Word been around for a while that big Clive has been sniffing around getting a deal done.

Of course with the demise of his A-League franchise he needs to stay in the spot light!

Good if he gets it done as then Tinkler will join in with a club in the Hunter Region cause if soccer doesn't want the Billionaries we'll certainly take them!

haven't we already been down this road with these types of owners??

NBL want teams to be community model teams.. Rightly so. These owner teams fail when the owner gets sick of losing money or bored.

As much as i'm a fan of Tinkler's marketing ideas etc, i agree with the NBL/BA's stance.

There won't be any players left!

While the one owner thing is a valid point, there's a difference between Seamus McPeake/Eddie Groves rich and Clive Palmer rich...

Anon 370155, Tinkler still owns the Jets in the A-League, all of the issues with the Hunter Sports Group and the FFA were resolved.

The NBL needs Palmer's $$$ but they don't need his ego which is as fat as his triple chin. No thanks.

not sure about a white knight riding in......more likely the grim reaper !!

I can't get my head around the fact that it's so morally and ethically wrong to give the owners another go at this. Did a horribly wasted, huge sum of their own money, give them the right to do it again? Pay up every single cent owed to the people connected with this club and maybe there's no harm done.
But...It's much too late for that now and Joyce gets 7 cents in the dollar any day.
Shame, Shame... if allowed to happen!!

A white knight to save a white elephant perhaps?

Why would you bother? Surely you'd let it sink and then set in as a new franchise.

I am expecting them back in.
I can't put my finger on why, but this last minute stuff could easily just be the Tomlinsons themselves.
Expect an announcement tonight.

PLEASE SURVIVE!!!!!

ok, so I have often defended BA here, sometime I have bagged them.

This time they have lost it.

They are not in control of this. If it is true that the "club" is not responding to requests for information then BA is out of the loop, and GC is controlling the agenda.

Should have made an announcement at 5:05pm that the club were out of the league. Not simple by any means, but having acted decisively on the Melbourne Camouflage bid, they needed to show strength and decisiveness on this one too.

Blaze are making another submission tonight.

The problem Anon, is that since the time of Bill Palmer IMO, no one has been a good manager of things NBL related.

I have a question. Does anyone know if the TV deal (ten) is predicated on a certain number of teams being in the league or in certain markets?

The current AFL deal requires 18 teams. This is the reason everyone knows the AFL will not let North or Port or Western Bulldogs die.

I'd be interested to know if some such stipulation applies to the NBL. Paul?

Had enough of this mob! GONE... AND good riddance.

The official word is.. Gold Coast have obtained the 500k via a corporate fan. The Blaze have submitted their proposal to BA/NBL.

BA will meet on Monday to go over the proposal and decide the outcome.

#370348

yep, and Ross Oakley, Wayne Jackson et al saw the demise of South Melbourne and the removal of Fitzroy from the AFL. They did well, very well.

Bill Palmer took the league onto national free to air in prime time, negotiated long, multiple term deals with mitsubishi the likes of which the league has not seen since and saw the NBL boom.

People continue to blame league CEO's for local teams failures. You overestimate the capacity and expectation of the national office to influence local teams failures.

Is Andrew Demetriou responsible for North Melbourne's crappy Etihad deal? Is he responsible for Port Adelaide's football department spending?

Was Bill Palmer responsible for the fact that Geelong played out of a venue that could seat only 1850 people or that Hobart was not a corporate powerhouse centre that could support the team?

And while we are asking, we should clarify something. Hobart died. Geelong and the Gold Coast were offered generous redundancies, negotiated by Mal Speed, to leave the league. In other words, it was a deliberate plan, and the two teams were paid to leave - close to 7 figure sums at the time.

Lets hope for the leagues sake they can get on the court.Run a low budget program with 2 imports and a group of SEABL players and then build from there.Look at guys like Jazzmar Ferguson,Jerrell Williams,CJ Massingale etc etc.

HO, the biggest income streams of any sport are its league sponsorship and broadcast deal. The NBL has both in place but only pass on an insignificant amount of money to the teams.

Every AFL team would fall over if the AFL HQ operated their business in the same manor.

