Too many questions! Break it down a bit so we can focus on particular topics.

I went to a United game the other week. The deal for corporates was great - good food in the Reds room, free drinks, etc - but it's not the same as an entertainment package IMO. Got as much from chatting with my hosts as I did from the game in parts. Didn't see what happened at half time. The cheer squad makes noise, but there's not really much else going on and the team was very average on this occasion. Not to say that I didn't appreciate it, but I certainly wasn't going to swap my 36ers season ticket for it.

Saw an ice hockey game in the US last month and that was a very good package - promos, contests, music, kiss cam, and so on. Very entertaining sport, high speed, talented players and an overtime win. Really enjoyed it.

I remember someone telling me once that with AFL, you can get 35,000 every second week for six months of the year, with NBL, it's 5,000 every week or second week.

Media coverage and PR has a lot to do with spectators as well.

The AFL always have a story in the Crowvertiser every day, even if it 's a "made up story" about someone's groin, or behaving badly, or "next big thing"

I think the 6ers would benifit from showing their tv/radio commercial the week up to a game, which advertises that specific game with tip off time and date.

Another good thing to do would have a local evening news do a weekly preview for the game on the thursday night.

Basically just promote the hell out of every home game!

Would it be worth the sixers giving out free tickets to one home game in the season? Get as many people to the game as possible, create lots of interest, promote the crap out of the game and then hopefully people will love the atmosphere of around eight thousand people and return?

Obviously, do something for the season ticket holders and those that have bought tickets already to make sure they are happy and not ripped off.

The way i see it is that the more people we get to a game, regardless of whether its paid or not (for one game only) the better. better promotion, better atmosphere and hopefully it could draw more people regularly.

Might be a good chance to do this for the first home game of the season, brings a good atmosphere into the season and also allows the club to get good footage of a packed out stadium to get some decent commercials on TV.

What do people think?

spectator support is not a problem in australian basketball. 36ers home games are regularly packed. basketball fans are very devoted and will watch it pretty well on tv.

the problem is that as a sport it isnt really attractive to corporate types as say afl, rugby and cricket are. that probably has to do with market penetration and all that. for instance, i cant stand rugby but could probably easily list 20 odd players off the top of my head. i could probably attach who some of their sponsors are too. so the big corporate dollars will go to whoever is getting big media attention, big media attention will go to whoever has a marketable product and whoever has already attached some media attention ( usually through there own media build ups etc).

lets face it, we are not going to shift any of the big 3 ( afl, rugby, cricket) out the way anytime soon.

we need to focus on maintaining and improving the league obviously but in terms of what we need to do is keep getting it out on free to air tv, generate more interest outside of 'diehard ' fans, but most importantly, recognise our limitations and work to a model.

afl will drag in many more viewers, but will cost you a billion dollars in rights,

filming footy vs basketball would be about 10 max staff at a bball game to what? an army to film a footy game.

basketball may only get you about a 1/4 of the viewership but it will cost you 1/ 15th of the price. chump change to these guys. push that, let them know they have a cheap, rock solid product and work from there. work on stability, keep it around. make the most of what you have in terms of promoting the game. be very active and clever. while football teams are jetting to arizona have the nbl teams be the most pro-active in terms of engaging fans with the club. have the most web content. have the most fan days or anything that can involve people. every home win a random member gets something that has just been signed by the club. have somewhere the fans can gather. focus on a junior club on a fortnightly basis and send the development players to train the kids for an hour. everything you do invite the press, film it for your web content. name a junior player of the week and invite him to the game.

basically have a hundred different things going. if you dont have as much money you work harder while everyone else is setting back. thats how you make a difference

Anon, good point; but every company you mentioned is a global conglomerate in their respective markets.

Unfortunately the whole process is staggered and requires a longer approach than more would like.

Your first objective is that the teams need to increase their existing numbers by putting on a performance that will keep existing numbers constant and encourage that "loyal" fan-base to get the word out. This means for example, the Sixers needing to return to some guaranteed finals form as they had just on about 7 years ago.

Once the existing fan-base is guaranteed and you get the additional people turning out, then you guarantee sellouts. Maintain the sellouts and then you need to start advertising to encourage the value of getting a Sixers ticket.

When you get the over-demand for a Sixers game again, then you can start to get the word out to the more lucrative sponsors who will be interested in investing in a team that has a popular demand.

This progressive chain needs to be spread across all teams. The "expansions" are always a bonus, but only if the plan is sustainable and you have a guaranteed fan-base to kick things off.

Once the global demand is up, then you start advertising the league and build corporate interest. We have the benefit of having a lot of close games for the past few seasons; unfortunately the fair share of live games on TV haven't covered these (but you can't predict).

