press release y/n ?

I'm putting it out there, Gibson is a curse.
Bullets, Dragons, Blaze and now 36ers?

Honestly, what else are they going to use Adelaide Arena for? I'm expecting the 36ers end up playing the season there

13 August 2012

Members & Fans note from Adelaide 36ers CEO

I'm sure, as 36ers members and fans, you would be eagerly following the story on the Adelaide Arena. I wanted to update you all today that, unfortunately, we still do not have an answer from the Commonwealth Bank as to whether they will grant us a lease to remain at the Arena for the 2012-13 season.

This is immensely frustrating for us and all 36ers fans.
We are continuing to work with the Bank and have been providing them with all of the information they need from us, to help them make their decision.

We have made it very clear to the Commonwealth Bank that we must know as a matter of urgency, because we all want to see the 36ers take the court from October 7.
There is no question that the longer we do not have a decision on our lease, the harder it is for us to prepare for the 2012-13 season. Unfortunately, for us in South Australia, there is no alternate, available venue to stage our NBL matches.

We will continue to keep you informed and hope we will be able to update you again soon, once we have heard about the lease agreement.

Leeanne Grantham

"Unfortunately, for us in South Australia, there is no alternate, available venue to stage our NBL matches."
Interesting sentence... Taking the franchise interstate? Brisbane?

Is there a reason they cant play at the AEC or the netball venue? - even if its just for a few home games until the Bank makes a decision?

Or as a worst case scenario, would they do something like take home games to regional parts of SA until the venue situation is sorted? They'd also be doing a good service to the state that way.

There's no way they'd fold because of something like this - surely an alternate venue can be arranged for a short term?

Only four games of their schedule would be available at the Entertainment Centre and even then would require a professional court set up. The netball venue probably couldn't hold enough fans for the club to avoid losing disastrous amounts of money. Keep in mind that they have responsibilities to corporate supporters as well.

Does the CBA have it on the market?

If it goes on the market, Basketball Australia simply needs to find a way to buy it, or a benefactor whos prepared to do so. Losing the Blaze is ho hum, but to then lose an iconic brand like the 36ers in a basketball stronghold would be disastrous.

Was just going to say something similar. Gold Coast Blaze going - meh who cares, but it would be a disaster to lose a traditional power like the 36ers. Then the NBL would have some real problems.

Maybe they should go bush for a while?

Marty Clarke said something about a bush league.

Like you balance anon would mean a lot to CBA. Unless you have millions they will not care

Fucking hell I didnt realise the situation was THIS DIRE!!! and silly me goes and buys season tickets last year for this season. god damn it. You woul;d think Basketball Australia would help sort something out.... Losing Adelaide is on par with losing the Melbourne Tigers... If its Goodbye 36ers its pretty much goodbye league. The 6ers had some of the highest numbers attending even despite terrible seasons, 3 of them in fact in a row. Basketball Australia needs to stop congratulating itself about the olympics now and get right onto this!

Before we all start handing out razor blades, let's take stock of the situation.

The property is basically Lot 44 and Lot 1-3 William St Beverley. The site is around 183 m x 100 m (TBC) or 18,300 m2 (1.83 Ha). Located on the site is a custom built constructed building approximately 7,000 m2 in size. Built in 1991 at a cost of nearly $16 million, the asset would be written down to ? M. (I think the ATO allows a writedown rate of 2%/yr on a building?)

The CBA has taken control of the asset, so in order to maximise its return, it needs to either find a buyer for the asset, or obtain a good return in the form of rent from the asset. The asset is restricted by planning laws and this can limit the sales return.

The CBA would have a number that the assets "owes it" and would be seeking to obtain this number of possible through open sale.

If the CBA acted as landlord (ie Adelaide Arena) (probably not their preferred position), while it would be seeking to achieve a high ROI, the CBA is limited by the commercial realities of the market and so they would be seeking to maximise the best return they could if they leased out their asset.

Their best position may be to continue to lease the building to the Sixers while it:

1. Seeks a buyer who wishes to keep it as a basketball stadium.
2. Seeks a buyer who would change its use (this would need planning approval, so there would be a time delay before they could move in)
3. Take the bull by the horns and redevelop the site to maximise any capital.
4. Lobby the government to make the stadium use more flexible in order to achieve greater rents and therefore make it a more attractive option for a multi-use stadium.

