Despite shocking TV coverage from Ten and minimal print media in the capital cities apart from Adelaide and Perth I think the NBL is heading in the right direction despite still having a bunch of simpletons running the league.

Positive signs for the NBL surviving the chopping block

anyone heaidng to Kings game this Friday?

As far as I know the capacity of the Townsville Entertainment Centre (for basketball) is 5,257. I'll try to confirm that with centre management and/or the Crocs but hey, I'm not holding my breath...they didn't reply to a question about the attendance figure for the Wildcats game so I'm not expecting an answer there.

Anon #346863, 20K for the round isn't bad in today's market and there is definite room for growth. When the NBL folded a few years back and when they lost teams like the Titans, Dragons, Falcons, Cannons etc they also lost a lot of fans. It takes time to win new fans but getting back older fans who's favourite teams are no longer competing is much harder and a lot would never come back.

As it was 19,270 attended Rd.15 but the total capacity (as best I know) was only 23,357 so it was a pretty good round attendance wise, other than the game in Wollongong. This round saw 4 of the 5 games played in the league's smallest venues (Melbourne, Auckland, Perth & Townsville) so an AFL type attendance figure you won't see.

If the teams with the 5 largest venues all had home games on the same weekend and all posted capacity crowds (Breakers @ Vector Arena, Kings, 36ers, Hawks and Taipans) then the total crowds would still only be 41,817.

I'll admit I don't have attendance figures from the glory days of the 1990's but I do know that Adelaide & Perth played pretty much every home game in front of 8K and 8,200 respectively. The Tigers, Magic & Bullets played often to 8-10K+ crowds and larger for finals. The Giants played to 6K+ crowds at The Glasshouse while the Kings usually played to 7 or 8K crowds despite the performance often not matching their hype. If only it was like that today.

And further to your last post Holden, it's not unreasonable to suggest Melbourne and Perth could bump their average attendances up by another 1500 and 2000 respectively if they played in larger venues.

Austadiums has ten years worth of data, but it will be incomplete - for example last year virtually none of melbourne's figure went in which would have dragged the average down.

http://www.austadiums.com/sport/comp.php?sid=4

This data is very misleading viewed in this way, different years had different numbers of teams, and therefore more aggregate games, different fixtures (some games played in tiny regional venues) and crackpot franchises (playing at MSAC! Sydney Spirit! etc).

I do recall crowd averages in excess of 5500 in the 90's, which were remarkable considering some of the venues maximum capacity was even smaller than we have now. Geelong and the old Gold Coast from memory had significantly smaller full house capacity than Melbourne for example.

I remember Geelong left the NBL (where it maxed out at 2000 people) and miraculously grew 600 seats - the SEABl media guide a couple of years back showed Geelong's biggest ever SEABL crowd at 2600!

I have mentioned before that the last two seasons the NBL has got the conditions right for MUCH better crowds (FTA, longer season scheduling, more spaced games, removal of Wednesday games and the return of the Kings.) As such to me, even an 11% increase last year (which i do not think is accurate) can be attributed almost solely to the return of the Kings which means the other clubs collectively have not capitalized.

Anon, criticisms suggestion at the sport is moving in the right direction, but doesn't know past figures themselves. Nice.

Anon #346920

The 2010/11 season had excellent conditions for growth as opposed to 2009/10.

- Significantly better fixturing (25 weeks instead of 21)
- Removal of Wednesday night games
- Live FTA (remember EVERYONE saying this would be the saviour for crowds and the league)
- Return of the Kings (this was meant to be good for ALL teams, not just Kings home crowds)

Austadiums shows crowds increased 11%, which is consistent with the league's numbers, but we know that in 2010/11 austadiums did not get many of either NZ's or Melbourne's crowds which meant it probably over reported the average and therefore the increase.

Wollongong, Gold Coast and Townsville's crowds were static at best, Cairns exceptional and Sydney quite stunning considering their win/loss. Adelaide dropped slightly from memory. Melbourne I think dropped last year from the year before. That does not correlate with your picture. In short, last season, Sydney's crowds, being well above league average, basically dragged the whole league average up.

I agree it will be interesting to see what Perth do in a bigger venue. Adelaide have done better with crowds this year despite not "winning".

I also agree there is a bug in the fixturing this year with Sunday's, but I don't think anyone is saying the bug is as bad as Wednesday nights - maybe it is.

The overall league averages are misleading, but we use them because we have little detail on individual markets, it would be nice to look at each market in detail.

Melbourne were up last year, their 2010 crowds were their lowest in a long time. I think it's pretty clear the crowds have been excellent overall this year.

There is a real base to build on if the clubs keep working at it. This coupled with the fact people are still watching late at night is also good news.

Too early to get excited, but things are definitely heading in the right direction. Crowds this year could well be 1000 above some years in the past decade which would be a very good achievement.

Anyway, this discussion seems to come up every other week!!

Breakers just announced that tonights game Vs Melbourne has sold out at NSEC making it their 3rd sellout in a row correct me if I'm wrong.