Imagine the league with Brisbane, Hobart, Canberra & a 2nd Melb team right now. It be awesome!!

12 team league is ideal atm for interest without stretching depth, no more no less.

my teams that are nbl worthy are

cairns
townsville
gc
sydney
wollongong
melb
nz
adelaide
perth
12th and final team battle of tassie v wellington

It will be good to provied opportunities to gun guys like Lindsay tait and Kendall who currently dont have jobs.
brisbane
2nd melb team

36ers.

Kings seem vulnerable without a home!

I think a 2nd Melbourne team, a 2nd NZ team and Brisbane over the next 5 years would be a good fit.

AIS team of best Aussies under 23 wholly funded by the federal government would be nice.

Crocs also desperately in need of a new home stadium.. And looks like they won't get it anytime soon, if at all.

Would hate to see any team fold. It would kill a lot of the momentum gained from 3 years of stability and growth. And for once, the NBL looks to be more desirable than the A-League.

Not that I've heard anything official but it would seem from an outsiders point of view that the Gold Coast Blaze look shaky. A small and fickle fan base, high costs and lack of sporting culture would make it hard to succeed there.

The answer is the second Melbourne team.

Anon, where do you get your info from. I have not read or heard anything here in Tville about the Crocs being bankrupt. Our stadium needs fixing tha's true, but as to the other, as I said where did you get it from. The management has always been to tight with spending money to have none.

Anon, I was referring to the a-league losing 2 clubs this season, Gold Coast and Newcastle (maybe) rather than speaking about crowds. It's clubs are also bleeding money. If it wasn't for the government and Foxtel pouring in millions, the A-League would be nothing. They also lost North Queensland last season, so that's 3 clubs in 2 years gone.

As for crowds, they may have higher crowds - by a long way - but also play in large venues which they get no where near filling. They also enjoy a huge profile because it's soccer - a football code - so they really should be doing a lot better.

Not that it really matters when comparing the two sports, but just to point out, the Kings got over 6000 quite a few times, the Sixers averaged nearly 5000 which is impressive for a bottom team, and NZ have been getting big crowds when they play at Vector. So the NBLs best can definitely match it with the A-league, and on a much lower budget/profile.

He didnt say more desirable in terms of fan support, I think he was talking about sustainability of franchises. It's probably a little early to be calling the NBL sustainable just yet, but the A-League is making it look good at the moment.

you beat me to it Wildcat fan

A 2nd NZ team would be good just to divide the Tall Black players amongst 2 teams and even up the competition a bit more. The Breakers are a superior team because of this advantage.

Yeah Id like to see Melbourne, Brisbane and Wellington over the next three years, for commercial reasons and also to create opportunities for young players that just dont exist anymore. Then I think things need to settle before looking for more expansion.

BA's stated goal is 14 teams I think, so maybe they have their eyes on Newcastle and Hobart, but I think the league needs to be strong to absorb another two regional teams.

That's a great post anon, and I agree with everything you pointed out. This topic is debating the stability of the NBLs teams - who wiill be the next team to die - my prediction was Gold Coast, though I would hate to see that happen.

When I made the comparison to the A-league, I was stating my opinion that the NBL is currently more stable (hence more desirable) than the A-League from the fact that they have lost 3 clubs (ok Newcastle could be still around) in the last few seasons, while the NBL has consolidated, tightened their belts, and have rebuilt their league to be more sustainable (without government help).

I take it your an A-league fan, and that's great. I also like the Glory. However, the A-leagues clubs are losing far too much money to be safe. Average attendances of 11,000, whilst good, is probably not enough of a return since it's clubs are losing $4m to $7m annually. The Palmers, Tinklers and Sages of this world will eventually say enough is enough and pack their bags.

And just finally, you mentioned the 40000 crowd at the Victory v Sydney opening round. That was a great crowd, but also remember there was enormous hype surrounding it, and it was Kewell's first game v Emerton. All the marketing was thrown behind those two players. Now over the course of the season, Melbourne's crowds dropped, as they weren't winning. Of course credit must be given to such a big crowd, but it proved to be just a one-off.

Sorry for the long boring rant haha, just adding my 2c to this debate :)

I know what youre saying Wildcat Fan. No one is disputing the NBL's shoddy history of losing franchises, and no one is saying it wont happen again.

But the past three years have been settled, whereas the A-League has lost two, possibly three, and had to bail out a number of others. Given the amount of money that has been spent by Lowy, owners and the fed gov promoting the sport it should really be doing better.

I am interested to see where the two leagues head in the near future. Perhaps the A-League will have to modify itself more towards the NBL's current model of smaller spending.

Re expansion: in 1996 there were 126 spots for Aussies in the NBL, now there are 69. The only year where there was a similarly low number of spots for Aussies as now was 1979.

Sadly, the players now coming through and playing national champs and/or finishing college are the juniors from the highest participation years the sport has seen in Australia and we simply dont have professional jobs for them.

Sorry, that should read 112 spots in 1996.

#359060

Some context for you on your a-league post.

For a start, the failure of both NQ and GC cannot simply be put down to poor crowds because of poor performances.

