I don't care how much the league wants the big market teams' games on TV, a casual fan getting their first exposure to NBL by watching Melbourne vs Sydney, for example, is not good for the game...
Or Melbourne vs anyone. Or Sydney vs anyone.
And I want to see NZ more than 3 times in the regular season. They are the champs, they should earn at least more live games than a small market Aussie team. There are more than half a million Kiwis living in Australia, more than the populations of Townsville and Cairns combined, for a sense of scale.
I completely understand the need to telecast big market games from a financial point of view, but should the gap be that wide between Melbourne and Sydney, who have been widely picked to finish on the bottom of the ladder, and teams like Cairns, Townsville, and New Zealand, who all look to be in finals contention as well as being uptempo, exciting, explosive teams that will be fun to watch for fans -- especially casual ones with short basketball attention spans?