Basketball Australia today confirmed that the National Basketball League would move forward as an eight-team competition after the owners of the Gold Coast Blaze chose to withdraw from the competition.

As a result of the Blaze’s decision, eight teams will make up the 2012/13 iiNet NBL Championship competition - the Adelaide 36ers, Cairns Taipans, Melbourne Tigers, New Zealand Breakers, Perth Wildcats, Sydney Kings, Townsville Crocodiles and Wollongong Hawks.

Basketball Australia Acting Chief Executive Officer Scott Derwin said the competition would continue to move forward and build on the growth of recent seasons.

“Ultimately, we won’t allow this decision by the Blaze to detract from the momentum our sport has started to gather over the past three years,” said Derwin.

“As a league we have seen significant growth over the past three seasons, with attendances rising each year, our TV and on-line audience growing rapidly and the return from our commercial partnerships reaching new highs. We are also poised to make some major announcements around further strategic developments in the coming weeks.

“The reality is it’s genuinely tough out there in the business community in all sectors, and sport is not immune to that. If you look to all major sports you’ll see organisations dealing with significant and difficult financial challenges.

“But the resurgence and growth of the NBL has not occurred by accident – we’ve put a lot of hard work towards strong governance and the development of long term commercial partnerships to get back to a position of strength.

“It’s naturally disappointing to see a club withdraw at this point, but we’re confident the long term and future prosperity of the league will remain strong.

“We’re on the verge of something very exciting here – we can and should be proud of our recent achievements, and we can and should maintain our energy for the season ahead.”

The iiNet NBL Championship season will still commence on October 5th as previously announced and Basketball Australia already has an eight-team schedule approved and ready to be released on Friday.

The revised fixture will predominantly involve the NBL’s eight remaining teams changing opponents rather than home dates.

The league will still feature a 24 round season, as well as the recently announced NBL All-Stars weekend, and the top four NBL Finals system remains unchanged.

Background information – League Facts:

•   Attendance has grown by 20% since governance reform in 2009/10;

•   This year’s finals series attendance grew from 26,000 to 52,500;

•   The NBL secured a five-year, free to air broadcast contract with Network Ten (and recently released a significantly enhanced broadcast position for the remaining 3 years of the contract);

•   This season’s total audiences in Australia and New Zealand shot up by 457,000;

•   Licensing program sales have grown by 298% this season;

•   Website visitation is achieving 50 % growth year on year; and

•   The league has invested in the development of the four year NBL Business Plan “Transition 2015” and committed to achieving its outcomes.

Actually ive always heard that Cairns is into AFL:S

I've spent quite a bit of time working in Cairns over the last 5 years.
The 2 teams that are followed and discussed "around the water cooler" are the Cowboys (NRL) and the Taipans (NBL).

That said, their newspapers seemed to share space with other sports (AFL and even football) a lot more readily than here in WA, where there seems to be some sort of contract guaranteeing at least 50% of the sporting coverage is AFL.

