Only when they are playing at North Shore Events...

Interesting, they never really announced this formally, they pretty much talk as if it's business as usual. I know that the previous deal was for 5 years, but the review clause and the way they were talking made it sound like there'd be some sort of new deal/re-negotiation.

We are delighted to have FOX SPORTS as our broadcast partner for the next few years.

Few doesn't really sound like four - maybe there has been a re-negotiation? If so, I wonder:

1) What the motivations are for re-negotiation (whether it's FS not wanting to commit for such a long period, or NBL backing themselves to have more leverage in the future or future plans/direction ie digital revolution, fta or a more ratings based performance approach or change of financial arrangements etc.)

2) What exactly was re-negotiated?

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every game televised live on FOX SPORTS

I'm glad FS haven't backed away from this - at least not for this year, I think given the way last season was, i'd say the NBL met or exceeded expectations which gives every reason for Fox to continue positively, and having every game televised live is huge.

It's interesting that there aren't Wednesday night games, this seems to be something that Fox has always been so demanding on, particularly in the past. It shows the NBL is starting to have a bit of a say which is good, they aren't tied down. I'm guessing the Monday night and Thurs night games are the "give a little, get a little". Overall more games on the weekend is a good thing, particularly from a crowd perspective.

Hopefully there'll be a free-to-air live game each week, it would be nice to get a multi-year FTA commitment, but that seems unlikely. It would also be good to have a highlights show like the one Fox Sports did on FTA each week as well.

Every game live on FS, plus the live game of a week on FTA, plus the highlights show on FS plus subscription live streaming ticked all the boxes last year, it was a superb scenario, if that continues this year then we really can't complain.

we are looking at now taking our digital capabilities to the next level to further increase our fan engagement

I love this focus, looking forward to what comes next. The website while not great, is still better than under previous management (the inclusion of highlights video clips is a huge plus - this speaks to new digital capabilities and the good Fox deal). They bought basketball.com.au and talked about a cricket.com.au/ESPN type website covering NBL, NBA so hopefully given they've had 12 months something will pop up in the near future.

The app is also a good step forward, hopefully they'll make it even better.

Also props on the social media management - significant improvement over previous management.

I love this focus, looking forward to what comes next. The website while not great, is still better than under previous management

Disagree. It took me 20 minutes to load the fixtures on my phone today because it's still uselessly unresponsive. The first time I clicked on the fixtures link it loaded the article about Terrance Ferguson.

And there's still no proper week-by-week fixtures anywhere on the website.

Talking about the quality of game not the sht-stained floorboards.

haha NSEC is pretty horrible. Sydney Olympic Park looks horrible on TV as well, it doesn't look professional at all.
The SEC was perfect really, both visually on TV and location wise. Qudos Bank Arena is much better than Sydney Olympic Park but the location still sucks and it's too big. Hopefully they'll move to the new International Convention Centre once it's built.

Quality of game wise, last year was pretty damn good quality in terms of players and this year looks even more exciting. There is some serious talent in the NBL now.

I've always been a big fan of the 48 minute game though, I still believe 40 minutes seriously diminished ejoyment of the game. I like 100 point games and I like two or three players in each team averaging 20 points per game.

60-90 point games just aren't as good.

Koberulz - you say that like screw ups weren't a regular thing with previous NBL websites - they were frequent, in fact it was unusual and surprising when anything worked the way it was meant to.

I said not great *but still better than previous* and I maintain that.

I used the old site way more than I've ever used the new site, precisely because the new one is too difficult. If I do use it, I try to make sure I'm on a PC, because it's utterly useless on mobile.

And I spent most of my time on the fixture page when I was on the old website. The new website doesn't have one.

I would direct criticism that apart from the ladder and stats leaders, the year-long schedule and more indepth statistics are very crappy on the current site. I don't go to those often so it hasn't bothered me, albeit an obvious issue.

For some reason they've decided to chuck the fixture on this calendar app thing which I specifically want to avoid doing. Really they just need to replicate this format: http://www.afl.com.au/fixture and http://www.afl.com.au/stats. The fixture presentation isn't a tough thing for them to fix, the stats might be a lot harder though.

News, video clips, ladder/ppg/rpg/spg/apg and social media wise - I think the website is substantially better than previous versions. The navigation is a bit different to usual, but I don't mind it. I think the website certainly does a better job than previous NBL websites overall, albeit everything seems too enlarged and a bit clunky. And yes,if you're looking for more indepth stats or previous games info or year long schedule then it is unacceptably bad.

I remember posting here (or possible OH) when I tried to find footage of Townsville's game-winner in Sydney in round two or three, and couldn't. The most recent photos and videos were all from pre-season.

Whether it's updated more often now I don't know, I haven't bothered to go back because a) I have no expectation anything will be there and b) navigating is too much effort.

I remember it taking them a good 4-5 rounds to start uploading any videos to the main site - you're right, but when they did, they did it regularly and well

Great news the Fox deal is continuing, having every game broadcast last year really showed off how good the league is, and I expect it's only going to be better next season.

It's great to have FS back on board, I was a bit concerned when I read before that they had the option to not continue again this season, but to not have Wednesday games is a big step forward, considering their love for them in the past...

As for the NBL website, I understand they had to get it up and working fairly quickly, but structurally, it's a mess, from a front end user experience perspective, it's a mess... I don't even bother with it on the mobile and only very rarely visit it during the season...

Itw ould have been considered a minimum viable product on launch, but part of that process is to actaully build on it and fix it to make it better, and they haven't done that...

Especially with it being a Wordpress site, it's actually really easy to get it out there without complicating it so much...

No reason they can't have both. I always manually plugged the schedule into my phone anyway, and plenty of others would do the same, but that doesn't help with looking up past scores and stats. It's also not very convenient if you want to look for certain matchups.

And that's with the entire schedule on my phone. I imagine most people only download the schedule for their team, so if they want to look up any other game...

The current NBL website is very poor. When hardcore fans stop using it you know there is an issue. It's just too hard to navigate and the stats are atrocious.

It is very sad that last season is the only one in the league's history where the stats aren't loaded on Fox Sports Pulse. I hope the NBL rethink that.

NZ are playing more of their games at Vector Arena this season than at NSEC.