Next Tigers v Dragons game at 3,300 capacity, probably sold out already.
(300 at Dragons v Sydney in 10,000 seat capacity)
Interesting?

Atmosphere was fantastic at times. However just after the half there was a real drop in the crowd volume. It started to pick up and got good again on dragon rolls.

Such a great game to be at for a dragons fan. Big boos for Ebi every time he got the ball. Darden got the better of him as well which made it great.

Hopefully the casual fans had a good time and we will get a few more people there regularly.

GO DRAGONS!!!

That's what I was thinking. Any ideas on what could be done about that?
Seems a shame.

yeah bg talked about having all the derbies at hicense or rod laver... but al westover said they should have it at the state netball and hockey centre coz it has better atmossphere

Good on 'em, for doing that.

Will be interesting to see what this does to the Dragons' odds and how long it takes for them to skip the Tigers as favourites.

With regard to 300 in Sydney.. I'm going on NBL match preview, said.. a 'few' hundred, and, someone went to the game said 'less than 500'.. so, 300 wouldn't be far out.

Yes, I thought that was interesting..

Brilliant win by the Dragons and amazed @ the huge scoring margin.

Tigers must have been really flat, asleep or thought the win would simply happen rather than make it happen.

i was there tigers were flat and craptacular besides anstey who is a bit of a tool, atmosphere was great as a dragons fan i was about yelling all the time. I actually thought the tigers would be louder than us but i was suprised to see we outdid them a bit (i know we smashed nothing to cheer for, for them) but it was great hope they are all played at Hisense not Cage. Westover is on dope or whatever his players were on last night if they play at the cage again.

oh yeah about the crowd some tigers cheersquad people were shattered and basically in tears ill never forget that moment

If the NBL is serious it would make the tigers play at Rod laver and promote the hell out of it. Unfortunately the owner of the tigers has way too much say in how things go in the nbl, imo he is a major reason behind the failure of the image of the NBL.

If it was the AFL they would move it, sadly the fans will never build trust back in league if the league cannot help it self. I think that the image of basketball is in far worse shape then we are lead to believe, sure at grass roots level there are loads of kids playing but if 4000 of them turn up and watch a game reminiscent of the mid 90s with great atmosphere, dunks and hard running exciting basketball and then find themselves with no seat at the CAGE! for the next game, then what happens???? they leave... and never ever come back cause they have been let down yet again by basketball.

what ahtomosphere??????????? it was a big crowd but no life, dont talk shit, yess ppl but no fans...

Atmosphere wasn't that great because crowd was 50/50 for both sides, and the Dragons smashed the Tigers.
It wasn't like it was Adelaide vs 'out of towners' where one team gets 95% of the suppport. If the game would have been close, the roof would have lifted off.

Apparently 2/3 of the crowd for the Sydney vs Dragons game had made the trip up from Melbourne for the game. There was more support for the Dragons at the game that Sydney!

talk shit???? If you were there you would have seen the amount of people wearing Tigers and dragons stuff... You must be a tigers fan, cause they lost you have to be negative, Have a look at the big picture

If you think there was no atmosphere at that game, it can only mean one of 4 things :-

1. You weren't there

2. You're a Tigers supporter who just wants to bitch and moan

3. You were sitting behing Seamus, and no sound or vision actually got through to where you were sitting.

or

4. You weren't quite as drunk as I was.

Coz, mate, from my perspective THAT was the best spectacle NBL basketball has had in a LONG time. And honstely, the result had nothing to do with it.

Awesome show by the Dragons, on and off the court. Well publicised, well marketed, well managed, well run on game night and best of all, well played.

THAT WAS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THIS SPORT SHOULD BE RUN SEAMUS SHOULD GET OF HIS ARSE AND MOVE THE GAME AS ONLY HE CAN

ok basically I agree with you guys for bigger stadium but, in defense for Seamus the cage is costing him FAR less than what Cowan is paying for ($40,000 a night JUST to hire the facility), whereas the cage probably around $10000 (not 100% sure for this one though). Since the move to SNHC the Tigers has actually made some decent money for the last 3 years.

As one of the post said, less than 500 for a game that costed him $40,000 just to hire? it doesn't make sense for Seamus to do the same thing.

However I have heard from an insider that Seamus was saving up money to build their own facility which will cater for lot bigger crowd. But this plan is now on hold depending on the new league's plan eg. if it's going to cost them few millions to just buy the license again then obviously it's going to delay the process.

So, if Hisense cost him $30k extra to hire, but he pulled in 6,000 more people at about $15 each, that's an increase of $60,000 that could be spent promoting the NBL in Melbourne and prying the Tigers away from capped crowds of 3,000 for the remaining derbies. This game just been should show Seamus that it's worth trying.

All derbies between Tigers and Dragons should be held back at the 15,000 seat Rod Laver Arena - a so called neutral venue for both teams.
If the two Melbourne teams got together with some help from the NBL (yes they should still do some work), and marketed the games, then they could help return the game to the halcyon days of the early '90's (at least in Melbourne) when the Tigers and Magic drew sell-out crowds of 15,000 to Rod Laver Arena.
For heavens sake, they drew nearly 10,000 without little in the way of promotion for this game at all!!!