Maybe the thinking is that Asian teams will bring in sponsorship and money that can then be used to solve a few of the problems the NBL has here?

I agree with Boza. We urgently need NBL back on FTA TV. Without this we will never see the NBL back in the glory boom days from mid 80's to mid 90's. A real opportunity exists for NBL to be back on FTA TV in 2007 for two reasons. 1)Is the anticipated success of the Men's and Womens national teams in the 2006 commonwealth games. 2)Which ever TV station misses out on next years AFL rights biiding war, will have serious dollars to play with. Surely the limited dollars the NBL receives from Foxtel for the TV rights is only chump change compared to what the FTA channels are willing to pay for the AFL. If one of the FTA channels were appraoched by the NBL board with the corrcet marketing strategy and a 3-4 year offer, there is plenty of scope for the NBL to be turned around and restored it to former glory days.

Abosultely no dis-respect to the WNBL as I am a big follower of the WNBL and the NBL but how does the WBNBL get coverage on ABC and not the NBL

Whatever can be done to get the money in can only be a good thing, as long as the money is then put into developing and promoting to the younger audience. I agree that FTA will not happen while the crowds are so low. It is a catch 22 tho, because most certainly more TV exposure would bring the popularity of the game back up. Possibly need one of the stations to take a risk. im not hopeful tho.

I believe that this is big picture thinking from the NBL.

Basketball has the advantages over the sports normally associated with Australia : AFL, League, Union and Cricket.

Any Asian country good at these? NO.

Soccer and Basketball are the sports of choice through out Asia.

I can see the NBL being apart of an Asian Super League with the winner going into a tournament for an Asian trophy of some sought.

The step of having NBL teams being able to suit fringe NBA quality Asian players has got to be a huge plus for the NBL.

Imagine the hype / novelty factor alone for local media plus the amount of home fans that will follow that said player's new team.

How many of us followed Brett's effort in Greece? How many people in Minnesota follow Dusty here? It is all good.

More exposure means more fans which means more opportunity for sponsors dollars, both locally and internationally.

Local companies are looking to break into the Asian market all the time. What other sport in Australia will be able to offer a direct link into Asia through the player plus also weekly telecasts of their logo into millions of people living rooms. NONE.

What is the problem? If this is done right the NBL will then be in a position to name it's price to the FTA stations to broadcast locally.

You make some excellent points Kent. My question is what are the NBL salaries like in comparison to the Asian league salaries? Will we find it hard to attract a decent amount of Asian players to our league? If yes then we should go for it, if no then wouldn't the money be better spent promoting the sport in Oz?

If we had enough decent players coming in from Asia as Kent said it would create huge exposure for the league and the crowds would come back.

Winedrinker,

I think you will find WNBL is covered by ABC under its charter of supporting Minor Sports & Women's Sports. Noticed over the weekend they were covering a Hockey Tournament and the ABC also has the Netball generally.

One aspect of any proposed AustralAsian 'super-league' that would require serious consideration is the number of teams involved and how to (re)structure the competition. It's a huge can of worms:

* How many asia based teams would be admitted and at what cost to the Aus based teams?

* Would a geographic conference system be instituted? Say, East and West, where Perth and Adelaide are in the west with the Asian teams, and east-coast Australia along with NZ in the East. Or perhaps a regional system (Asia / Aus & NZ) which I think would be a bad idea (reinforcing national boundries).

* By adding more teams, the regular season would have to be lengthened - increasing (travel) expenses (yes, and potential earnings if done well). I'd love to see a longer season (and longer playoffs).

* Revoke some existing NBL licenses to prevent the league from becoming too bloated, keep travel costs down and make way for larger (Asian) cities to make more money than the smaller regional centres? I'm thinking of places like Cairns and Wollongong (even Adelaide only has a catchment of about 1.5 million people who can regularly attend games and the 6ers are probably only averaging about 4,500 per game this year). Aus doesn't have anywhere near the population density of Asia, where the crowd pulling potential is higher simply by sheer weight of numbers.

Perhaps some kind of profit sharing could be instituted to (at least initially) help cover travel expenses of smaller and/or struggling clubs. But that's (Arnie) pie in the sky and I'm no marketer or bean counter. Would that be at all appealing to prospective clubs (that are already doing well in their current situation)?

And it makes me wonder...

Trust me - I am all for making the league bigger and stronger, and especially try and stop losing quality Australian players to other leagues.

But the reality is that we have had to make huge salary cap cuts to make sure some teams do not go bankrupt, and this is why we are losing players to other leagues as the money is a lot better.

If we get some Asian teams involved - who is going to pay for the massive increases in travel costs without sending teams broke?

problem is that the nbl boom coincided with the nba boom, and coz the nba intrest is not at large, basketball intrest isnt as large. if the american game peaks again so will ours. thats not to say that we cant do things to improve ourselves

Im all for the expanding into asia idea. For that to work NBL needs to be much more compelling that it currently is. More money needs to be pumped into the game to keep the talents and keep a pipeline of talents flowing into the league. The pay nbl players get is just ridiculous. Im not saying NBL players are crap but ever heard of the saying you pay peanuts you get monkeys? Expanding into asia will mean higher price for boadcasting rights leading to more money to invest back into the league and its players.
I think the basketball in this region should follow the lead of what soccer is doing, we need to find some basketball nut who is loaded to invest in the game. As for the distance restrictions of the game, maybe a champions league format should be used to reduce the travelling during the regular season.
More also need to be done to broadcast the game. How about using the web every now and then to throw in some free streaming games for loyal nbl fans. NBL has been taking so much from the fans, its about time the fans get something in return for all the goodwill and support they have shown. How about a 1 hour program like NBL TV summarising results highlight reels etc. That will go a long way to generate interest. Someone needs to get off their butt and pump some money into the game and the game will take care of itself. I call for the ex-nbl and ex-nba and current aussie players to form a consortium of some sort to raise the funds for this to happen. With the backing of legends like gaze i reckon they can talk many fans into even investing themselves.

Buying (season) tickets, merchandise and getting their friends to go to games is the fans way of investing in the league.