I think using local media (newspaper, nightly news) to run positive stories on the team keeps people interested, which would hopefully bump up attendances. Easier said than done, and not always possible if the team is in trouble, or if the team is competing for air time with AFL etc, but I can assure you that this is why the Wildcats have stayed relevant in WA, long before the new stadium or Jack Bendat came along.

First thing that needs to be done is to move back to the winter season, get away from the summer season, so people have an option for going out at night and enjoying a sport that is indoor during the winter!

Until this is done everything else is redundent...

Winning.

Its simple- better marketing.
Let people know theres a basketball game, ads on t.v for '' friday night game at sydney entertainment centre''
There would easily be enough people in sydney that would love to go to a basketball game, but its not marketed well enough for everyone to know.
People that arnt current fans arnt going to look up '' sydney kings game times'' on google, just randomly, but if there was tv ads for games, people would see it and people who are interesed would go, and there would be a huge increase in fans.
Honestly sydney kings, please put a few ads up for one particular game, make it interesting to the viewers, and see how many more people will attend the game.

basketball is a very entertaining game to watch, even for people who don't follow it, surely out of 4,000,000 people in sydney, 10,000 would love to see an exciting basketball game.

I think the trick is to be everywhere but being everywhere costs money.

One no cost option: Next time 6pm news or morning shows does the weather from location stick a NBL player in the back ground and don't move from that spot. Free advertising

Advertising and marketing are two different things. It costs money to advertise. It doesn't necessarily cost money to market your product.

As everyone else has said - Marketing and advertising creates awareness of when the game is on - some teams do it better than others. Every team needs to market themselves heavily because the media itself wont do it. This includes community visits to schools etc...

Dont rely on the local media to get behind the local NBL team - they're more focussed on cricket and A-League in summer, and AFL/NRL as soon as training starts! Perth is pretty good with media distribution of its sports, but as soon as AFL pre-season starts its all over for the other sports here.

Teams winning at home also helps. Seen a high number of teams losing at home this season which is a bit unusual... A lot of casual fans don't really care too much about the team when they're on the road, but they want to see the home team win, and will be more likely to come back after seeing their team win at home than after a loss. I know its fickle, but basketball isnt a 'traditional' enough sport in Australia to have enough real die hard fans.

It starts with the product

The days of sell outs in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Townsville, Woolongong (even for a few years in Sydney) there was
- Australias best players
- 48 Minutes of game time
- A faster cleaner game
- Better quality imports
- A winter season

Lets start with this before worrying about any advertising/promotions (which are necessary nonetheless)

Even in those days, the NBL and clubs were pretty poor in getting grassroots and state association players and families to totally embrace their teams to the level of AFL, soccer. This is the starting point before any mass TV marketing. Get those who love the game to love the NBL and 75% of your attendance issues are solved

Having SEABL and WNBL games at the Powerhouse pre-Sixers always made more of a night of it too, at least for the purists

God, where did you blokes pull winter from?

History my friends, is a great teacher. What history teaches us is that crowds were in free-fall which prompted the decision to move to summer.

You cannot compete with AFL and NRL in summer. NBL was struggling with that in 1997, to try it in 2013 would be to (ptp) court disaster. Both of those leagues, particularly the former, have become far more sophisticated in that intervening period.

Add to that your chances of maintaining consistent FTA in winter are almost zero.

48 minutes? you are just pushing your own barrow about game preference if you genuinely believe that is a factor (nice piece of contextual exegesis though). Next you will be telling us the difference is three man versus two man officiating....

And, prior to 1997/98, the league had a much more regimented and audited approach to player promotions, you might want to think about that as a major part of crowd success.

how does making the game 48 minutes make it " a faster cleaner game"?

Don't know why Friday night games can't be shown earlier on One. Is it earlier time slot means more money? By the time it gets to half time I can't keep my eyes open! Most young b/ball fans would not have NBL.TV and would rely on One and Ten for coverage Cant seee them sitting up at 9.30 waiting for the game to start. Good to see the music being toned down during games though. Good move.

I'm not going to get into a 40 v 48m debate. Going into the pros and cons of this is boring - the only real difference in my opinion is from a statistical point of view, a 40m game produces less attractive stats. I miss the days where a handful of players would average over 20ppg and teams would get over 100 on a regular basis.

I used to love following players and team stats. Not so much anymore, but that might be because I'm a lot older now and my interest in hoops isn't as fanatical as it was 15 years ago rather than it being because it's a 40m game.

This also has little bearing on crowds attending games in my opinion.

I don't want to get into 40 versus 48 either, merely pointing out that Mack raising it is not a basis for good crowds then or average crowds now.

The fact that the Tigers played a handful of games at Hisense Arena this season already proved to be better as far as bringing in bigger crowds, I'm not sure why they aren't back there playing! Makes sense - Central stadium, looks good on TV, can hold around 10,000. Obviously the Aust Open meant they couldn't be there, but really, central stadiums are the way to go for big crowds.

It's easy for people to hang around from work in the city then just rock up to a game, or to even get some of those casual fans that go because they are already in town and it's some good sport to go an watch before you hit the town!