Where did you get these figures?

Melbourne not even close to selling out games by membership like people have said.

Sydney is terrible

yet NZ has no trouble getting sponsorship or filling games.

If true, Sydneys is embarrasing given their market size.

Wollongong seems about right. They might have terrific community support which keeps them going year after year, and love the battler underdog tag, but they dont have a strong fan base that actually show up to games.

Melbourne and NZ seem a bit low. Thought there would be more at Cairns and Townsville, but not surprised either.

Just shows how much work still needs to be done across the league!

To put Cairns' in perspective, that's 1 in 100 residents is a member, way ahead of anyone else.

Thats a fair point. Taipans are well supported, with consideration to thier population. I thought there would be more only cos their attendances are always very solid at around the 4000 mark.

Ok, that's pretty dire. Someone asked if the Wildcats were double the season ticket holders of anyone else and I said no way... but turns out we're only a smidgen off being triple the next contender.

More than Adelaide, Townsville, Cairns, Sydney and Wollongong combined... Going to love here the plans of the new NBL admin to pick up the situation here.

@Mystro,

By the by, do the Breakers have big processing fees on their single-game tickets?

@'948
Yes & no

That Wildcats member base brings in 7,000 people at an average $500/membership. That's a membership income of $3.5m.

You can pay for a lot on the back of a strong member base. Corporate hospitality counts for a lot as well but it should never be the only viable plank of your financials.

Memberships are vital, as are using your members as recruiters as Perth has done very well.

I wouldn't put odds on any of the other corporate books of the other clubs being any fuller than Perth's either...

Memberships pay the bills too, not just corporate boxes, as suggested above.

The bloke I sit next to at Wildcats games says his boss was the court sweeper sponsor last season and that was $50k and includes court side seats to 3 games during season... Noticed there was no sponsor currently at wildcats games for the court sweeper so there is some extra monies to be made but on a serious note...

When is NBL getting a new major sponsor (as much as I don't like Mitsubishi, I felt Mitsubishi challenge meant something) hopefully whoever it is can bring some prestige to the league again

(if true) for 50k I'd want courtside seats to every game, not just 3.

Cairns, Townsville & Wollongong numbers are pretty good considering the cities population.

Sydney and New Zealand are poor considering their market size AND the fact that the Breakers have won 3 straight championships. You'd think there'd be some more band wagon jumpers.

People aren't buying because either it's too expensive or fans can't see the value in a membership package.

Re: League naming sponsor. It won't happen until next season. Would be too hard and expensive to re-brand everything now that the season has already started.

Clubs who had thousands of empty seats at games need to reduce their membership prices, no doubt. Melbourne have done that for their Hisense memberships and had great success.

What the low membership numbers indicate for me is the low level of genuine passion for the teams. That's shown by the fact some venues need courtside announcers constantly revving up the crowd.

I think creating that passion for the team is one of the biggest challenges for the NBL and its clubs. Once someone is on-board in that way they tend to stick through thick and thin.

The NBL wont survive if it exists purely as an entertainment option.

The Breakers are one of the hottest tickets in Auckland but if these numbers are accurate and up to date it indicates they havent yet been able to convert the casual fan into a committed one (although Im sure I read an article last year saying NZ had around 3000?).

Buying a membership isn't really NZ culture

When it comes to sporting events, most kiwis will just buy individual games as they go.

Aucklanders are notorious for this..the Blues and Warriors have equally dissappointing member numbers

We are a basketball household but not members due to other commitments - but we will buy several platinum tickets and eat in Apollo over the season - so whilst not members we do our bit. How about comparing members to average attendance figures?

Anons don't need proof on here.

Once the deal is up with channel 10/one hd i think alot will change. e.g. sponsors, game time etc. Not sure how long there is left on it though...

@ Nat

Yeah seems real steep to me as well but is that $50k a league wide standardized figure or is it Perth showing its massiveness?

I'd be interested to know what a community based club like Wollongong charge for sponsorship

Nathan, that was me that wondered if Perth was more than double all the other clubs. Vlahov and co are obviously doing something right over in the West. You'd like to think that the other clubs were learning from Perth, but the above figures don't appear to back that up.

I was finally in a position to buy season tickets for the 36ers this season and I was okay with $375 for Gold membership, as I'm getting nearly $10 off per game. However, a mate of mine who is certainly earning well above the average wage decided it was too expensive.

We are both pretty hardcore basketball fans though, so it is not good that in the end I couldn't convince him to commit.

I think to get him over the line, there'd need to be a significant improvement in the performance of the team. Hopefully, Joey can coax a good season out of his team this season and then a few more Adelaide fans might come out of the woodwork. Its hard when your teams have been bad to horrible for an entire decade though!

I think it was transferred.

I'd like to think we got some mileage out of offering to count the cost of people's single-game-tickets against the cost of their memberships after the Adelaide game, so hopefully we see some movement on that 7,028 soon.

Well, now that we've managed to get over the 36ers (very tricky effort), we have 1 home game, 3 away games coming up, and I would expect/hope to get each except for New Zealand away. That would be a very tidy October effort.

So hopefully, we'll go into the Wk 4 clash against Wollongong at home with hype, a 4:1 record and some new memberships and get our crowd back on last year's track. I'm pretty paranoid we'll have our first sub-10k Perth Arena crowd against Sydney this weekend.

Oh my god, we're discussing things on a forum, we're obsessed!

"When does counting single seats against anything count? "

What does that mean?

Anon, yeah I thought it was a reasonable price. Getting Lightning games thrown in as part of the deal is good too. The point I was making is that, from my perspective at least, its the product on the court at the 36ers that's been the big problem, rather than the cost of tickets.

Unfortunately, the Sixers are now known as losers in Adelaide and until they start to be successful on the court again, its going to be difficult to generate memberships.

Once they brought in Joey and retooled the team, I was willing to jump onboard, but I think others like my mate will wait until they see a winning season again first - and fair enough too after so many disappointing seasons.

Anon, I think what Nathan meant was that the Cats fans who bought single game tickets last weekend can deduct that cost from the price of a season ticket, hopefully encouraging a few more to commit. Seems like a good idea to me - try before you buy!

^ Yeah, that's exactly what the offer was, Beantown. If you bought a ticket to the game against Adelaide, they had a stall set up where you could buy a membership after the game and would put the value of the ticket towards your membership.

I.e., you bought a Silver ticket at $60, think "gee, this basketball caper is a bit of alright, I'd like some more", buy a Silver Membership at ... I think it's $429, then they deduct the $60 you paid for the ticket away from the membership. So you get on board for $369.

No difference in cost for the club or patron and you get a try-before-you-buy.

A very good idea from the Wildcats. I know one person that's seriously considering a membership after going to his first game at the Arena and utilising this offer. And he's more of an NBA fan than an NBL fan too.

There are Bronze @ $40, and a few areas of Nickel at $20, which are single-game only, they don't have a nickel membership category. Which is a good trick to make sure cheapo tickets are available to pad out the numbers. But yeah, Silver is $60, Gold $90, Plat $110, courtside $290.

These (insane) prices are why I'm worried about the crowds, would be bad for club and league if they collapsed.

Yeah I'm a gold member at the wildcats and they cost me $45/seat per game and I have 2 seats so that is $90 so basically I'm still paying the $90 but I get a free seat as opposed to paying $180/game on a game by game if I wasn't a member.

Gee that is high