It's a bit hard to be objective on a bball site, but like it or not, there's no money in Aus basketball. It's been slowly seeping out for the past 10+ years.

Unless the new BA / NBL do something miraculous, the status quo is not going to change much - basketball will be a 'minority' sport in the short term at least, and struggle to attract the big $$$ from sponsors or TV.

Perfectly said Libertine. Every sport that is really successful on an international stage stems from having significant money to invest in it.

It wasn't too long ago in the grand scheme of things that basketball in Australia was booming, so one would think that there's a market for basketball here. The matter that the heads of bball need to address is managing a way to tap back into that market whilst keeping it fresh so they don't lose them, as well as attracting new people to the sport. All this happening whilst the major sports in Australia are going pretty well to say the least. Combine that with an iffy economy, and it's clear that Bball australia has a massive task at hand!

Great post Hurls!

Hurls, ignore the article. It was ridiculous.

WTF is the Roar??

The roar is a sports website that covers pretty much every sport except basketball. Well, there's the odd article here and there by the experts, but mostly any basketball stories written are by amateurs such as the idiot that wrote this article.

It's 99% soccer, rugby afl and cricket, and 1% everything else including hoops. I gave up on that website a while ago because the coverage was poor.

Anyone who thinks online coverage of sports is a 'misstep' has no clue. Just another half-baked fan opinion piece by the looks.

The premise of the article is a bit silly however no one it appears has debated the risk of NBL.tv.

That risk being a low subscriber base.

The other codes have played this game more carefully, and with more power obviously. NBL are wrong in spruiking the groundbreaking nature of the nbl.tv deal - AFL have offered a similar service through Telstra for some time now. Its not like for like in terms of actual service, but its close. It is also the broadcast coverage, so its better.

AFL have done this with a view to a significant change in how their rights deals come together in four years time - including the opportunity to offer a massive direct subscriber deal to members and reducing the reliance on FTA and PTV revenues. The establishment of the significantly invested in AFL Media further points to this.

Acknowledging the NBL's impotence, the risk is that they become a subscriber only solution within three years. That is, rather than a mix of FTA/PTV and subscriber revenue, none of the networks will want their content and revenue becomes subscriber only, backed by what advertising they can harness.

NBL is then totally at the mercy of subscribers, and if the base is not at least 40-50,000, the advertisers (online, video etc.) and partners will see them as even more of an irrelevancy than they are now.

As i understand it, subscriber base for nbl.tv is around 3-4k. This is just a little smaller than tiny in the Australian sports landscape. The risk has yet to be played out, because the slightly improved FTA deal, and the revenue it brings, is masking it. I think we have under-estimated the play the NBL have made, because we are all in love with the service, but moving to the subscriber model has happened here because of desperation, not because of strength.

NBL.tv is a risk. It's great for fans, but I doubt it would be viable in and of itself.

I can imagine the subscriber numbers being pretty low, probably only in the hundreds or low thousands at this stage.

I think NBL.tv should continue running even at a loss, and even offer single game subscriptions.

Write it off as an advertising cost. Webcasts are not expensive to produce.

It's vital that they don't drop it due to the low number of early adopters. Lower the price if you have to. But do not drop it.

It's probably not ever going to make a profit, but that's not the point. The point is getting the game out there and giving the long-suffering fans some ammunition to stick up for their beloved league for once.

The NBL is finally starting to wake up to the fact that if you keep the core fans happy, they will do a lot of your advertising work for you.

Also that whole article is based on the idiotic assumption that the NBL is "choosing" to show delayed telecasts and only one live game a week.

But Mick, the NBL cannot survive, let alone thrive, without significant corporate support.

Corporate Australia don't hear messages from core fans. They look at Nielsen or whatever and judge the product. If they see 100,000 viewers, they go ok, there is interest here - if they see 5000 viewers, they go meh....nup, not investing in that.

The risk is not about whether nbl.tv is a loss maker or not. It's about the fact that this is now the NBL's major play in broadcast, because after the Ten deal they will likely not have an FTA/PTV provider.

If this broadcast play yields tiny subscriber numbers, what will the NBL have to sell in 2015 or whenever the deal with Ten expires.

Right now the Ten deal is rumoured to be 800k per season. For the NBL that is a lot of cash to replace.

A valid point in the Roar article is that MORE people would be watching NBL if it were on "actual TV".

NBL.TV is an innovative concept but it is difficult to market, even at $19 month.

Free TV is the immediate future of a NBL. It generates a sense community with live games. Get a group of mates around and watch some hoops!

NBL.TV but it won't be as wide spread.

I don't know how the deal works but can One HD generate revenue for the NBL because they don't have 'real' ads?

The product is solid but there has to be a flow on effect to get some chatter - rather than preaching to the converted.

I'm not going to defend the article itself, but it should be pointed out that it is NOT talking about the opinion of The Roar as a website. It is the opinion of one particular fan columnist.

The Roar also publishes pieces like my own, which have been overwhelmingly positive of the new broadcast arrangements for this season: http://www.theroar.com.au/2012/10/03/basketball-australia-have-built-it-now-nbl-fans-must-come/

To confuse one article as the opinion of the entire site would be like taking the opening post of a thread here and saying "hoops.com.au says ...!", which would not be correct of course.

Finally, if you want to have your own opinion heard or provide some balance to the debate, The Roar is more than happy to publish your own contribution: http://www.theroar.com.au/contribute/submit/

Cheers,
Michael DiFabrizio (an expert columnist at The Roar)