A good read.

Let's really hope LK continues on after next season

Not being a subscriber, I can't read that article, bugger!

I'm not a subscriber, I just copied and pasted the link and it worked.

100,000 people have downloaded nbl.tv I wonder over what period of time? Is that the number that people have watched games weekly? Fort nightly? Monthly? Over the entire season? That would be interesting to know

Wierd. Copied and pasted the link and said it was premium content. lol, sif people are dying to know what he said...

....

.. btw can you copy and paste the article? ;)

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NBL Round 10 Wrap
Basketball
Larry Kestelman very happy with return of NBL after $7 million purchase last year

RUSSELL GOULD, Herald Sun
December 14, 2016 9:00pm
Subscriber only

THERE were less than two minutes left last Sunday at a sold out Hisense Arena.

Larry Kestelman, the millionaire businessman who forked out $7 million last year to re-energise a competition he felt was going the way of the dodo bird, stood up in his packed corporate box.

All 60 of those boxes were full too as Melbourne United, the team Kestelman part owns, thrashed the New Zealand Breakers in front of 10,300 people.

INJURY SCARE: UNITED'S RELIEF AFTER ANDERSON SCANS

As the crowd roared, the music blared and the ball game went on, Kestelman, the son of Russian immigrants who moved to Melbourne when he was 12, took a rare moment to himself.

He smiled, a proud fatherly smile. The NBL is back.

"I will own up and say I did have that little moment," Kestelman told the Herald Sun this week.


NBL owner Larry Kestelman and his luxury yacht Vegas. Picture: Luke Marsden
“I stood up and was looking at the crowd, they were going absolutely nuts, there was not an empty seat in the house, music was blaring, it was a good feeling. You stand back and think: 'Yeah, we are winning now.’

“A lot of people thought I was crazy for taking on such a challenging proposition, but now you can think we are on the right track, we are on to something.

“You don’t allow yourself too much time to think about such things because you can get ahead of yourself. We certainly know we still have a lot of work to do. But I did have a moment, it was good.”

The NBL is buzzing on the back of a new philosophy that puts entertainment on equal footing with sporting excellence. It’s dinner and a show, plenty of bells and whistles to occupy the most fleeting attention span, and in the middle of it all, a game of high quality basketball.

It is, according to Kestelman, what every sport aspires to be.

“Every code is trying to take a long form game and see if they can squeeze it in to two, three hours of an intense event, and that is what basketball has always been,” he said.

“I think people just love the format.”

It was only 17 months ago, July 2015, when Kestelman, who made his fortune in property development and selling the Dodo internet and phone business for almost $230 million in 2013, took over the NBL.


Melbourne United’s Todd Blanchfield drives to the basket against New Zealand Breakers.
He inherited “six or seven” fulltime staff and a brand tarnished by years of neglect. But he saw a diamond in the rough.

Kestelman lived through the late 1980s and 90s in Melbourne, the NBL’s “golden era” as it’s so often called. He knew it could be great, it just needed a bit of TLC, and a lot of cash.

He had the latter in spades, and his initial outlay has been matched by a few more million since. But he didn’t just splash cash, Kestelman got his hands dirty right from the start to realise his bold vision.

“From the time I took over, the first 6-9 months, it would probably have been 80 per cent of my time. It was something that needed to be built from scratch,” said Kestelman who has business interests ranging from property development to technology and media companies.

“You always think you are going to put in less than you end up doing. But I went in with a completely committed mindset that I would invest whatever it takes to turn it in to the product it deserves to be.”

When he joined Kestelman in the rebuild of the NBL, Jeremy Loeliger shared that vision of what the league should be.

The former lawyer became the general manager of the NBL, now CEO, inspired by Kestelman and his own love for basketball, albeit for the game as he remembered it and not what it had become.


Loeliger had stopped following a competition which had faded from the memory of so many who thrilled in the exploits of that Andrew Gaze inspired golden era.


Andrew Gaze takes on Shane Heal in 2001.
Eyes turned elsewhere because the NBL, which had more than 30 clubs go broke or merge since its inception in 1979, failed to keep pace with growing consumer expectations.

The sport alone wasn’t enough, and between the pair of them, Loeliger and Kestelman saw an opportunity to make the NBL so much more than it had become. To bring it “back”.

“People have these really romantic notions of what the Andrew Gaze, Ricky Grace, Rob Rose era of basketball was like. But most of us were children back then and we were very easily impressed,” Loeliger said.

