Bongobrain, as you suggested I will make my comments on the Official Sixers site.

"I believe that there is room for both forums but if you choose to ignore the club's official site you choose to ignore the club itself"

How can you expect to be taken seriously with outrageous comments like that? Too many idiot fans post rubbish on the official site for me to bother going through it, I choose this one as there are fewer posts and generally a few intelligent ones in there (although there are plenty of idiots who post here as well). I take offense to your assertion that by me posting on this site and not the official one I am ignoring the club - surely chosing not to follow any message board would be greater evidence of a lack of support for the club.

I don't imagine I'll see a reply here as you only operate on the official site, but I don't really need one.

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Further to my post...

People dont need official numbers to know when the stadium was close to packed, compared to lucky to make 50% right now. We have eyes....and ears.

The fact the full house sign used to go up for so many regular season games 2-3 seasons ago. Yes, last seasons results are impacting on crwod figures...but I know as a FACT that rthere was a 2,000+ season ticket holder shortfall from predicted figures this season, not to mention the shortfall in walk up sales each week.

Yes, all the petty sniping and fighting needs to stop. We have a great team, the league is in great shape, and only looking up right now.

I feel your post does nothing to stop the negativity, and in fact will only contribute to it festering even deeper.

Isaac has always maintained it is not an "us and them" attitude between the 2 sites. When JABA took over the club site, there was no forum for fans at all, for quite some time. This forum was generated not only as a forum to talk about the 6ers, but also about the Lightning, ABL, Juniors, Social School comps, and anything else generally basketball related.

Something that even now, the "official" site cannot accomodate.

"The lack of genuine support for the Club shown by these generally faceless critics does as much harm as anything the front office might be accused of. Ticket prices might be too high. Attendances might be down. I wonder if people really know what the true attendances have been in the past, not simply what was published?"


Mate, it doesn't matter what the "true attendances" have been in the past as opposed to "what was published." If you have been going to the Sixers for any decent amount of time, all you have to do is look around at all the empty seats. You hardly ever used to see that. Last season I could understand it somewhat, the team was struggling. However, this year the lads are doing really well and haven't lost at home yet. But the people still don't come.

Why is that? You tell us instead of bashing into the fans who post at this forum and calling into question the integrity of their status as "fans." You should watch yourself to be honest because there are a number of season ticket holders, myself included, who post here. We are not your problem. We ARE the genuine supporters of the club. We put our hard earned money down months before the season starts, often before half the roster is complete. In other words, you get our money and our bums on the seats no matter what you do or don't do, no matter if the team stinks or wins the title. Don't waste your time blaming fans like us for the lack of fans at the games compared to seasons past. Worry about the fans who used to come and now don't anymore.

Who are the SIXERS? A new team?

Looks like the 36ers have some competition!

Anyone sensing a similar situation to when that the (ex?) 36ers administrator/front office worker (yvonne someone?) made some comments about the way the 36ers club and official forum were being portrayed? Unfortunatly, although i understand the intentions of Bongobrain, comments/statements such as the one made by bongobrain have no place in a public forum. By naming the company you work for and what general expressions you guys have you unintentionally end up insulting a great deal of fans. Not all fans regularly post on these forums and a great deal of fans do not even visit these forums, in reality it is a small minority which do. You assume that the comments made on the forums are what everyone is thinking when it is only one individual, it is a public forum after all.

"I believe that there is room for both forums but if you choose to ignore the club's official site you choose to ignore the club itself.
It's time to show your true colours.", this is an absurd comment. You have no right whatsoever to tell supporters where they should post, what they should say and by how not doing as you suggest is not supporting the club.

I have volunteered countless years to basketball and to be told i have no passion for the club, discriminate against the front office staff, hold negative and have a selfish and largely esoteric agenda and more to the point no responsibility on what i do is hurtful.

What you have posted is much worse than most things ever said and if you are indeed a worker from where you say you are you will have achieved nothing but bringing the club into disrepute. In my mind, you have insulted the people who really care for the club and basketball in South Australia.

I hope you realise what you have just started and do not repeat such comments again.

Wow Bongo is that the taste of sour grapes in your mouth?

Thanks for your comments but perhaps stick to running the official site with its errors and bad moderation that allows vulgar posts to stay on it for alomost 24 hours.

The succes of this forum demonstrates the passion that basketball followers have in this state.

The inability for the new marketing people to get bums on seats in arguably the most entertaining year of basketball ever played in the dome is disgusting.

The new marketing have disenchanted the fans with the lack of ability to communcate with their clients.

They have lost advertising dollars due to the arrogant nature in which they have dealt with long term sponsors.

They have not brought a new sponsor in to the club.

From your statements this maybe Bernie Lewis' fault????