Landmark broadcast deal

In an Australian first, Basketball Australia has signed a landmark broadcast deal with PERFORM Media that will see all games of the iiNet National Basketball League Championship televised live and in full across multiple digital platforms.
The multi-year partnership – effective from the start of the 2012/13 NBL season – provides basketball fans unprecedented coverage of the competition:
- Every NBL game will be broadcast live via an NBL.TV subscription service for mobile, tablets, PCs and IPTV;
- Fans will be able to view television matches simulcast, plus all other NBL matches live anywhere and on any platform using a single login to NBL.TV;
- Games and highlights will be available on demand, giving fans the freedom to choose how and when they watch the NBL;
- PERFORM will produce five-camera live broadcasts of all NBL games not being shown by the league’s free-to-air television partner Network Ten and New Zealand broadcast partner; and
- The deal also includes production and distribution of national team games hosted in Australia – meaning fans can for the first time digitally access any home games played by the Boomers and Opals, subject to television broadcast arrangements.
Basketball Australia Chief Executive Officer Kristina Keneally said the new agreement would complement the NBL’s existing broadcast agreement with Network Ten – which will show one game live nationally every Sunday afternoon on TEN and one game per round at the regular timeslot of 9:30PM on Network Ten’s digital channel ONE.
“This is a landmark deal in Australian sport – the very first of its kind in our country,” Ms Keneally said.
“New media and digital broadcasting are already having a huge impact on the media landscape, and basketball fans rightly expect broad access to high-quality live programming in this space.
“This deal truly puts us ahead of the pack: basketball is the first sport in Australia to give fans such comprehensive digital access to live sports content on-the-go.
“This is also the first time in NBL history that every game will be broadcast and available live.
“More Australians than ever will now be able to see the NBL, with access to every game of the iiNet NBL Championship season live across multiple platforms on NBL.TV.
“The increased visibility the NBL will receive from Network Ten’s live game coverage coupled with PERFORM’s digital, mobile and online broadcasting will be a boon for our sport nation-wide.
“On top of that, NBL.TV will be a league-owned platform rather than one owned by a rights-holder – so the NBL will retain control of its own broadcast product and benefit directly from the revenue generated by it. It gives us a major new revenue stream, as well as an attractive new proposition for sponsors.”
Chris Mutimer, Managing Director of PERFORM Media Australia, said his company was excited by the opportunities the new partnership presented.
“The commercial opportunities around giving sports fans access to live sports content on-the-go are considerable, and it's a service that's already proved hugely popular in other countries,” Mr Mutimer said.
“We've already had a lot of interest from media buyers and other sports, due to the ability to target individual consumer groups.
"The deal also sees our international digital broadcast capability launching in Australia, and establishes a unique end-to-end solution for sports focused on driving new revenue streams.”
As per Basketball Australia’s standard policy, the commercial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The 2012/13 iiNet NBL Championship season tips-off on 5 October.

Background Information
About NBL.TV
A full season pass with full access to all NBL.TV features will be priced at $79. A monthly pass will also be available for $19.
From today, Basketball Australia is also offering a pre-registration launch special for the full season pass – with fans able to pre-register to receive a special sign-up of offer of $59.
Fans can visit http://www.nbl.tv/earlyRegister to pre-register for a season pass now.

About PERFORM Australia
Perform Group plc is a public company on the London Stock Exchange and owns one of the largest portfolios of digital rights in the world. They have over 700 employees in 16 countries, and have offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. PERFORM own leading sports websites Sportal.com.au, Goal.com and LIVESPORT.TV, and power digital platforms for the NRL, the FFA and the EPL live streaming service for Fox Sports.
PERFORM provides content in multiple formats to some of Australia and New Zealand's leading telcos, betting operators and media groups including TABSportsBet, Vodafone, Bigpond, Optus and SBS. PERFORM's digital advertising network reaches an average of one million Australian sports fans every month and includes the world's largest sports VOD network ePlayer, which syndicates sports news and highlights to over a thousand publisher websites around the world.

Glory recruit . Ten have 2 games one on Friday around 9 so its live or close to live and one on Sunday afternoon . One have one game so 3 on fta tv. The fact that ba announced this deal I was estatic

It was announced today that next season, the NBL will have a live Sunday afternoon game on Ten and a 9.30pm Friday game on One each weekend. All finals will be shown across both networks.

Didn't even know the NBL was starting up tonight.

Didn't even know the NBL was starting up tonight.

Tv ratings for round 1

Breakers vs Perth-28k(NZ only)
Wollongong vs Sydney- 21k
Adelaide vs Melbourne-34k

Attendances:

New Zealand-4k
Wollongong-4.3k
Cairns-4.4k
Adelaide-3.9k

Also worth mentioning Wildcats have over 6 thousand members now.

How many dollars did they get for tv rights?