“It was fantastic on court but if you go back and look at the footage of those classic games it was pretty rough and ready.

“From the day that Larry and I first started talking about this we shared a very consistent and common vision for what our product could be and how to grow it.

“To bring it back was important because people had such a great memory

Don't thank me all at once :P

It is a great article

Larry Kestelman very happy with return of NBL after $7 million purchase last year
http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/article/83c60a48d23bebce4f470f1fd39aca49?esi=true&t_template=s3/chronicle-tg_tlc_storyheader/index&t_product=HeraldSun&td_device=desktop
RUSSELL GOULD, Herald Sun
December 14, 2016 9:00pm
Subscriber only
http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/article/83c60a48d23bebce4f470f1fd39aca49?esi=true&t_template=s3/chronicle-tg_tlc_storymeta/index&t_product=HeraldSun&td_device=desktop
THERE were less than two minutes left last Sunday at a sold out Hisense Arena.

Larry Kestelman, the millionaire businessman who forked out $7 million last year to re-energise a competition he felt was going the way of the dodo bird, stood up in his packed corporate box.

All 60 of those boxes were full too as Melbourne United, the team Kestelman part owns, thrashed the New Zealand Breakers in front of 10,300 people.

INJURY SCARE: UNITED'S RELIEF AFTER ANDERSON SCANS

As the crowd roared, the music blared and the ball game went on, Kestelman, the son of Russian immigrants who moved to Melbourne when he was 12, took a rare moment to himself.

He smiled, a proud fatherly smile. The NBL is back.

"I will own up and say I did have that little moment," Kestelman told the Herald Sun this week.

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/1bb60222f40bb531ae330fe735ac1f33?width=650
NBL owner Larry Kestelman and his luxury yacht Vegas. Picture: Luke Marsden
“I stood up and was looking at the crowd, they were going absolutely nuts, there was not an empty seat in the house, music was blaring, it was a good feeling. You stand back and think: 'Yeah, we are winning now.’

“A lot of people thought I was crazy for taking on such a challenging proposition, but now you can think we are on the right track, we are on to something.

“You don’t allow yourself too much time to think about such things because you can get ahead of yourself. We certainly know we still have a lot of work to do. But I did have a moment, it was good.”

The NBL is buzzing on the back of a new philosophy that puts entertainment on equal footing with sporting excellence. It’s dinner and a show, plenty of bells and whistles to occupy the most fleeting attention span, and in the middle of it all, a game of high quality basketball.

It is, according to Kestelman, what every sport aspires to be.

“Every code is trying to take a long form game and see if they can squeeze it in to two, three hours of an intense event, and that is what basketball has always been,” he said.

“I think people just love the format.”

It was only 17 months ago, July 2015, when Kestelman, who made his fortune in property development and selling the Dodo internet and phone business for almost $230 million in 2013, took over the NBL.

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/88f8c8e089c07d00632389ce0023c121?width=650
Melbourne United’s Todd Blanchfield drives to the basket against New Zealand Breakers.
He inherited “six or seven” fulltime staff and a brand tarnished by years of neglect. But he saw a diamond in the rough.

Kestelman lived through the late 1980s and 90s in Melbourne, the NBL’s “golden era” as it’s so often called. He knew it could be great, it just needed a bit of TLC, and a lot of cash.

He had the latter in spades, and his initial outlay has been matched by a few more million since. But he didn’t just splash cash, Kestelman got his hands dirty right from the start to realise his bold vision.

“From the time I took over, the first 6-9 months, it would probably have been 80 per cent of my time. It was something that needed to be built from scratch,” said Kestelman who has business interests ranging from property development to technology and media companies.

“You always think you are going to put in less than you end up doing. But I went in with a completely committed mindset that I would invest whatever it takes to turn it in to the product it deserves to be.”

When he joined Kestelman in the rebuild of the NBL, Jeremy Loeliger shared that vision of what the league should be.

The former lawyer became the general manager of the NBL, now CEO, inspired by Kestelman and his own love for basketball, albeit for the game as he remembered it and not what it had become.

Loeliger had stopped following a competition which had faded from the memory of so many who thrilled in the exploits of that Andrew Gaze inspired golden era.

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/43eb21c28c1536e7ba0abe7cc369165f?width=650
Andrew Gaze takes on Shane Heal in 2001.
Eyes turned elsewhere because the NBL, which had more than 30 clubs go broke or merge since its inception in 1979, failed to keep pace with growing consumer expectations.