Therefore, while the current position does not appear to be favourable to the Sixers, unless the CBA has a buyer tearing down the door, the CBA need the Sixers to continue as tenants to keep any cashflow at the site and at least give a prospective buyer an option.

After all, what's the worst that could happen? The Sixers could relocate to the Gold Coast !

How much is the Adelaide Oval upgrade costing the tax payer?

I think the Government needs to step in and buy it off the bank.
Federal government would also be in a position to buy this asset for the sport, after all both Australian Basketball sides made the finals of the olympics with the women getting a bronze. They have been receiving return for investment.

How you let basketball progress after this is the problem because past business and financial planning hasn't been successful. The sixers could then rent the premises of BSA

I like the idea of "traditional power" in Adelaide ... we havent won a playoff game in ten years, and are coming off consecutive worst records in our history.
Though tradition counted for so much when Brisbane and Sydney were in trouble ...

so what i can understand is, the 36ers ownership had nothing in plan for incase this happens, and if we go under, they are ultimately 100% at fault...

regardless, the sale of the land can not be redeveloped i believe... remember being told due to the original use of land before the stadium that it can not have housing, and nobody will buy it and build another stadium for anything, so the CBA will basically be forced to rent it to the 36ers as nobody else will touch it, especially without a tenant if the new owners wan't a return on it's investment. A church may purchase it, and they would still probably want to rent it to the 36ers to get some money back, not to mention would be a big goodwill showing for them to get more people converted to their god...

i really can't see the 36ers not playing there this season, would be bad publicity for all involved!

What can you really plan for? To buy it? There's no alternate venue's that work and the AEC is booked year(s) in advance well before this problem was foreseeable.

Unforeseeble? What the hell have you been smoking, it's been coming ever since Eddies financial problems, they could have been in contact with the bank from day one to make sure they had addequate notice from them, and also could have put in place back up plans with other venues to help secure any seasons in the future they may have to move... Any promoter knows how to "pencil" in dates, so surely a multi million dollar business should know how to do the same... They brought this problem on themselves with their own stupid planning... It's just a shame that idiots doing administration could possibly ruin the careers of so many players, or set them back a few steps...

They could have also met with interested parties who are looking to buy it possibly prior to this all happening to determine a lease proposal with a buyer, which could have helped the new owner get the property at a lower price, or at the cost of what's owed!

It really isn't rocket science...

It's in the best interest of the CBA to be cagey. Create uncertainty and a sense of urgency that precipitates demand for the place.

Under real estate law, all offers must be presented to the vendor.

Who is handling the sale? I feel like offering $2, but I think the first offer should be $1M.

adel oval - 550 million plus.

adel arena only needs a few mill


shows you where and with who the power bases lie.

who knows what is fact and fiction in this - the truth and the real reasons people are in this will show in due course.

for those of us like myself who love basketball and the 36ers / lightning - we can only wait and hope the powers that be make decisions that will at the very least maintain what we have already.

Agree with those who say the State Govt should bite the bullet. They have ploughed precious little money into community sports facilities over the last decade or two, all the while funding the top end of town - so modern Labor! Sport is never going to be self-funding, and you are crippling any sport to insist on user-pays. We all pay taxes, let's see something for them. Oh and what better facilities couldn't do for obesity rates, healthy community participation etc etc.

It's also in the best interests of the 36ers to make it sound bad if they are angling for outside support. This could be a good early test of Keneally's ability to get govt support.

good for 36ers - interest rates are low - so good time to buy something.
specialist venue suit basketball mainly.
new housing down - so subdivision may not be worthwhile.

bad for 36ers -
bank just wants some / any money from a sale.
another party wants to pay more than basketball returns.

netball has more participants but probably 80% of them play outside in winter. more numbers and poorer venues means netball sa can prop up a 2,000 seat venue.


maybe we go back to asphalt courts ....... not

i dont think the local netball clubs have stadiums ?

y/n ?

..and I said " " Aw Comm own now , we CAN'T play basketball there. "
Seems Groves borrowed $5M and they wanna recover THAT.
Although they gave up once before and Paradise were happy to have Basketball there , but there are State Govt. restrictions.

paul, yes, I think this could just be the club angling for some support.

Shame the stadium isn't really that suited to junior basketball otherwise it might make more sense for BSA to pick it up (even at a stretch).

Remotely related - why have the Lightning never played at ETSA Park?