The dome is half to three quarters full every game. Fans know the capacity of the dome and tehrefore know what sort of numbers are attending the games. Figures are readily available if you really wanted accurate details.

You have posted on the official site that the updating of the site is managements responsability and not yours. This i understand. Maybe the marketing department need to better utilise the site and keep fans informed of what is happenong with the club.

Most of the info contained on there is old and out dated.

Can you perhaps list the achievments the new marketing people have made so far since joining the organisation?

Can you list the dollars that have been spent by them on promoting the game?

A good way of becoming the reference point for fans is to become the premo source of information. For instance the captain did not play tonight ....any info on the site re that ? any info on the site telling fans that he would not be playing?

There has been a huge amount of positive and usefull suggestions made on this site....take the time and read them.

This site promotes all basketball in Australia and as the saying goes any publicity is good publicity.

The new marketing crew is jobs for the boys. That may be one of the reasons that they cope so much flack.

You need to be passionate about your product to promote it effectively. These people were given a job they new nothing about. They have not demonstrated the capacity this far to have learnt anything about the sixers or their fans.

This is all constructive criticism...it just depends on how it is chosen to be received.

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As far as I know, Bongo and crew were not basketball fans or knew a thing about the game before taking over Isaac's old job. Company loyalty? Maybe he was forced into posting something?

(Mod: No, he wouldn't have been forced to post something.)

Correct. To the point that JABA had to get someone else to write their game reports for them...turned out Isaac has ended up doing them :)

(Mod: This is to JABA's credit, not against it. Identified a shortfall and looked to fill it.)

One of the reasons we don't use the site is as I have said before it is simply terrible. By the time all the not so fancy "Sixers" animation gets through it's time to do something else. This site is where basketball people go to. The 36'ers at least are gaining some attention. It's being studied at Flinders as part of their business course. How not to.....

We're a couple of weeks out from Christmas. It would be a great thing if some gift ideas were mentioned on the Sixers site -- ticket packages, merchandise, etc. Right now, though, there's nothing. Basic marketing opportunity missed for those people who are struggling for a gift idea.

I signed up for the newsletter on the official site and have never received anything. Free opportunity to remind subscribers to buy their tickets, tell friends about upcoming games, and alert them to injuries and the like. Nothing received.

Reports on this site a few weeks back of emails sent via the site going unanswered. It's the small things like that which matter.

These three things have nothing to do with prior management, nothing to do with a peanut gallery, and nothing to do with any apparent lack of marketing funds. That they're not being done gives a valid avenue for criticism of the club/marketing team in my view. It's pretty basic stuff.

As for why people post here and not there:

- better community feel
- strong author identities
- higher volume of posts
- basic incentives
- more respected posters in the mix
- lower barrier to entry
- quicker response to questions

I have been involved with both the Lightning & 36ers for the last 5 years, as a statistician.
During that period I have received one letter of acknowledgement from the 36ers, aletter signed by BASA Staff Member. From the Lightning, after every season I received a personal Thank You Card signed by every member of the Playing & Coaching squad. Maybe if Carrie Graf gets the Opals job as has been rumoured, BASA should look to put Jan in charge of Marketing & Club Development of the 36ers. She does have extensive sales experience in Finance.

After speaking with bongobrain today via email, I would like to say that I agree with his ideas behind his post, if not quite the way it was delivered.

His post was borne out of frustration seeing this site used extensively, but that usage is not translating over to the 6ers site.

In a catch-22 situation, if we arent using the official forums as well, potential sponsors would look and think there is no interest, and so they wont agree to a sponsorship deal.

I, for one, dont for a moment want to tell people what to do, not do I advocate in any way stopping posting here, or even reducing what your posting.

Perhaps pop into the 6ers forum once or twice a week, have your say. Bongobrain tells me he has assurances from club management that negative posts will not be removed, as long as they are not abusive, nor slanderous or personally attacking someone.

He also tells me that they are going to change the style of the forum, to make it easier to use.

So give it a try. See what you think. I would like to think both the great site we have here, and the official club site, can co-exist and serve the SA basketball community really well.

If any one cares to discuss this with me off forum, feel free to do so at [email protected].

Cheers.

I fail to see how the use of a forum impacts on sponsors spending money with the club.

Do any of the NBA clubs have a forum?

As i stated in my post on the sixers site does vodafone check the Ferrari website for interactivity before handing over money to Fiat?

Did Sorbent or Nike check the Lleyton Hewitt site before taking out sponsorship?

The answer is hell no!

Perhaps they could look at treating the sponsors better and not taking to them with arrogance which has seen people pull their $.

Sponsors will throw money at sectors they feel that they will get benefit from.

At the moment sponsorship dollars are hard fought for across the board yet long term sponsors have been shunned away from the club by the way they have been treated.

