Kids with colouring-in books and dogged fans are helping drive National Basketball League crowds to record levels, and forcing a rethink of the orthodox Australian sporting hierarchy.
The NBL, which concludes its regular season this week, has reached an average attendance of more than 7,000 for the first time. The surge has brought the league to within sight of the A-League Men and its average crowd of just over 8,000.
NBL’s chief executive, David Stevenson, says the league is committed to making matches as entertaining as any other leisure activity, not just within sport. “We actually think about the choice for someone, do they go to the movies for two hours, go and see a band or see a stage show, do they go shopping in Chadstone?”, he says. “That’s a big part of what we’re trying to do – make those two hours a great entertainment experience.”
The NBL has been aided by factors beyond the league’s control, like growing basketball participation, high interest in the NBA and WNBA in the US, and success of Australia’s national teams. Attendance is also up 11% in the WNBL this season, and the 2022 Women’s World Cup in Sydney was the described as the most successful ever, with 145,000 attending. Both the Boomers and Opals have qualified for the Paris Olympics and are ranked in the world’s top four.
Among domestic competitions, the AFL is the benchmark for attendance – more than 37,000 went to every game last season on average. The BBL and NRL averaged around 20,000.
Professional leagues in football, rugby union, basketball and netball have sought to establish themselves in Australia’s competitive sporting marketplace, but success has been uneven.
Hunter Fujak, author of the book Code Wars and Deakin University lecturer, says outside the major codes, momentum can shift quickly. “We’ve seen with rugby and netball, once the negative momentum kicks in and snowballs and perpetuates, it becomes really hard to break the cycle of ‘negative momentum’, as I call it.”
Super Rugby club the Melbourne Rebels has entered administration and there are concerns they won’t exist after this year. Netball Australia and Super Netball players were involved in a public pay dispute last year and the governing body has been open about its financial challenges.
After the A-League Men launched in 2005, there were early signs it could compete with the major winter codes. But its momentum has stalled in recent years, and the operator APL made almost half its workforce redundant last month.
Fujak says in contrast men’s basketball has enjoyed period of positivity. “Basketball has really been flying, going back to the Boomers’ [Olympic] bronze medal in Japan, getting some increasingly marketable NBA players and the impressive transfer [of interest] we’re getting there,” he says.
Stevenson, a former Nike executive, says the NBL’s strategy had been threefold: make matches family-friendly, improve the on-court quality, and connect clubs with local communities. He says the average number of tickets per transactions – a proxy to measure the size of groups going to games – was higher than the AFL. “People are going together in groups, and a lot of it is families, that that’s their model of reconnecting and spending time together is to go to the game together,” he says.
And NBL crowds seem to remain solid even when teams aren’t winning. “I think there’s not much of a volatility for us depending on how that team is performing,” Stevenson says. “Which shows the importance of the entertainment proposition. Even if the team doesn’t win, they still walk away with a pretty good experience.”
The Sydney Kings, the defending champions, are entering this weekend’s final regular season round with only a slim chance of reaching the finals, but average crowds at Sydney Olympic Park’s Qudos Bank Arena have increased by more than 1,500 per match compared to last season, reaching more than 12,500 – within 1,000 of Sydney FC and more than Western Sydney Wanderers.
Kings majority owner Paul Smith says he knows his fans don’t have unlimited patience and winning remains a priority, but he has been “pleasantly surprised” by the turnout this season. “It just highlights that there’s just a pent up interest in demand for for basketball, and particularly in Sydney and particularly in that period from Christmas to the end of summer. That’s our sweet spot.”
In Adelaide, the 36ers have sold out seven straight matches despite languishing close to the foot of the ladder. One 36ers fan – who wished to remain anonymous – says the club had built a fun day out for the family. “The last game I went to, there were kids in courtside seats colouring in instead of watching the game. They came alive at the breaks when they were throwing out free T-shirts.”
Hujak says the NBL and A-League Men have much in common, including a summer season and private ownership, but the NBL has had more success with recent expansion. “Although you couldn’t definitively say one is winning over the other, I think the gap is incredibly small,” he says. “But they’re heading on opposite trajectories.”
Stevenson says there is more work for the NBL to do, and the former AFL executive says the structure of the privately-owned NBL allowed it to move quickly when needed. “In a lot of other sports, their governance model can be so involved, that it takes a long time to be able to make decisions. There are some of things we can do pretty quickly.”
The league is yet to sign a broadcast deal for next season, despite claiming a 29% increase in ESPN ratings this season. Unlike in the AFL or NRL where TV dollars roughly cover player salaries, clubs only receive modest distributions from the reported $15m annual deal that screens games across ESPN – broadcast through Foxtel and Kayo Sports – and Channel 10.
Fujak says advertising slowdowns at free-to-air TV companies mean the league still has some way to go before it is competing for the bigger broadcast dollars. “There probably is some upside but there has to be some cautiousness in terms of the expectations because even though they’re growing, I can’t see them achieving a dollar bonanza.”
The league may by 45 years old, but Smith likens it to an adolescent: awkward but with room to grow. “It’s a gangly youth with long legs and arms but its body has not grown into its form yet,” he says. “They’ve kind of got pimples and all sorts of things, but could turn into a handsome young man, you never know.”
