That just shows how basketball has lost its touch with other sports. The only real decent league is the NBA. The Euroleague is physical and has good players but if you can't make it in the NBA you're considered a nobody.

OMFG... anon said why... JUNIOR AND SENIORS COMBINED... our younger squads dominate which is why our national ranking goes up, if our senior mens was in top 4 we would probably be 1???

Exactly-The Women's team is the best in the world and the junior teams usually do an exceptional job(e.g last years world champs where they were something like 8-1 (w-l) but just lost the quarterfinal to Brazil)
The fact that Aus. is no.2 overall, doesn't suprise me one bit.
Remember that the reason why we do such a great job internationally and yet we cannot run a league within our own country is because alot of our best talent is overseas e.g Bogut in NBA, Anderson is Europe same with Nielson and Newley
If these guys were in the NBL, the NBL would be much much stronger

Aussies have been number 2 in the world since the Opals won the World's. Our junior teams ie. Sapphires, Emus, Crocs etc are always finishing top 4 if not winning. Boomers the only team not to finish around the medals recently.

Its international status like this that marketing gurus should have a field day with.

I see the ad right now.

Green screen on which the following text appears (one version is accompanied by a male voice over, another by a female voice over)

Question

"In which team sport played across the globe does Australia rank as the second best in the world?"
"Forget Soccer, Forget Cricket, You think it might be Rugby Union? Well you'd be wrong"

"Get out on the hardwood people and live the dream"

"Be the NBL, Be the WNBL, just be apart of making Australia number 1!!!!)

Then in the small print at the end and like the quick political voice overs "Spoken by ...insert male/female basketball star, for Basketball Australia. See your local basketball stadium for further information"

What have you got to lose Chuck or Scott?

Big Ads ...just how naieve are you? You wanna run a tv add like that? Ok, so you produce the add and that costs you 50-60k (cause you need three different versions etc etc)....then you have to run it...ok, so where?
mmm...perhaps the ABC will run it as a community service announcement? Perhaps SBS will run it during their news just to show that a new add has been released by BA.
do you have any idea whatsoever what it costs to run a TV campaign? like any idea? The NBL spent 200,000 bucks back in '98 producing the "nothin better" campaign add and then had no bucks to run it anywhere.
Any sort of effective campaign costs you millions in ad-time, and a really effective one is backed by a sumplementary radio/press/internet campaign which is then backed by collateral material etc.
Do you guys have any understanding of where BA get their money from and just how little they have?
I've quoted some numbers here before...but I'll remind you again....
a) Most of BA's revenue is allocated funding from the ASC (probably 70% of their total revenue) and can ONLY be used for the purposes the ASC specify - mainly elite teams
b) The next large piece of the pie is the states fees, which adds up to less than 1 million a year and on average means less than $3.00 per participant in this country ends up in BA's hands
c) The rest of it is sponsorship and ad-hoc funding - and there aint much of it.

If BA run a $250,000 surplus for ten years straight then invested all of that in one surge you might get to run a campaign like this....and that would be a huge risk because you would be putting all your eggs on one basket. Lots of "ifs" by the way in all that.

BA put their world ranking out there all the time, like in every release and in every PR document they produce. One day someone might do a fluff piece on the extraordinary success others have spoken about here with the Opals and junior teams.

(Mod: Informative.)

Get back into schools and shopping malls, then.
( Other sports do )

Camel, you'll get no argument from me on that - particularly the NBL clubs....

The NBL used to have a dual contract system for players - a playing contract and a promotional contract (which covered school clinics etc). The promotional contracts used to specify minimum time spent on actual "development" work - clinics and the like. That all went out the door in the late nineties and a single contract system was developed incorporating "some" of the former "development" contract stuff.

BTW, at that stage NBL clubs had two caps - playing/salary cap and promotional cap - the later could be extended for genuinely doing extra work in the community. It was the system on which the original Kings (you know, the ones that never won anything but made a LOT of money (reportedly in excess of 1 mil per year back then)) built their success.

But BA cannot make local associations do that sort of promotional stuff and BA do not have any full time players as part of their staff in the way a club does....

And, clubs training 9-5 ,mon-fri, these days.
Why, only yesterday, I saw an Australian soccer player speaking in a school hall to a thousand kids.

Clubs aren't quite training 9-5. Often it's 2-3 hour sessions in the mornings (used to be 4 per week for the 36ers), individuals in the afternoon (again, 3-4; and I don't think the vets do all of these) and gym sessions four times/week.

AFAIK, 36ers players also have a quota of promotional events (clinics, appearances) they have to fulfil as well.

One problem may be that top-level players could find these tedious and clubs could use a relaxed approach to enforcing quotas as a bargaining chip?

