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When Andrew Gaze says it might be best to if the NBL shuts down for a season, you know things must be serious.
However this line in the sand moment is only a yearly line in the sand moment. Didn’t Tommy Greer say something similar last year that caused a 24-hour media flurry?
This climate has an element of decay to it, people are now expecting the whole thing to fall over. They are sad because everyone has fond memories of the golden age, but while a few franchises are killing it on and off the court, you need competition and a league full of viable teams to make it sustainable.
So let’s go radical, let’s dream and let’s not worry about the obstacles just yet. Let’s look at a relatively realistic perfect model, let’s look at five steps the NBL could take, as, let’s face it, they couldn’t do any worse.
Look to the States
At the moment Australian basketball’s biggest potential asset is also its Achilles heel. Sports fans in Australia love the NBA and follow it intently, but only a small fraction of that support translates to the home-grown product.
It’s the code that we’ve never cracked, and pretty much started during the NBL’s early 90s golden era when the kids also started watching the NBA. Eventually, they spurned the home cooking for the stateside glamour.
So instead of that asset working against the NBL, how can it work for it? It’s time for the NBL and Australian basketball to do some grovelling to big brother. We’re now producing players for the NBA system, we’re producing customers via NBA League Pass subscription and we can be a much less hostile and cooperative option than the European leagues.
So it’s time for the NBL to become part of the NBA’s farm/development D-League system. That is, an off-shore second-tier feeder league, one that carries NBA branding and the like that ties together our love of the NBA brand and creates local content.
This does not change the league as far as teams, it simply put them playing in a league that has greater context with what the market wants, and cuts the cord of the NBL as beleaguered competition. Let’s call it the Aus D-League.
It’s a model that sees the MLB entirely fund the Australian Baseball League, and if it works for baseball it should work for Basketball as a more popular sport in Australia.
TV
In return for ‘giving’ the NBA a new development league to complement its American one, we grovel and ask for some monetary support. This comes in two ways. The NBA and the Aus D-league become a package deal for Australian TV, and we leverage off our high usage of NBA League Pass.
So whether it be Pay-TV initially, or to a free-to-air network from the get-go, the NBA assists in selling broadcast rights as a package.
NBA rights into Australia would be a drop in the ocean so let’s lean on the NBA (in return for our development league) to, at least in the start-up phase of the league, giving that overall television fee to the new league.
This does two things, it guarantees that Australian basketball gets shown on TV and makes the rights worth something given the ability to use the NBA. We’ve seen 7Mate, in addition to ESPN, screen NFL games this year and I would argue that there is as big a market for NBA content despite the fact it would screen at morning/lunchtime.
We’re told that Australians are the highest subscribers to NBA League Pass outside of the USA. It’s a crying shame that revenue is never seen by the Australia game.
I would also suggest that a very large percentage of those subscribers do not consume NBL games at all.
So with the NBA’s cooperation our new league is an add-on to the NBA package – and we either take a clip or the price goes up by an amount to accommodate us. Simply put, if you’re paying for the NBA, you’re also going to get our new league and our new league is going to get some money for it.
This twin approach gives us something we do not currently have – a pool of money generated by the league itself away from club ticket sales.
3. Back to the future: Winter?
Now this is all workable in its current summer slot, but it becomes even more enticing and workable if we consider something radical – go back to winter.
A couple of points first-up; traditionally club basketball in Australia is a winter sport, and when was the last time the Australian public got behind the NBL? Yes, the golden era of the late 80s to mid-90s was all played in winter.
Today’s NBL would give anything to have the public interest it held before it decided to go to a summer season. Its rationale at the time was by not going up against the AFL and NRL it was going to become the pre-eminent summer sporting league and grow.
It hasn’t, it’s gone the other way.
So yes it’s hard to go up against the AFL and NRL, but every sport has run away from them and now it’s just as hard in summer.
When the NBL went to summer there was no A-League and no BBL, and the television presence of the Australian Open and international cricket has only grown.