The sport alone wasn’t enough, and between the pair of them, Loeliger and Kestelman saw an opportunity to make the NBL so much more than it had become. To bring it “back”.

“People have these really romantic notions of what the Andrew Gaze, Ricky Grace, Rob Rose era of basketball was like. But most of us were children back then and we were very easily impressed,” Loeliger said.

“It was fantastic on court but if you go back and look at the footage of those classic games it was pretty rough and ready.

“From the day that Larry and I first started talking about this we shared a very consistent and common vision for what our product could be and how to grow it.

“To bring it back was important because people had such a great memory of what it was in the 80s and early 90s and part of recapturing people’s imaginations was reminding people of how much fun it was.

“But I make no secret of the fact that getting the sport back to where it was is only one very small part .... we want to far exceed where the NBL was.”

Packed houses in five states, and New Zealand, more than 100,000 downloads of the NBL app, which offers live coverage of games, and TV ratings growing by the week are all solid pointers to a job well done, so far at least.

NBL round 10: Highlights1:51

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/external?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent4.video.news.com.au%2Ffoxsports%2Fprod%2Farchive%2F2016%2F12%2F13%2FNBL-Round-10-Highlights.jpg&width=650&api_key=kq7wnrk4eun47vz9c5xuj3mc
NBL round 10: Highlights

December 13th 2016
2 days ago
/video/video.news.com.au/Sport/Basketball/
http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/news/content/v2/origin:video_integrator.dyajQ4ODE6jqBxX4hPsYYt4mBb5CVfif?t_product=video&t_template=../video/player
NBL round 10: Highlights
Expansion in to Asia is on the horizon too, with both short and long term plans in train.

Even Kestelman had to concede the momentum gained in such a short time had surprised him.

“I do believe it was a three year plan and I do believe we are ahead of it,” he said.

“We are growing at a faster momentum than I would have expected. Like any business or venture, if you build it, they will come, and I think they have come a little quicker than I even dared to dream.”

Plenty of businessmen would be caught up in the nightmare of it too, as dollars continue to come of Kestelman’s pocket with no expectation he’ll be putting any back in for some time.

But while he calls this a business venture, it’s much more a labour of love, and right now he’s enjoying a honeymoon period he doesn’t want to end.

“I certainly see myself reinvesting for quite a while to keep improving the product. Like any business person I am hoping at some stage there will be a return,” he said.

“But the joy for me right now is seeing the success of what my team has done in the last year and a half. It’s nothing short of extraordinary. That’s the joy right now, not making a dollar, I’ll do that elsewhere.

“The feeling that the league and game is getting back … I think we have blown away the past. It’s on a different level. It’s something Australia can be proud of.”

Sorry, first one was a bit short!

Thanks, @ROFLCopter. That's an interesting article. Like most of what comes out of the NBL, it's light on any solid info, but we're getting used to that.
:-)

Thanks for that ROFLcopter, good read.

Thx Rofl copter

Sorry, that was me^

Not being a subscriber, I can't read that article, bugger!'

Here's a work around for subscriber news sites:

1. Copy and paste the full URL eg:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/basketball/larry-kestelman-very-happy-with-return-of-nbl-after-7-million-purchase-last-year/news-story/83c60a48d23bebce4f470f1fd39aca49

2. Load a Google page eg. www.google.com.au
3. Paste full URL into the Google search box and click search
4. Results page will load with the result you want
5. Click result and you will have access without being a subscriber!

Whoops point 1 is meant to just say Copy

Having a Chinese ball team sounds good in theory but will it happen, I'm not so sure. The question is would the Chinese Basketball Association want to have a club side in an Australia league? As having a chinese side in NBL could undermine the local Chinese league.
Slingers won't return, they seem entrenched in the ASEAN league.

2nd Sydney/2nd Melbourne/Canberra/Hobart should all be looked at. Maybe a 2nd NZ side in Christchurch or Wellington. But with soccer

Sorry did anyone read the bottom section at all especially these 2 paragraphs?


Plenty of businessmen would be caught up in the nightmare of it too, as dollars continue to come of Kestelman's pocket with no expectation he’ll be putting any back in for some time.

and


"I certainly see myself reinvesting for quite a while to keep improving the product. Like any business person I am hoping at some stage there will be a return," he said.

Sorry that just worries me been a NBL follower since the 90s....got to turn a profit to be succesful. Just saying

Such a legend!