Keep in mind that the AFL did this and make a national push at the right time to get the masses interested and the corporate sponsors.

NBL can do just the same, but it starts with maintaining and securing the loyal fan-base for each team before trying to rope in the rest of the nation.

Outsider, I'd expand on your suggestion a little.
Give kids from each club free tickets for 1 game per year, and give the parents who take them there a 2 for the price of 1 deal.

baller 3 i think that is good to talk an individual game up the week before. i also like season slogans.

double headers (WNBL / NBL) seem to get a slighter larger home game crowd.

Who says BHP and heh others dont put anything back into the community?

I seem to recall them announcing a project where they will be spending 30 billion in SA alone. Sure it doesnt get their name on a basketball singlet but Id suggest that building an entire town and employing how ever many thousands of people (both directly and indirectly) is a pretty good effort.

and before everyone says 'oh they are only spending that money to make themselves even bigger profits', isnt that what we sponsorship is all about? Do you reckon that Nike or gatorade just sponsor sports to get a warm fuzzy feeling? Of course not, they are doing it to sell more of their product and make more profits.

Basketball is starting pretty much from ground zero a couple of seasons ago, we just need to ensure that the sport keeps taking small steps and continues to put itself forward as a professionally run, entertaining package and hope that by doing all the little things right suport will grow and revenue will increase. Then in turn we can reinvest in the game via promotion.

Phil, not many fewer TV personnel required to cover a basketball game compared with the bigger sports. There'd be less cameras at bball, but total staff would still be 20-30, counting those in the OB van and looking after the equipment outside the stadium. Yvonne and I photographed a lawn bowls test match between Australia and South Africa recently. ABC had 5 or 6 cameras and about 25 people on the job. We had no idea there were so many until they asked us to photograph "the team" on the occasion of its last bowls coverage. The cost of such an exercise was the ABC's main reason for planning to abandon bowls and local footy.

I doubt any company is going to look at basketball sponsorship as social responsibility any time soon when there are real social responsibilities out there. Ive said it before and I'll say it again: the NBL needs to stop taking their fans for granted, realise its actual place in the market and act accordingly. You are behind: soccer, league, union, cricket, afl, tennis, motorsports. All of which have the best in the world at their respective occupations competing before our eyes. Who can honestly say that anyone in the NBL is among the best in the world at what they do? Which is fine, but we need to understand this and work within that constraint before we move forward.

And it starts with advertising. Whoever signed off on that NBL ad for this season should lose their job, plain and simple. People laugh at that shit.

The AFL have a much better, more streamlined PR machine. In today's "Crowvertiser", a full page dedicated to AFL in the off season. All filled with "non-stories" which look like they could be straight from a PR Company Press Release.

Story 1: "My ATM owes Power $350K" - big deal. ABC Learning owes ?
Story 2: "Strong bodies on Port roster" - some even stronger ones elsewhere, but is it newsworthy?
Story 3: "Captain Kirk's new sunship enterprise" - story of ex Swan Kirk going to GC Suns - yep, that made my day just knowing that.
Story 4: "Ready to exceed Day's dream", by Zac Milbank. The story of one WWT Eagles struggle to play SANFL, now he had a premiership medal and Essendon are after him (Presumably so he can play in their reserves?) Gee, a good news story that makes you feel all happy and ready to take on the day. Now I feel like climbing on my unicorn and riding off to slay the dragon and rescue the princess locked in a castle by her evil step mother.

Anon: you have more international quality talent playing in the A-League (even if theyre washed up) than the NBL, all there is to it.

Statman, you nailed the topic on the head with a good answer. Case closed.

Anon 341337, while it's always good to throw the "social responsibility" question into these conversations; but businesses don't need social acceptance to make money.

As Statman said, businesses get involved in sponsorships due to the advertising and association benefits, nothing more. Basketball needs to become an attractive venture with plenty of TV, Radio etc. coverage spamming over the airways.

Technically the cost of slapping a brand on a team logo and donating an amount to funding a team is cheaper than paying for reoccuring TV adverts; but there's no point if no one is going to see the logo on the jerseys.

The pinnacle goal that NBL would need to do is get full weekend coverage, and a bigger piece of the sports report on the evening news. With all due respect to how well the league is going so far, that goal is at least 10-15 years away.

i have my reasons why i dont like alot of those global companies like bhp etc but they are actually much better than nike/ rexona/ gatorade etc. while those guys are pumping millions into endorsements for overpaid stars and helping prop up elite level leagues with sponsorship dollars bhp are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into projects to help combat skills shortages and to help some of those remote communities ( especially indigeneous) where they are located.

if bhp could fund a sports team, or establish a trade college with scholarships particular to skills needed in the industry i know what they would chose and what the government would be pushing ( likely to get good tax breaks from that kind of thing too). nike only wants you to buy their product.