Edited by Roar_Brisbane : 8/10/2012 08:30:40 PM

Pretty sure the NBL gave away the rights for free in order to get on FTA didn't they?

Tv ratings for round 1

Breakers vs Perth-28k(NZ only)
Wollongong vs Sydney- 21k
Adelaide vs Melbourne-34k

Attendances:

New Zealand-4k
Wollongong-4.3k
Cairns-4.4k
Adelaide-3.9k

Also worth mentioning Wildcats have over 6 thousand members now.

Do those ratings include the NBLTV deal? Anyone know the figures on how they sold? Its an interesting choice for the NBL - but I think it only works for sports that already have a strong hold of the market.

NBA NEWS



NBA set to penalize players for flopping

Posted Sep 27, 2012 7:15 PM - Updated Sep 27, 2012 8:53 PM
ELIZABETH, N.J. (AP) -- The NBA is about to act in hopes of stopping the floppers.



Spokesman Tim Frank said Thursday the league is finalizing procedures to deal with flopping, the art of falling down when little or no contact was made in an effort to trick referees into calling a foul.
Frank said the competition committee met two weeks ago and discussed plans that would go in place this season. Commissioner David Stern believes too many players are deceiving referees by flopping and has been seeking a way to properly penalize them.
The procedures will likely involve a postgame review of the play by the league office, rather than an official calling an infraction during the game, Frank said. Players would likely be fined if the league determined they flopped.
The proposed plan mirrors a "postgame analysis" option Stern discussed after the competition committee met in June. The league already retroactively reviews flagrant fouls to determine if they need to be upgraded or downgraded.
"If you continue to do this, you may you have to suffer some consequences," Stern said about flopping during the NBA Finals. "What those exactly should be and what the progression is, is to be decided, because ... we just want to put a stake in the ground that says this is not something that we want to be part of our game, without coming down with a sledgehammer but just doing it in a minimalist way to begin stamping it out. And I think there are ways we can do that and we'll have to wait and see exactly what we come up with."
The league's 62-person referee staff is holding its training camp, its first under the leadership of former NBA player and longtime league executive Mike Bantom. Bantom replaced Gen. Ron Johnson as executive vice president of referee operations earlier this month.
"I think one of the things that I'd just like to focus on is I think there's a perception out there that kind of throws into question sometimes the competence of our officials and even the integrity of them at times, and I think that that's not true to begin with and unfair, and I want to try and change that perception," said Bantom, who had been the league's senior vice president of player development since 1999.

Queensland Basketball launches bid to bring back Brisbane Bullets

A NEW joint venture has been launched to revive the Brisbane Bullets basketball team.

The Brisbane Bid Group is a partnership between Basketball Queensland, Basketball Australia and a private equity investor by the name Brisbane Bullets Queensland Pty Ltd.

The group is aiming to have the Bullets bounce back into the NBL by the 2013/2014 season and has appointed former executive director of the Queensland Olympic Council, Mr Michael Brierley, as full-time CEO.

Brierley also had corporate and commercial management roles with Yachting Australia and NSW Tennis.

Basketball Queensland chief executive Graham Burns said it was vital that the Bullets returned.

"A Brisbane-based NBL team is of great importance to the league, the sport of basketball, and the South-East Queensland region, and it is our hope that this new strategy will result in an NBL team that Brisbane can call its own, for many years to come," Burns said.

A number of consortiums and bid groups have been formed since the Bullets dissolved, but have failed to bring the club back to life.

Brisbane - a foundation NBL club - died in 2008 after former Bullets owner and childcare mogul Eddy Groves experienced financial difficulties and handed back the licence to the NBL.

The Bullets won three NBL championships during their time in the league.

When the Gold Coast was extinguished earlier this year, Cairns and Townsville were left as the only Queensland clubs in the NBL.

Something Roar_Perth might like.

:shock:

This is fantastic news. Will be great having the Bullets back.