Did he mention anything about crowds and television ratings?

Kings got 6519 yesterday. Not bad but need to be averaging at least 8k per game. Still along way to go

Link: http://www.aussiehoopla.com/category/podcasts/

Re: crowd numbers he said the initial numbers are encouraging this year (ie. attendance is up to the best levels in years), but not nearly at the levels they are shooting for long-term.

Townsville can get f----. Their team was propped up for years and years and they never bothered to turn up to games. They had an excuse when it was running from a shitty little rec center, but none when they went back to TEC. They were holding the league down and they had to go.

Let's hope that in time, the Fox Sports viewing audiences can at least match what the A League are getting. They are WAY ahead of us, in terms of viewing numbers, at the moment

@ ME: I don't entirely disagree with you, but at the same time it is a shitty situation if you are one of those fans that has been turning up game after game, year after year.

The owners were never going to be able to afford to participate in the comp with the type of $$$ needed to field a competitive team (or meet the salary cap min. requirements), and Kestelman mustn't have felt like it was going to be easy/plausible to attract a new ownership group in Townsville that could... It's hard to disagree with that. I still think it's a shame, though.

It is a shame but the interest was simply not there, making it unsustainable. The crowds weren't big enough, affecting revenue big time. It's as simple as that

NBA fans need to understand that they're really in the minority and no-one would actually know who Steve Blake is and the only thing he's being touted as is an ex-NBA player, his draw for the non-regular fan would be minimal...

I was a bit disappointed with the crowd numbers yesterday, but not the quality, it was easily the best crowd we've had in a long time, very invested and pumped all game... If the Kings keep winning, hopefully that number will grow...

Wonkiee, I hope you are right. What is the Marketing like for the Kings in Sydney? Any TV Ads? Radio Ads? Billboard or newspaper Advertsing?

* Wookiee

Whats the level of community engagement with Melb and Syd compared to Perth's?

Aim for families and a good day/night out for entertainment.

Start at schools and other community events, free meet and greet days with some freebie takeaways, maybe tickets, get people familiar with the team.

LK would've already thrown money at propping the Crocs up. Their community showed it wasn't viable, sad as it is to lose a team we were all familiar with.

I couldn't agree more Ricky. Perth are masters of this. People think that Perth draw large crowds, due to their success with winning. Whilst this certainly helps, their community engagement is second to none. School visits, association visits, charity work, huge banners in the CBD, newspaper and radio Advertising, always stories in the West Australian newspaper, brand Marketing etc.

They didn't sit on their hands and hope the public would come to them.

They got out there and Marketed the brand thoroughly, to thousands of people

Unfortunately I'm not a FTA tv or radio guy during the main part of the day sort of person so I can't really comment on much, but from comments made by other Kings fans in Facebook groups, etc, it's a huge improvement over past seasons... Have seen some on-train advertising which has been a big step up, not on my line unfortunately, I'm still stuck with crap graffiti...

They just need to crack the public some how... I think the best approach is to appeal to fans of other sports somehow... NRL fans are a pigheadedly loyal breed though...

@Aussie - the "ee" is appreciated, but feeling Wonkiee today, so I just took it :)

Agree that getting into the community is a key effort area and the Kings have been working hard with that the last few seasons, and also trying to improve their family fun pre-game activities and stuff as well, as well as during the game... It's a very pantene shampoo situation... won't happen overnight, but keeping at it and it will happen... I think that's key... Keep working hard and don't expect immediate fixes...

Perth are the gold standard in the NBL, but it's been a combination of everything they've done - community engagement, but also on-court success over a very long period of time.

@Aussie, I think you may find there are other teams that utilise a lot of community engagement, too. Cairns and Illawarra are two teams that work very hard in the community (they have to, being community owned teams!)

I do think it would be harder in Sydney and in Melbourne to do that, because they are much bigger cities, and have a huge spread to cover in terms of supporter base. They have to do what they can, though, and really need to be getting out to at lease one or two schools per week, for example, even if with just three or four players for each visit, just to get the interest building.

#yourgame

Townsville will start again through the QBL and hopefully one day, be a powerhouse in the National competition.

The city is not ready and imo, they cant be called the Crocs when they come back, the brand and name is damaged for good.

Rod, Are the Townsville Heat kind of like a sister club of the Crocs like the Taipans have with the Marlins?

I saw Schenscher played for the Heat in the QBL after the Crocs folded.

No not at all. We are run by Townsville Basketball Inc which is a seperate organisation, in fact that was one of the downfalls of the Crocs; they never really had ties with the local junior basketball association.

The QBL program is run by Greg Vanderjagt who is GM of TBI. I am the Head Coach of the Heat and we had Peter Crawford, Luke Schensher, Mirko Djeric and a host of local guys including Harry Froling for half of the season before he went to SMU.

We sold out most game during the season, or close to, and had brilliant sponsorship support for both us and the Flames (which is the girls team). The new Head Coach of the Flames is Claudia Brassard's husband, Mike St Maurice, so with him on board and Greg as GM, we have close connections with NBL & WNBL players to add to our rosters.