I agree Marty.

That's why it makes me sick to see the NBL’s mission statement before this season as "we aim to be the leader of sports entertainment in the Asia Pacific region by 2015..." (!!!)

Not even Australia, but all of the Asia Pacific Region!

FFS! And you wonder why nothing changes. They want to be bigger than the NBA.

it’s a joke and it starts at the top. Sengstock has had his go. Thought he would be willing to do the dirty work like he was as a player but his gig is up IMO. He’s all talk.

How do you expect to be a successful business when you don’t attain any short or long term targets because they were set by idiots?

john have you been to an nbl game?? 20 to 30 people to film it?? seriously?

how many cameras do they have at an nbl game? i dont think its more than 2 but i havent really paid much attention. thats 4 people working the cameras. 2 to host it thats 6. i dont know much about behind the scenes stuff, how many can that be 2 or 3 technicians? does steve carfino and gaze/ heal/ whoever have any make-up or wardrobe assistants?? a production manager? yeah i stand by my guess of approx a team of ten. many afl games must have close to triple that, and with the much higher price of their commentators the cost must be far greater.

anyway the point i was getting at with that is that while the nbl may not have the market penetration of afl it is a far cheaper product and if we can establish it as a very reliable entity it can be very successful as the 4th big sport in australia.

I would say there are at least 4 cameras at an NBL game this year. Two in the stands at midcourt and one at each end. Including commentators there would be approx 15 involved at a guess.

Anon #341393, It's a good point, but from what I've seen the "second rate athletic basketball players" are in demand by the AFL; so that classification doesn't stick to everyone in Basketball.

Basketball in the past few years have increased the costs of going to a game, but they're still better than AFL tickets and on par with most A-League tickets. And considering you can pay upwards of $1200 for a seat at Boston Garden that's only $25.00 here clearly shows that "if the sport is popular, they will pay". It may be extreme comparing a Celtics ticket versus a Sixers ticket, but there's a reason why people go to a game in the NBA and pay that amount.

Yes, there is a problem and it's being addressed. However realists understand that 2-3 years won't do it. That's the length of time it will take to stabilize the league and secure the existing fanbase.

Baseball will NOT overtake basketball..

At least we have that going for us.

I do however agree with anon above that a lot of Australian players are second-rate athletes.

Newley & Ingles body types should be the norm not the once-in-a-generation exception.

One issue for basketball is that it's basically over by the time you're 14 unless you're going to be 2 metres tall. An U16 boy starting high school who decides they want to play basketball has no pathway to district. At the larger clubs there are 50 kids who have been playing for 6 years lined up in front of you. If you aren't an exceptional athelete, you'll have to settle for AFL.

The kid who can't get a start in a sport isn't going to be all that interested in watching it. Neither are his parents.

Clubs must be dying to bring that optimistic attitude on board.

A couple, phil. Next time one of the crew trips over me, I'll ask how many people they have at the game.
I think your estimate is too low, and mine is probably too high.

The NBL isnt the most athletic league in the world, but a lot of players who have played here and in decent European comps think the NBL is more athletic.

I dont think lack of athleticism is really a major issue for the NBL. How hard players work in games means they dont always show their above the rim hops though, but that is the Australian/NZ style of game and Ill take that any day over most European national league games.

Out of interest and slightly off topic, NBL crowds are something like the 7th or 8th highest in the pro basketball world.

Agree with Paul that NBL style is more entertaining than Europe. I think we should run with that and distance ourself from FIBA, and start implementing rules like the NBA limiting handchecking in the backcourt to keep the free flowing game alive.

One issue though, this season especially: what is with all the turnovers?

581- I certainly know what I'd rather watch for 40 minutes. Give me the game over your pissing every day thanks.
I do get your point though and perhaps NBL has to go back to 12 minute quarters next season.

Can you explain why crowds have increased since the NBL went to 40 minutes if 48 is such a crowd drawer?

I like how they chopped all of eight minutes of game time and the sky is falling. The game isn't long enough. Yet in the same post, T20 cricket, a trimmed version of one-day cricket which itself is a trimmed version of a test match, is extolled as the answer.

I agree with#341403 a lot of teens start a sport around year 10,basketball is impossible to get into at that age unless you are freakishly talented.Some kind of programs must be available in district clubs to cater for these kids,in the long run more interest in the sport equates to more bums on seats at the Arena.