My stance is make the site worth while visting and the traffic will follow.

Actually, I am far from blaming the fans for the problems.

The priblems lie directly at the feet of the management and marketing teams that run the club.

I can assure you I had more than 1 email discussion with bongobrain, and my stance has not changed in the fact the post he put up is insulting, and downright rude.

However, he has also made me see the fact that for the club to grow and prosper, they do need traffic thru the official site.

So, all I am asking is for people to use the official site as well. Nothing more, nothing less.

I suggest all of you upset with the original post, do as I have done, and email the 6ers management and demand the post get removed, with an apology to be issued from JABA.

I have not sold out, I have gained nothing from the post I titled "my response". Apart from grief of the fans.

Bongobrain pleaded with me as someone who is known by many on this forum , and perhaps normally respected by a few to try and help alleviate the problem. I only agreed to do so in the best interests of the club.

I must admit with the backlash I am copping, I am beginning to wonder if I did the right thing. But, I stand by my actions, whether others think they are right or wrong.

Don't you think that the best way to increase traffic to the official site is to actually make it worth visiting? Seed the forum, answer questions, have navigation that doesn't throw errors on people's computers, use the newsletter to contact people weekly when new features or articles are online, have competitions, run special deals, have regular things like polls and MVP voting that keep people coming back, and so on. None of these things cost any money so the actions of prior administrations are irrelevant. All of these things are entirely obvious too.

I totally agree.

And considering there are the internal marketing people, JABA's own people and the external marketing company seemingly producing diddly squat, it is really frustrating.

Forgive me being reasonable new to all this history/war between this site and the 36ers, but it sounds like this was originally on the 36ers' site, and was removed for certain postings not being to the clubs' liking etc.

Now the club or at least the marketing someoneorotherbongohead is complaining about all the attention this site gets.

This site is an excellent site, visited by a lot of great SA basketball identities. Maybe the club needs to do some major sucking up to the likes of Isaac and get this site back at the actual forum itself .... and leave Isaac running the show?

Isaac - have never met ya dude but tell them all to stick it. You've said enough in your own replies on this posting regarding the marketing. They don't get back to ya, they don't advertise.

Bongohead, wake up and get some basketball people with business savvy in the positions and things will happen.

Meanwhile, I still haven't logged on to the 36ers' website .....

Moses, my company was responsible, for a few seasons prior to this year, for building and maintain the Sixers and Lightning websites. After the Sixers chose to discontinue our contract in favour of another company (JABA) and with the replacement Sixers site initially not offering a fan forum, I created Hoops SA for people to discuss all things relating to basketball in SA -- from the Sixers down to juniors.

That's the history, but there's no war between the sites or anything exciting like that.

i think the people in charge of the official 6'ers site really have to start impressing people if they are to get a decent number of fans visiting it. A great start would be sending out a weekly newsletter informing the fans that have signed up what has happened during the past week at the club, any injuries, or milestones coming up, etc. Surely it wouldn't take too long to write up a paragraph or two and send it out to everyone on the mailing list? correct me if im wrong though... :)

genna -- you're definitely correct. It'd take 5 minutes.

Isaac and myself know how easy it is to send out the newsletters (I was doing it until Isaac returned from is European sojourn)....it is so easy, takes very little time, there is no reason why they cant be getting sent out.

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if you read the post propertly bongobrain said he would only reply on the official sixers forum, and that is what he has done

"In particular I am concerned with comments suggesting that Phil Smyth and Steve Breheny "are no fans of the club". The club is not just the management, it is the combination of a team, coaching staff, management staff and the fans. Whilst there maybe some personal problems with some individuals it is simply not true to publicly state claims such as this. Apart from being untrue it is also extremely damaging and does absolutely nothing to help the club."


I agree with this. One or two people on this forum have pushed that claim. I don't see it as a widespread belief. I personally think that claim lacks serious credibility, as does the person who constantly sprouts that.


"I am concerned with comments about the marketing team being ineffective too, when I know they are working very hard with limited resources. All they get in return is a barrage of flack, often from faceless critics."


Unfortunately the marketing of the 36ers is poor. Whether that is the fault of your marketing organisation or the 36ers management, it is unclear. You possibly summed it up in your comment above - "limited resources". Marketing is clearly an area that needs significant attention and more resources. Whoever is at fault doesn't matter. What matters is that something is changed. Sweeping it under the carpet or deflecting the blame is not going to solve anything.



"The overall financial situation of the sport, not simply the Sixers, is the problem. A problem created and caused by the decisions taken in the 'good old days', when no-one planned for the inevitable rainy day."

Ah, yes, it was the previous government's fault. ;)

That may well be true, but the current management has been there long enough to implement a new change. Unfortunately nothing is working. And the bottom line is we need to see results. We can't hide behind the previous administration forever.