So why not think realistically and work better as a second-tier sport? Because right now there is no sport that occupies the whole winter space alongside the AFL and the rugby codes (netball is done by June/July), and perhaps that’s the niche that would work.
Remember it has worked before. The old NBL Final series of October were such a big deal, because then there was other sporting league competing; that is an opportunity that still exists.
There is such a thing as football fatigue, and the rise of the NBL in the early 90s was not to the detriment of those codes (although they were looking over their shoulder). In fact, if memory serves me correctly it piggy-backed off them to a degree – eg the live Sunday NBL game was sandwiched between AFL panel shows and its Sunday afternoon live broadcast.
In today’ sporting media landscape I think it might work best to be a national ‘second sport’ in winter rather than sitting fourth in summer. It makes television difficult, but remember from Monday to Thursday there’s only one game of live sport on Australian TV (NRL on Pay TV on Monday nights). Why not make that basketball’s TV niche?
But then there is the other big plus with winter – NBA involvement. It becomes the big carrot for the NBA. Their current American D-League season runs from November to April, so an Aus D league would give it a year-round development league in a country where language, living standards and cultural issues are no barrier.
Yes, NBA teams use summer camps in this period which may cut out the absolute cream of next tier talent for chunks of time of time but realistically it opens up a whole new range of second tier players to come to Australia and use the league as a pathway and improve the competition.
Our Australian D-league option all of the sudden becomes very attractive to the NBA. It also creates enormous opportunities for Australian players. Who knows the NCAA eligibility rules could be looked at and college kids may come home for parts of winter to play.
We also become a television option for the NBA, as it can sell year round television rights into the Australian market, both on broadcast and privately through League Pass.
Who knows, we may even have the fanciful in its current state situation where in lieu of it having any basketball match content from mid-June to October it takes some of our matches for League Pass or NBA TV – a whole new revenue stream could open.
And finally, why not try to capitalise on the worldwide hype of the NBA Finals in June that puts basketball front of mind? At the moment the league sits dormant for months after its biggest international showcase.
4. Club model
An NBL with six clubs is not feasible, but NBA backing and some TV money would at least give some funding to re-establish the league and this is where we need to get smart.
As a second-tier national league, realistically what places could work?
The idea being that funds that are now generated now become, like the AFL’s equalisation policy, the funds that allow membership-based/association based teams to play in the league along with the privately owned. From here we can get some balance and see what really works best, the private ownership model versus member-based.
This gives us some time to transition those clubs that are struggling as private entities but boast healthy membership to change their model. It may well eventually push all clubs to this model, if that happens organically it may be a good thing, however with a league that has revenue it can consider the mixed approach.
Funds can also cultivate new teams with a membership/association backing to come into the league.
Perhaps there is a greater role for SEABL teams to play here as some have suggested. Taking the stronger teams that have that membership base and working to bring them up to national league level.
There’s a string argument to say that a second tier league should look at Australia’s biggest regional areas where basketball has a stronghold and bring pro sport to places that is not currently catered for.
If we want to get really radical perhaps there’s a promotion and relegation with the SEABL – further tying community basketball to a national league.
5. A new package
So a new Aus D-League plays in winter, is branded and tied to the NBA as a development league, giving it instant fan credibility and greater quality of players. It piggy-backs off the NBA to create TV revenue and TV exposure that gives a funding to the game that it’s never seen.
It becomes comfortable in its skin to be happy as a ‘second-tier’ league, not competing with the AFL and NRL but being everyone’s second winter sport interest. A niche market as respite for footy fatigue in fans or perhaps an option for those fans that want something more (remember there’s only one AFL game in Perth or Adelaide each weekend, and they don’t play night games at the MCG after day games- so why not head over to Hisense?)
It looks at options like mid-week TV-focused games with weekend games focused on attendance.
It allows a transition to membership based clubs, looking at traditional strongholds to build support.
It opens up regional areas with league support.
It’s radical, but the NBL is in a place where that radical might be the only way out.
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