Anonymous
Years ago

Sports Fever neglecting NBL

I watched Sports Fever on 7mate! Last night for the first time, and while the show was quite funny, they pretty much covered every single sport played in Australia over the weekend expect for the NBL. What gives!?

AFL got plenty of coverage as expected, cricket got a ridiculous amount of coverage, rugby was mentioned and the A-league got a run. At that point I thought, if they are going to cover the A-League, the surely the NBL would be next. Nope, not even an insulting joke about the league. Is the NBL that invisible, that it can't even get a mention on a general sports show!

There were over 7000 at the Kings game (against an AFL match between the Swans and GWS), a full house at Wollongong and Cairns, and twice as many people at the GC Blaze game than there would be at a GC United match. So why is the NBL so blatantly being ignored!?

Admittedly I only really watched the whole show just to see if they would mention the basketball, so I was skeptical from the start. Proved to be correct after all.

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Harry Balls
Years ago

The only time I've seen 'em comment on NBL was when that AFL player dunked at half time and AFL dicks cried out "what if he hurt himself?" so really it was an AFL story. Even then, the only real mention of the NBL was something like "is the NBL still going? I thought it stopped in 1996".

Maybe it'll rate a mention when the finals get underway...or when the second Melbourne team is (finally) announced.

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Anonymous
Years ago

The NBL is only a minor league in the Australian landscape, however it deserves more attention in the main stream media than what it currently gets. The type of coverage the league gets across all channels would assume that only 1000 people attend games in regional centers only. The league is much better than that, yet it's consistently ignored.

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billo
Years ago

Those guys are all huge soccer fans to begin with so NBL is never going to get the same coverage on that show. NBL is miles behind AFL, NRL and cricket as mainstream sports so, again, I can see why it's not getting a look in.

If they start covering baseball over basketball then we have a problem.

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DJ Rod
Years ago

They normally take the piss out of sports so the less the better right?

Btw last week Jenna O'Hea was live in studio!!!

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Anonymous
Years ago

The NBL is poorly marketed. When you have an inferior product and you market it poorly, of course the media are going to neglect it.

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Anonymous
Years ago

Inferior to what?

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Anonymous
Years ago

Lack of marketing and PR.... something the Dragons got hard on to in their time, but the rest of the league has never been able to get up to any reasonable standard.

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Anonymous
Years ago

Perth Wildcats do a great job marketing thier club. The only thing they dont do, which they should is put a TV advert out. They dont need to sell tickets as their games are at 95% capacity, but a TV ad will at least get their brand out to all of Perth.

From what I can tell, the Taipans are big news in Cairns, and NZ Breakers appear to be riding their championship success well with good marketing.

I think its just the Tigers that do nothing.

From a league point of the view, the marketing could be a lot better, but that shouldnt stop "Sports Fever" from not knowing that the league even exists. Its not that hard to know its still around and doing OK.

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HO
Years ago

Inferior product? Looks like Port Adelaide, GWS Giants and North Melbourne won't get a run on Sports Fever this year.

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natwhereyouat
Years ago

It's a funny show, i watch it every week. Mainly because there's a lack of anything else on those nights. There has been some basketball talk.

Last week or week before they had O'Hea on there. It was clear they had no idea about the sport let alone the league (WNBL). Stupid questions being asked.

Week before that they had a small thing on Jeremy Lin, like everyone did. And they took the piss outta him.. ofcourse.

Actually come to think of it, that's it. Honestly, unless they're going to get in a third party to talk about basketball/NBL/WNBL/NBA I'm happy for them to stay away from it, it gets cringe worthy when you hear non basketball fans talk about basketball and "Slam Dunks" and how tall people are etc

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greg
Years ago

They need to get Mark Worthington on board.
Seriously. If he could help market NBL basketball as well as he markets himself, things would be vastly improved. That's not meant as a joke or a criticism.
The face of GC basketball will seem to get bigger for the Blaze next season when he's Captain (and he WILL be Captain, no player voting I'll bet) And I don't just mean as a billboard on the GCCC which I assume is pretty large. He appears to have more personal (small?) sponsorships than anyone in the League and be the top paid Aussie player.
Maybe he learnt a lot from the Dragons?

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Anonymous
Years ago

Russell Hinder made a nice quip about Wortho (to his face mind you) at last night's NBL awards about how most of his teams seem to go belly up (Kings, Dragons, Tigers and now talk of Blaze financial problems).

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Hoops

Sports Fever neglecting NBL

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