I think (as HO hinted), more of a contract and payments could be based upon meeting promotional obligations. All events could be logged with BA/NBL via a centralised system to ensure that it's not just the Matt Sutton's of the world getting out to schools.

Hey guys, interesting conversation. The community engagement stuff is really important. So is FTA TV.

There are two things that got me into basketball:

- Mark Davis turned up to my primary school after the championship win in 1986 and did a clinic. I was sick that day, but my friend was suddenly a convert and joined the new school basketball team and he got me interested soon after.

- In about 1988 I discovered late night channel 7 delayed broadcasts of that years playoffs. I remember Davis, Bill Jones, Pearce, Green, Ali and others beating up on an overmatched Melbourne Tigers (I think with Colbert and Simmons) before getting beaten by the Perth Wildcats (Pinder, Crawford, Grace, Ellis)

I'm willing to bet there are a ton of people my age who can point to a similar introduction to basketball in the late 80s.

So Isaac and others, do you think the amount of time major players spend doing clinics at schools and the like has decreased significantly since the late 80s for example?

Don't have enough information to know (e.g., stats), just aware that they still do some school visits at least. Might've been a more significant drop off in the Eastern states big city clubs?

Not sure if the league provide educational material to schools, but did notice the other day that the AFL have a DVD package they give to P.E. teachers. I've also seen the material that the Breakers give out (booklets plus DVD) and it's very good for an NBL club.

The league should create a set of lessons and content, work with each club to create a customised version of it (their players doing the drills, etc) and then get it out to all schools; that is, if BA/AussieHoops haven't already covered that angle.

Yes. We have let it slip, in schools, from what I
see, in my area, and doing a bit of coaching at my sons school etc.
But, I also heard Harmison say it. And Rachael Sporn say they used to do a lot. But not now.
All good ideas, Isaac, in your above.
Some good players, that enjoy the PR part. Whilst some find it a bit tedious. And some that are not good at public speaking etc.

HO, very informative post indeed, well done.

I apologise for being naieve. I did not imagine my flippant post about a potential Basketball Australia advertising campaign would be rebutted with such scathing critic.

Your use of data was inspiring and dismissed my wishful fantasies accordingly. Most of all you reinforced that such nonsense does not belong on this medium of intellectual discourse.

I am honoured to have been able to converse with such a learned colleague such as yourself. It has been enlightening.

Before I 'post' again in the future I will place greater consideration to executing scientific process to any theoretical position I may present to our esteemed fellows.

Finally and please forgive me, but I have one last question, what does naieve mean? Did you mean to type naive because that may have made your response to my first post on this topic possibly faultless.

(Mod: Last line made me laugh. Still, can't whinge about HO's point - not much point in an ad they can't afford to run.)

fair call Big Ads. and I laughed at the last para too. shite, i'm glad you only found one spelling shocker to pick me up on - there are probably more.

Could we do a DVD into schools, then ?
Sounds like a good idea?

Suggest that in Brisbane and Sydney that BA whack an add on homeless people as soon as possible.Guessing it would be cost efficient and who knows, some of them might even be out of pocket ballers?

Many corporations these days who seemingly spend big money on advertising campaigns do so on a 'contra' basis - ie in exchange for commercial air time on local broadcasts the NBL could provide promotion for the particular network - perhaps at all home games each club is required to set up a big screen like at the Dome and loop new program promos during timeouts and quarter breaks.

Sure, the cost of production is high, but with good marketing skills the costs of advertising in off-peak, childrens and the occassional primetime zones could be affordable.

Remember those awful 36er ads with Dusty and Willie a few years ago - most likely a result of many free tickets, corporate box discounts etc to the local network.

And they were pretty average, infrequent and only in Adelaide where awareness of the NBL and 36ers is pretty decent courtesy of The Advertiser. The massive expense would come in getting word out in Sydney where they'd be less likely to give away broadcast time for freebies IMO.

Broadcast economics. The true big networks (melb and syd) will not do a contra deal, although they might, like Foxtel, write in a value in ad placement in certain timeslots against the broadcast deal.

So the AFL broadcast deal might be worth 110 million per year, but the AFL might only get 98 mill of that in cash, and each club might get 300-400k worth of adsports etc as prta of that which always sweetens the broadcast deal for the clubs.

Basketball simply does not have that negotiating pull.

I don't see how the hell the NBL can spend that much on TV ads just to get made up, are they stupid? Give me $25K and I will get a quality tv ad put together, street team together, then they pay for anything like flyers, the actual tv time, posters, magazine ads, etc... end of the day they are gona reach more people faster and alot better... why the hell is there nothing on facebook for 36ers? why isn't there anything on myspace for the 36ers... 2 of the biggest promotional tools on the net aint being used, and they are FREE!!!