U18 Australian Club Championships? is that a new national tournament?

I know that the U14 Australian Club Championships are being held in Casey, Victoria during that time so surely they aren't referring to that.

Very excite!

Are these WNBL-NBL double headers a sign of things to come?

But more importantly will hoops.com.au descend on Perth for the Sunday game?

29 regular season games is dumb. I get the concept but during AFL finals, date clash. They won't get many travelling fans. It’s not worth the money. Good WA get behind Hoops so hopefully the non-WA games they get a few people who moved to support their state teams.

I don’t get why the NBL don’t look what the British Basketball League do. They have the exact same teams as the NBL so they play 36 game season. Plus one month of a midseason tournament, home, away games.

29 game season makes the fixtures so random again.

The Australian sporting landscape doesn't want midweek games. Might work for the TV audience but attendances Monday through Thursday are not good even for the super power AFL. BBL play to a total population of 73 million people. There are some significant differences

Agree it should be 36 rounds to make it fair, if not 27 with home and away swapped each season, mid week games are great but very hard to get to in most Australian capitals, traffic being the biggest issue. The nbl management are certainly having a go.

@Boomer30619 It looks like the U18 Clubs is new and very off timing given that it is about 2-3 weeks prior to HSC exams which would impact some of the older players.

Sounds like a good festival.

The 29th game thing is a bit odd.

Why not add another "neutral" type game elsewhere? Maybe each team plays another outside of their 14-home and aways in a region, Darwin, Canberra, GC etc?

This isn't going to work. But give it a crack I guess why not.

I'm confused by it as-well. Should be 2 games so the home, away can be even. Seems like the nbl don’t care. They love their family dates so don’t blame them.

Are people not familiar with Gather Round? AFL is a 23 game season now.

What's the issue with 29 games when you have 14 home, 14 away and 1 neutral at Hoopsfest?

Like the afl you don't play every team evenly, comp is so close that it can make a big difference.

Ket Just like when everyone complained that Melbourne/SEM got extra home games in NBL21, Perth get an extra home game and you could say strength of opponent at Hoopfest will have an impact on finals.

It's strange, why couldn’t the nbl just have a group stage of two groups. Best 4 teams play semis, then have NBL Cup/Trophy final.

Cup didn’t work but that only happened with Covid rules. May as-well have a new NBL Trophy that can be legit midseason tournament. I love how Italian, Germany, Spain, France all have Cup’s and Trophies every season.

Reasonable ticket prices at RAC for Utd JJs Friday night and Adelaide Sydney Sunday will be crucial. The tickets from $60 for a family mentioned at the press conference while reasonable is the same for Wildcats games. There are also tickets for families that cost several hundred dollars, hopefully the WA govt and or NBL are going to chip in here.

Adelaide has Sydney which is not ideal whatsoever, but at the same time, don't care if it means trying something for the success of the league.

I’m sceptical it will work, but I hope it does work and happy that they’re trying things out.

"Monday through Thursday are not good even for the super power AFL"

Including Thursday in that sentence is perplexing. What's your metric for this? The vibe?

For the AFL, it’s the second highest attended slot (Friday nights the top) and the top broadcast ratings slot (Friday nights second).

We will see more Thursday night footy going forward as the new broadcast deal kicks in from next season.

UTD JJs is Thurs night typo. Even more reason for it to be cheep cheep

Thursday night makes no sense. There won't be many travelling fans from south coming up. Flights won’t be cheap either since if one WA team makes afl finals. Flights will go up. It’s good for WA.

The crowds for Thursday and Sunday at Perth Arena are going to be very poor unless tickets are dirt cheap.

NBLTigers won't have to worry aouut WA teams playing finals

A week long tournament for mostly year 12 students, a few weeks before HSC in Perth, Are they serious?

This is laughable thinking they will get the best U18 teams from each state. Most families have just come off state nationals in Brisbane.Average $4K expense before families travel!
Clubs are just finding out about this and are far from impressed about the extra financial burden it's putting on clubs and families.

I appreciate the U18s is the pre event to the NBL and WNBL but unless there is significant financial support clubs/families, parents and clubs won’t be forking out $3-$4k for a poor man’s gather round .

And most U18s have finished their junior basketball in September and concentrating on a thing could year 12.!! .

Who audits these ideas!

Cantshoot3s - it's probably a great opportunity for those kids that have never represented their state at national level to finish their juniors on a high. Don’t forget this age group had U14 nationals cancelled due to Covid and the current U18 bottom agers had 2 years cancelled back-to-back.

Understand the considerable extra cost but everyone has a choice in life. Don’t go, then let another kid have an opportunity.

Many of the kids, including some of the top agers are actually grade 11, think it would be around 30 going through grade 12.

*30%

For anyone interested the Cats vs Phoenix game Friday night is not included in your season ticket but all Hoopsfest games are 10% off for Wildcats members

Pass.

Did anyone register for presale and receive any info about buying tix today? More info was to be provided during the week but havent seen anything, presale starts at 10am AWST allegedly.

Tickets to NBL games are $35 for an adult anywhere in the stands at either RAC arena, Bendat or HBF Arena so thats good by the league and WA govt keeping it reasonable. The double header saturday was $35 for both games, decent.

The NBL with a cheeky back page ad after Freo get eliminated from the AFL finals race