BJF I warmly acknowledge what you say. I am not sure it has a bearing on what I am saying to Anon.

Too much is said here without the context of history wrapped around it.

Anon's inference is that Palmer was poor because three clubs left during his time. (more actually did but nonetheless).

However to support you I would say that if Palmer and Speed were trying to strengthen the league by getting rid of those three teams then well done. None of those markets at the time heavily influenced TV or sponsorship decisions. Poor drawing teams hurt your league crowds. etc etc.

In similar ways I have argued here against the inclusion of Newcastle under Tinkler and Wellington. Neither of those help the strategic needs of the league in regards to TV and sponsorship. That is why Brisbane and Melbourne #2 are so critical - and NOTHING else.

Oh and BJF. The TV and sponsorship deals now in place are dwarfed in actual terms by what the league had in place under Palmer and Speed.

I would suggest to you that the league now operates on revenues of less than 2 million per year. Back then it was more like 5-7 million.

#370387

Again, you fail to understand the context of history. Completely.

While Hobart were averaging maybe 3000 per game, it was at a time when the mainland city clubs were averaging closer to 6-8k. Sydney was selling out almost every week, Adelaide was rocking, the Melbourne teams were drawing big crowds.

Back then 3000 at Hobart or 2000 (max) packed in at Geelong, with no chance of bigger crowds or in Geelong's case, a bigger venue, was not anywhere near where the rest of the league was. Gold Coast were in a terrible venue and both Geelong and Gold Coast were seen to have untenable financial models.

Geelong's model could never survive because their venue was just too small. Forget the myths of 2000+ people at a SEABL game, the Geelong Arena never crammed more than 2000 people into it.

Now, you will need to find a place where I said paying out those teams was sensible?

Because I have not said that have I?

I said those teams were paid out (it was a little History lesson for you), and I said that Mal Speed (not Palmer) negotiated those deals. And I said it was a planned outcome. The other teams wanted the poorer performers in the league out. When Geelong and Gold Coast came to town they drew poor crowds, they wanted more big games. And guess what... that is what TV and sponsors wanted too....

I agree, they could have allowed those teams to fold without paying them out because that is what would have happened.

Of course the alternative to paying them out might have been to watch them die awful, long agonising deaths and re-berthing as we saw become PR disasters at places like Canberra and Newcastle (and now Gold Coast), which of course, was what was allowed to happen AFTER Palmer was released from the league.

As for the nonsense of Geelong being a strong recruiting area - of what relevance is that? And of what truth is it? The last and only player from Geelong to play NBL since they left the NBL (from memory) is Herbert. That's hardly a strong recruiting area, no matter how successful the Supercats have been at the next level.

Blaze will be back and they will be playing out of the Convention centre again.
According to the twitter of Daniel Meers, GC journo.
Does anyone else still think this has been a scam from day one to relieve the owners of a pile of bills?
Apart from them being debt free, what's the difference?

bowtie, it certainly looks that way from the outside..

Daniel Meets did not say the club was playing out of the GCCC - it was one of the reasons they burnt so much money. BA needs to apply the $1mil rule to everyone or remove it. They remove it we'll be revisiting this again with owners walking away and players/coaches/fans out of pocket. When will this bullshit with owners going into VA to get out of bills and then restarting again result in anything different ? I want the Blaze to stay around, but this is destroying the league's credibility. If they had a $1mil guarantee, it would have been activated and paid everything out and the NBL would have taken the license back. Its practically trading insolvent atm.

Daniel Meers said 10 hrs ago Twitter,
"will be playing GCCC if if in comp"

Did I assume wrongly?

I wa reading today's Gold Coast Bulletin and it confirms they have raised the 500k but do not have the bank guarantee but are indicating they could do so by the end of this year...now over to BA...

Have BA allowed other teams leeway on the bank guarantee in the past?

As I recall Bendat didn't wanna put one up 'cause he was rich.
Here Groves didn't put one up . Later, he sold the team.
On radio : " Have the new owners put up the $1M ?"
Sengstock : " Er , well , er , we've met them , and
well ,er, they have the financial means to run the club. "

Less and less changes to last season except the owners saved a pot of dough, threw out their debts and little people get less than they are owed.
Did I miss anything?