Recent crowd figures should be sending off alarm bells at NBL HQ, particularly those of the league’s regional teams – Wollongong, Townsville and Cairns.
The Wollongong Hawks pulled just 2224 for their win over Sydney on Saturday, a remarkably small crowd given the close proximity of the visitors’ fan-base.
It wasn’t out of character however – two of the four Hawks home games this season have been less than that figure.
The Townsville Crocs had 2909 present for their win over Adelaide on Friday.
It was the second sub-3000 Crocs crowd so far, which is surprising given locals are lucky to still have the team after the off-season’s ‘Save the Crocs’ campaign.
The Cairns Taipans’ win over Adelaide was played in front of 3750. Obviously that looks relatively good, but this is a better-resourced club than the Hawks and Crocs.
Only once from their six home games have the Taipans played in front of a crowd above 4000. Last season, they averaged 4227.
Crowds at some of the other clubs have been concerning too, but Melbourne have to wait until the tennis is over to access Hisense Arena, Sydney might improve after Sam Young is presented to home fans and New Zealand’s drop in crowds can be put on the team’s drop in form.
While the regional sides have struggled to unhinge themselves from the bottom end of the ladder, all three are still competitive and not that dissimilar in quality to the sides they had last year.
The Hawks, for example, may have gone from finishing third to being on three wins, but they are by no means a dramatically worse side. They proved that the last two weeks.
The Crocs have actually improved on last year.
So this is absolutely something the NBL should be concerned about. TV ratings continue to track at a positive pace compared to previous seasons, but you still need to put bums on seats.
Especially when we’re dealing with teams like Townsville, who generated another round of ‘NBL loses team’ headlines last winter, and Wollongong, whose naming rights partner has been in the news this year for the wrong reasons.
After rocky off-seasons with Townsville this year and the now-defunct Gold Coast Blaze the year before, if crowds stay the way they are there could very easily be another crisis to deal with next winter.
Put simply, the NBL shouldn’t wait for that.
Instead of sitting back and springing to action after the negative headlines hit, this time a proactive response is called for.
The NBL should step in and help these teams with their marketing efforts, to first identify why fans are turning away and second implement a plan to correct it.
If there are other ways the league can use its resources to benefit these clubs, it should do so – even if it’s just a temporary measure.
The community ownership model that all three regional clubs now rely on has yet to be radically tested until now, perhaps due to the early on-court success of the Hawks and Taipans after switching to the model.
With all three clubs, community ownership seems like the sensible solution – but it may be that tweaks are required to ensure it has long-term sustainability.
Now that the NBL is half-owned by the clubs, and considering it’s very much in the league’s self-interest to keep the clubs it has, it should guide these teams through this process.
There’s no point dreaming of a 16-team league if you can’t hang on to eight.
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