, be self sufficient, have nice hotel room etc.

But they do not add to the commercial attractiveness of the league. "

more attractive than a league with 4x teams or no league, yes.

what Macdub said....

I kid you not Nick Mills could have a team from Wellington in next season's NBL.

Instead of mulling over Brisbane, why not go with Wellington - they already have half the players, coach, stadium, investors and fans.

They are already in operation as a sustainable franchise with over 20 investors. A lot of those are major "gold" sponsors.

Look at the talent they could attract - Corey Webster would consider going to a Wellington team as they could make him their foundation "drawcard" so to speak. Leon Henry, BJ Anthony, great imports, they could throw big money at Kirk Penney if the Breakers don't have the coin. Isaac Fotu could come back and play. Tai Webster..the list goes on.

The Saints already get 4k to their games. The stadium is a beautiful modern arena. It is smack bang in the centre of the city too, would make great Friday night games. It has capacity for 5,600. The Saints could fill this up every game.

As for tickets and costs of going to Wellington from Auckland as part of a double-header NZ roadtrip. Flights operate out of Auckland to Wellington (the Night Rider) for $29. Leaves 11pm ish. Perfect for after their Auckland game.

In terms of accommodation, Ibis Hotel Wellington are a gold sponsor, I am sure they can help out with accommodation and logding of travelling teams at competive rates to make it work initially.

It is a short grab from SEN, but in that time Gaze hons in on the model and how the model doesn't seem to work! I tend to think that is kind of obvious, so what can the NBL do, surely not the same thing year in and year out?

I just posted in another thread that while still unsubstantiated, I had heard that IMG were going to but the league, run it and also pay for a free to air tv deal. If that's the case it could perhaps lead to the no comments from NBL headquarters and the apparent sitting on hands at this point in time