They have both been acknowledged as terrible management decisions in admitting them in the first place. Other clubs, the unions and ex players have all criticised the FFA for allowing them in at a time (2008-9) when the view was that the sport needed to be making hay where the sun shines, ie, West Sydney.

The West Sydney bid at the time was largely tossed aside in order to take entry fees from NQ and GC.

BTW, GC performed extremely well in their first two seaons (finishing 3rd and 4th respectively) but crowds in the second and third years were close to league worst. There is little correlation between on field success and financial success in second tier Australian sport - the Kings showed that for almost a decade in the NBL, where they made great money but sucked on court.

I think your optimism about TV rights needs to be questioned. The A-league signed their current deal when crowds were booming. Since then the trending is poor.

Crowds this year are the fifth worst since the inception of the a-league. And this year, as I have pointed out here before, the conditions were 100% right for a significant lift, being:

- the removal of a crowd cellar dweller in terms of NQ
- the arrival of Emerton and Kewell (Kewell has proved to be a good away draw card)
- good performances from key market teams (MH, Sydney)

Removing NQ from the fixture, as both a home team averaging poor crowds and a visiting team no one wanted to watch should have lifted average crowds 10-15% by itself. My analysis is that the Kewell/Emerton lift impact has not been what it should have been. It will certainly not translate to a second year - maybe the a-league needs to convince Cahill to come home?

I think Wildcat Fans point is good. What we are seeing in the NBL, with all its problems, is a far more stable period since the league was restructured. I can quote a bunch of team disasters in the old NSL as well....

The A-league is going through a period of instability and increasing lack of confidence amongst its stakeholders. I accept that Palmer is just the weirdest cat, but Tinklers gripes, particularly about the way he paid for the license transfer, are being seriously scrutinized. Newcastle was the third best drawing team in the league this year - if they do fall, or if their crowds collapse because of increasing ticket prices and memberships due to a new owner, then that ain't good.

Seems to me the question re A-League vs NBL ownership is simply one of how much money do you want to lose? Very few NBL clubs making money, NO A-league clubs making money?

Is the A-League Marquee player allowance still $1.5m? Assume that is being spent, A-League clubs needs to generate crowds 150% greater than the NBL just to pay for one player? And then there's the rest of the team and management and operating costs to pay for (remember Palmer limiting the Gold Coast crowds to minimise his overheads? Marketing Genius!).

Obviously I'm not a soccer fan (and it is soccer, and one code of football!) but given the amount of cash the Fed Gov't has injected into Lowy's baby, you'd expect they be doing better.

You also seem to have glossed over the stillborn Sydney Rovers A-League franchise - wasn't that suppose to be born and bred in the football heartland of Australia - western Sydney - a surefire succes?

A-League - more profile - less stability, greater losses

NBL - less profile, more stability, lower losses

Profesional sport in Australia - pick your poison!

Phew! Got a few people seeing my point of view :) I've read a lot about the A-Leagues problems on other sports sites and I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned the NBL as a comparison, as there are real similarities between the two leagues. Could be a good thing? Anyway, I really think, that depite all the gloss and marketing clout the A-League has, they could really look at the NBL as an example to perhaps restructure their model towards.

I think they spend way too much money, get burnt financially and have a whole lot of political fighting and instability. That's now their biggest problem. The NBL seems to be going well in that regards.

At the end of the day, wherever you have private ownership of clubs, you will always have teams fold. Just need to get the ownweship model right, get rid of the dodgy owners (a la Tim Johnston NBL, Clive Palmer A-League), and things will settle.

The A-league's woes can't be put down to one thing. Expanding too quickly and having stupid nicknames doesn't help. I'm really surprised the ACL games are so poorly attended and followed. The A-league had a honeymoon period due to the successive world cup campaigns by Australia and the hype around the new league. Adding new teams on the back of this hype was a bit silly in my opinion.

Having second-rate Australian sporting leagues on just Pay-TV also doesn't help.

I genuinely think the AIS formula needs to be looked at in the NBL (yes i'm a broken record) but there's that many Aussies playing university basketball now and most won't get an NBL contract. I believe the development of many of these players would be greater if coached by AIS coaches (and potentially linked in with a university here as an added incentive). Yes we'd all love to go to American colleges and live like stifler for 3-4 years but in terms of basketball development many of these guys development would be greater if done in the NBL with other young guys.

Bad business decisions, poor management and a failure to connect with your local community for ground roots support are the 3 main reasons for the failure of an NBL club (probably can extend to the A-League and beyond to other franchise based sports really)...

At the risk of watering down our quality of product for the short term, wouldn't it be interesting to see the NBL totally restructured to a conference style competition and align all clubs with their junior program like the strongest SEABL level teams?

Pie in the sky stuff maybe, but if we really want to make this sport viable in a country (countries if we include NZ) with such a low population base, comparatively low finacial sponsorship dollar, small stadium availability and therefore sallary cap compromises, isn't it worth thinking about?

In stead of asking the question, who will be the next NBL team to die, I would like to know when we will change the attitude and thinking to one of, how can we make a national competition thrive in a sport which is recognised as number one at junior lavel...!