Jack Toft
Years ago

Opportunity for the NBL to get sponsors?

With the cricket ball tampering saga dragging on, the latest is the (not so) "unexpected" rush of sponsors to drop Cricket Australia to avoid the bad press.

https://wwos.nine.com.au/2018/03/29/11/12/ball-tampering-crisis-magellan-dumps-cricket-australia-sponsorship

While not being able to offer the same FTA exposure (currently), is now a great opportunity for BA and/or NBL to jump on these sponsors? I would have thought that Asics could be an interesting brand to try to get in the basketball family and as far as Magellan is concerned, I would have thought they would be a good fit as well as basketball supporters are actually more affluent than supporters of other sports.

I know this is a little bit like chasing a dumped girl for crazy rebound sex, but if those businesses are getting out of one sport, they have a history of wanting sponsorship and therefore may be interested in basketball.

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paul
Years ago

Something that hasn't been chatted about much is how Kestleman has set up the USA v Boomers games to get a good TV deal for the NBL.

I wrote about it briefly in the article linked below if you want to have a read, but the key plank is the NBL owns the Aussie broadcast rights to the games, which I imagine will be much sought after.

http://www.fiba.basketball/news/unlikely-bed-fellows-net-us-dream

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Anonymous
Years ago

Hey paul yes when the game was announced it didn't seem like something BA could pull off as they are generally hopeless. It makes sense LK was involved and got something out of the deal.

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Anonymous
Years ago

Big companies sponsor cricket because people watch it. Not really sure why they'd bother with the NBL

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KET
Years ago

Paul - that's very, very smart by LK.

Only problem is, how much leverage will it really give the NBL? Subject to cricket TV rights moving away from the current situation - where can the NBL actually go for some consistent live coverage?

Channel 7 has the Tennis for close to 2 months covering day and night every day

Channel 10 has the Big Bash every night and [and Women's big bash during the day] for 2-3 months

Channel 9 has 4 months of Cricket including a month of ODIs/T20s and the Tour Down Under for a week

The ideal and reasonable scenario for the NBL would be a "Live primetime game of the week" on Free to Air and a "Sunday mid arvo live game" with perhaps a pre-game show doing highlights of the round and top 10 plays of the week.

Then the rest of the games live on Fox Sports & NBL TV.

Channel 7 we can rule out being on the main channel for a month or two; for that period the NBL would be relegated to 7's third channel.

Channel 9 we can rule the ability for a consistent night or afternoon games on the main channel because of cricket fixtures

Channel 10 - they've screwed the NBL twice now - can rule out being on the main channel at all during the Big Bash

So... back to SBS?

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Anonymous
Years ago

Tennis was just purchased by Channel 9

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Anonymous
Years ago

The Cricket/Big Bash deal is up for grabs too at the moment. Will be interesting to see what channels end up with what sports. Might open the door for a mainstream FTA channel to show a few NBL games each week.

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Jack Toft
Years ago

It's very much chicken and egg isn't it. Promote the sport and it will grow, but you need sponsors to grow it, but sponsors won't put in on the up curve, only on the flat part of the growth curve.

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Anonymous
Years ago

SBS will do me, especially if they cover the production costs.

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KET
Years ago

Holy moly channel 9 having the tennis makes things very very interesting. If seven don't nab the cricket in any form the NBL might have a new home

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Baller#3
Years ago

Focus on quality not quantity. 1 primetime friday night game is better then 3 games at odd times in my opinion. Needs to be on a main channel if possible too. Would be great to work towards a friday night, saturday night and sunday afternoon timeslot.

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Proud
Years ago

Baller#3, that would mean the NZ would get no Friday home games and there'd need to be a live game on tv before the Perth game as too many people over in Eastern states complain about games not starting until 9:30pm when they are completely live.

I've always liked channel 7 and I think that was where Dennis and Lachie began their commentating careers.

Definitely need to get more eyes on the product from a tv viewership standpoint

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Hoops

Opportunity for the NBL to get sponsors?

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