"The lack of genuine support for the Club shown by these generally faceless critics does as much harm as anything the front office might be accused of. Ticket prices might be too high. Attendances might be down. I wonder if people really know what the true attendances have been in the past, not simply what was published?"

I agree to some extent. Negativity can be harmful. We need to be a bit more constructive about it.

What do you mean by 'true attendances'? I know what I see. And I know that in the past the crowd has been packed to the rafters. I know tickets have been difficult to obtain at times. And I know that anyone buying tickets on match day, was forced to sit in the very back rows, or sometimes run the risk of missing out on tickets alltogether.

I have no idea of your background but your comment makes me wonder how long you've been attending Sixers games. You don't need to have the stats in front of you to know how much attendances have dropped in the last 2 seasons.


"Why does all the chat take place on a site not managed by the Sixers - intimidated by needing to pitch in and really help the sport perhaps?"

Simply, this is a better forum. And it is moderated better.

Instead of pleading with people to use your forum or coming up with lame comments about true fans will go there, perhaps you should aim at providing a competitive service. Isn't that what happens in business? You attract customers by providing a better service.


"Why is all the chat negative - all care and no responsibility, is a pretty shallow but safe position I guess?"

It's not all negative. There have been plenty of great ideas thrown around on this site.


"Why is all the focus on the current administration - perhaps you would rather not know what has caused the problem, or what is being done, or how you could help?"

If you put it like that yes I would like to know what has caused the problem. Please tell? (I know you won't, which makes it a silly thing to even bring up)


"Why the hankering for the good old days - easier I guess because we can't make them come back, and avoiding the current reality?"

Why can't we make them come back? Have we given up? Are we accepting mediocrity?


"Time for a good hard look in the mirror you guys!. No doubt the front office has made some mistakes, but in hindsight and in possession of the facts, they have not made as many as those made a few years back that are now coming home to hurt the sport, but they have also done plenty right. Can you say the same thing? Are you really fans, or just a peanut gallery with a selfish and largely esoteric agenda?"

I can only speak for my self but I see myself as a huge fan. If I wasn't I wouldn't be posting here. The fact that we do, shows how much we care. We are here for the love of the game. I hope you can say the same.


"The front office does listen and there are things being done that do address concerns voiced by fans."

Good to hear. That is a positive.


"If you are serious about "supporting" the club you love, you will reply to this post on the SIXERS forum with some positive suggestions."

That's ridiculous. Are you really worried about the club or are you only worried about the hit count on your forum?

"Why is all the focus on the current administration - perhaps you would rather not know what has caused the problem, or what is being done, or how you could help?"

It's time to stop blaming the mistakes of past administrations and face the facts. There is $x (insert paltry sum here) available to market the club and it needs to be used efficiently to deliver results. That's the bottomline. I have been suggesting things (many of which would cost absolutely nothing, most of which would cost very little) for the duration of the season to date. None of these things have been implemented.

As for the final point in the quoted paragraph ("how you could help"), please show me where the club has sent out a newsletter asking fans to assist the club by forwarding ticket offers to friends, asked for creative marketing ideas, asked for help by inviting their friends to games. Where has the club provided an online survey so that fans can help determine which areas need improvement? Absolutely nowhere.

If you want traffic at the official site: run polls, seed the forum, send out newsletters with news snippets that require a visit for the full story, bring back MVP voting, have online-only specials, etc. It's elementary stuff. This is not necessarily a direct criticism of JABA because having been in their position before, I know that support can be less than forthcoming, but the fact that these things aren't being tried is not the fault of any fan here.

Just on that Isaac, did you post elsewhere that you were attending a "brainstorming session" with management?

If so, did anything come of it that you care to share with the masses?

All this going on and the sixers are currently on top of the table.

Must be very hard to market the best team in the country!!

Bongobrain, I am starting to think that this is your credo not just a nick, there are plenty of ideas on this forum.

You have been given excellent feedback mostly on the constructive side.

Now is your chance to prove to the fans that you will do something about it.

Unfortunately I had to miss that meeting (I have a lot of deadlines at this time of year with clients) and haven't heard anything about it.

Also, the Sixers forum might appear a bit more professional if the site administrator used a different name to bongobrain. I realise we all have nicknames but surely the site administrator should be a little different. It doesn't have to be your own name, even something as simple as 'forum admin' or 'site admin' would do.

Well all I say is full marks to Isaac for what he provides here and any time I have ever asked a question on this forum, I always get a very quick response.
It is no good criticising season ticket holders for comments they may make here, it is we who pay hundreds of dollars each year to assist with the club's financial position and we have every right to put forward our comments and suggestions, particularly when we are seeing such an extended run of pathetic performances.