Hoops

Larry Kestelman Interview on Sky Business

I think you are spot on @swish, his interview was very specific in relation to what is going to be required going forward and how this business plan of his along with the best qualified people in the right positions will drive the league's future success.

We must remember that the A-League was in part saved by a businessman who has a passion for the sport he loves, so for want of a better description Larry is our Frank...

Definitely agree Swish, and I do realise the media is a business and the content they put has to generate $$$.

Absolutely its up to the NBL to win that back.

The general point I was making about the media giving up is that they did that when the league was still going strong (albeit when it first showed signs of started to wane a bit - going as far back as 1996)

From there the NBL began it's on-going struggle. Even though the number of teams was still high, crowds were still strong in some markets, and sponsors were still hanging around. It was the media's sudden lack of interest in my opinion that really stuffed the competition up. Which contributed to all the other problems the comp has had since (perception of it being dead, clubs folding etc)

I think NBL fans need to understand it is not upto the media to make our league attractive.
We have to earn their involvement or like soccer has done, buy it.

The mainstream media is made up of many individual businesses all trying to make money. They make money by having content that the know or expect will appeal to the market they are selling into. If their content sells then advertisers jump on board, becasue they want to advertise where the eyes are.

The AFL doesn't ask media to support it. The media want to be asociated with the AFL. The bid for the right to cover it. Every Tv channel knows their news service has to have an AFL story or viewers will watch other news services.

So effectivively even the AFL has to buy media coverage - they just don't have to do it directly. Public demand means businesses want to advertise around AFL, so they pay for it.

What KL has had to do is convince a TV station that our product will attract viewers.- the old screen it/ and promote it, and viewers will tune in. Based on recent evidence this is not an easy sell so if we end up with every game live on Foxtel, plus 1 game live on FTA plus quality live streaming ( potentially stealing viewers from TV) then I think LK has done a great job.
I also think he may have had to finincially back it to try to get it going.
Lets face it, LK is investing his money and has 3 years to make this thing return a profit. SO if he's investing his own money in getting games live on TV he's hoping it proves a winner so next time more channels actually want to bid to show NBL.
He's also investing in 'dressing up" the league so it scrubs up well on Tv compared to all its competitors.
I hope we NBL fans appreciate what he is doing and how much he is investing and don't start knocking him everytime we don't understand his logic or think he should have made everyone love the game.

What annoys me when interviewers, and people in general question what went wrong with the league is that a huge part of what went wrong was when the media gave up on the competition.

Its not all one way the fault of the NBL. When the media gave up on it, the league had pretty much no chance to stay relevant.