Anonymous (#21774),
Great way to dismiss a potential franchise in one line. A 6,500 seat stadium, potential sponsorship by the casino attached to it and a cashed-up population of 650,000 people. I'm sure there is room for a fourth Queensland team. In any case the Rollers were still getting close to 2,500 with a terrible stadium and record in 1996, so I'm sure with the increased population there is room for another team quite easily.
Isaac, I've always felt the more teams the better. Increased exposure for sponsors, more local media coverage growing the sport and the ability to call the game the only true national sporting league would be advantages. I guess it all comes down to what people want at the end of the day. Do people want to see a 11 to 14 team league with crowds of around 5,000 or so each in nice stadiums and good standard of players on each team, or would people rather see a much bigger league that has it's talent spread out a little more thinly?
Certainly there is plenty of good players that the league has lost because in Australia they would be a third option scorer on a team and would just miss out on a really big paycheque, (I would be guessing after the best couple of players on each team the salaries would drop fairly drastically). Maybe with a bigger league with talent spread further these players would become franchise players at a smaller club and would return to Australia. I am talking about players the likes of Damien Ryan, Frank Drimic, Wade Helliwell, Axel Dench, James Harvey, etc. So from players point of view more teams is always a great idea.
I guess the NBL is admitting teams with an eye on the future growth of the league and demanding that they play in a stadium in which they can foster crowd growth and reach budgets. Melbourne would be averaging more than 3,000 I feel if they could have been able to cover the cost of playing in Melbourne Park (heard it was between $30,000 and $50,000 a game to play a few years back) and certainly recently the near capacity crowds are indicating that they may need a new stadium (Andrew Gaze indicated a while back that they plan to outgrow their current stadium sooner rather than later with plans to play finals games at Rod Laver Arena). West Sydney is a disaster in any case and I don't expect to see that franchise to last so comparing any new potential franchise crowds against it may be a mistake. What also must be remembered is a bad stadium can doom a franchise. The Giants were averaging more than 2,200 people a game before the change of stadium, yet the next season they only sold out a game once (after the Catt incident) and the previous game only 947 people attended the match! There were a lot of problems with that franchise but surely playing in a cut-cost suburban stadium didn't help.
I guess it all comes down to covering the budget in terms of entering a team. If the NBL allows a few regional teams in that could only get crowds of 3,000 max (I would expect the teams crowds to be sell-outs in regional areas) then the salary cap may have be lowered to make the teams competitive. Would the players oppose this? Surely it wouldn't hurt the market value of the players. I mean if you add up to five or so regional teams and lower the cap just by $60,000 or so the market value of players should stay the same as the talent is spread more thinly and players become more valuable despite the cap lowering. If the players agree to this maybe it might become viable.
TR, once again except for the Giants most of them Melbourne teams had pretty decent crowds. Another Melbourne team is a must I feel before too many people are lost from basketball forever. A Melbourne United sort of concept, bringing in all the people from the basketball wilderness. The Giants had no identity. If you were a North Melbourne Giants fan you probably would have never gone to a Titans game as it was filled with players from a team you hated, and played the same style of game. If you were a Titans fan you probably would have jumped off when BG was sacked and the culture changed again. That left exactly who left to follow the club? And then even those who stuck with the club are rewarded with overpriced tickets in a small dodgy stadium with a cut-cost roster. It isn't rocket science to figure out why no one attended matches.
Still I agree that a $500,000 Hobart team can work in crowd numbers. A second Melbourne team can work. A Gold Coast team can work. A Singapore team can work. How much does Mildura, Bendigo, Ballarat, Albury/Wodonga stadiums hold? Could a North West Victoria franchise work hosting a game in a few different cities each, with sponsorship from all, based in the town with the best stadium?
In any case, any expansion is good.