Australian Basketball – Too small to be big?
My daily email from Sportal blurted out this morning details that the team Gold Coast Blaze are in financial difficulty, in debt to the tune of almost $12 million.
Sportal on the Blaze
It would surely have to be part of the problem here, along with the NBL in general, that i the venue, the size of them and the cost to run them.
Going back many years, for basketball in Australia, I remember the Titans in Melbourne as well as the Tigers and Giants, all getting quickly out of bigger venues, the then Vodafone Arena, because they were just too damn expensive to be in. Same for Brisbane Bullets before they folded, it’s a tremendous looking venue but so expensive to run on game night and training too. Even up to last year the Cairns Taipans did not train at the Cairns Convention Centre, the venue where they play their home games, as it was too expensive to rent for weekdays. They went to the local courts! So it could be said that the home court advantage for teams like these is diminished a little, only playing there not training on the hoops they’d be using game night.
This leads to the question, is Australian Basketball too small to be big?
Let’s leave to one side the TV broadcast issues, that is a whole other sh*t fight.
The fact of the matter is that unless you are playing, or sharing a venue with other sports or teams that play indoors, you are on a hiding to nothing to just hemorrhage money for game night. Thus the ticket prices go up, or worse, the club absorbs the extra money to keep the crowds rolling through the doors. Success helps the club and venue, as the better you are the more interest you generate. But still, they play in over the top venues for a league that is probably too small to be big.
The solution is to eliminate the venues from the league that cost an arm a a leg to run (or the venue itself cuts the running cost to meet a league fixed ceiling. After all, the WNBL survives and thrives in venues like the new RSL Stadium in Townsville, the Schweppes Centre in Bendigo or Dandenong & Knox Centres.