I was of the understanding that the SOS group had first option on purchasing the stadium, although this may have been with Eddie and before the CBA took possession. When the stadium was for sale I believe that Eddie wanted about $8M? What was the CBA owed on the debt? If it was $5M then would this be the asking price by the CBA? As the SOS group is now smaller (so I have been told) would this figure now be out of their reach? Many questions - not many answers coming from the 36ers.

ETSA Park is probably slightly too big of a venue. I'm guessing Wayville is roughly the right size, and they probably only ever used Adelaide Arena for two reasons 1. Because at the time BASA owned the Arena and the Lightning, might as well make use of it, and 2. Because of the benefit of double headers with the 36ers that was probably advantageous to both teams crowd wise.

Maybe ETSA Park was too expensive as well or hard to deal with, I don't think location would be much of an issue.

Anon12, why would the club need to answer questions about buying a multi-million dollar stadium? They are keeping people in the loop about the lease they believed they had in place to play games at the stadium and that's fair enough. There's been info about the Entertainment Centre and the problems with ETSA Park are pretty clear.

They might have back-up plans that include either of those other options if all else fails, but at the moment their public face is about pressure on government/CBA I assume, and their info to fans has included pretty frequent updates.

I dont know if this will help, but Ive started a Facebook Page to hopefully catch the attention of someone in the government: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Online-Petition-To-Get-Our-Local-Government-To-Save-The-Adelaide-Arena/257882447662397

Please like and share around...

I reckon a CAN'T campaign like the one Skip's quietly pushing on Twitter could be topical given their heavy advertising.

Absolute priority at this point is locking in the lease so the team can play out 2012/13 and that is in the hands of the Commonwealth Bank.

If you contact politicians, maybe keep it reasonable as they're not the enemy.

we need to rattle the can

They could have easily made it financially viable to play at ETSA and some games at AEC... Had they ran the business well in last few years they could have found sponsors to bridge the gap. They didn't even reply to multiple emails from myself for player sponsorship for f*ck sake! That just points out how stupid these people are, I was looking for player sponsorship seats, now I won't be even looking at a season ticket at this point due to their unprofessional manor.

Unprofessional manor. Sorry, but I laughed at "manor"!

Player sponsors are not going to make up the sort of shortfall being discussed. Yes, those small things add up, but this issue is a bit bigger and I don't see how they could have adequately prepared for it. Not like they could preemptively soft-book the Entertainment Centre or tell corporate box sponsors that they might need to sit somewhere else at ETSA Park.

we need someone with Photoshop skills to do something with those CBA CAN'T campaigns,
Post them on the facebook page if anyone does one...

Ricey, you talk as if you have a clue about how to run a basketball club.

It appears you really don't understand how hard it is to make a club financially viable and you don't seem to understand the lack of legitimate options available to the 36ers in terms of a place to play. The reality is not very many of us here have an idea, but atleast be a little reasonable about your criticisms.

Is the guy that won $50 mill last week from the Western Surburbs a bball fan? He could pay cash.

Would the crows buy it?

Even if the Crows would want to buy it (and why would they, it wouldn't be in their interests really), they are already paying off their new headquatrters building at West Lakes, and 5 million is a lot of extra money even for a big AFL club.

Running a club is where all these idiots keep going wrong... They are running a BUSINESS!... Marketing is always horrible, which leads to poor/wrong sponsors, and so on and so on...

Ricey , you are embarrassing yourself on this topic. you have little idea of the complexity of the issue facing the club right now

Isaac, my comment was unfortunately a bit tongue in cheek and wasn't meant to be a criticism of the club. Having spoken to one of the principal members of SOS I was however aware that they supposedly had first option (again this may have been with Eddie). I would assume that this option may be discussed with CBA if no other options are available. I'm sure, as you have stated, that the club will keep the fans updated as much as possible given the fact that some negotitations may be financially/commercially sensitive.

BJF... I deal with venue bookings for a living, so I kind of do hey

So your job booking venues gives you authority to comment on a business that you have no experience in does it, right , my mistake.

your comment about "poor/wrong sponsors" shows how little you know. In the world of sport there is not such thing.

Ricey, so with your experience in venue bookings, what should the 36ers do at this stage of the off season?

I think they have a contingency plan/alternate venue in place but they're just putting pressure on the CBA to ensure their lease at AA is recognised so they dont have to move.

Alternatively, what should they do then?