Australia’s number one international team sport: basketball

With Australia ranked number one around 2014 in terms of NBA League Pass subscriptions as well as NBA store online sales, it was still amongst the top five subscribers of the NBA League Pass by the end of the 2017-18 season in a market of 200 countries, along with China, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico.

In terms of participation in Australia, an important factor towards explaining Australia’s international playing success, the 2019 Sport Australia AusPlay survey indicates that basketball had 1,017,968 participants (including 310,461 females), second only to football with regard to team sports.

Basketball also ranked ninth in terms of the most popular participation and physical activities behind activities such as walking, fitness/gym, swimming, running and cycling.

The survey also found that basketball had a higher percentage of participation for adults of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults (5.6%) compared to the overall population (3.5%).

According to 2018 Roy Morgan research, which also found around 1 million basketball participants in Australia, 298,000 were under 18 years old, 285,000 aged 18-24 years, 186,000 25-34 years, 199,000 35-49 years old, and 23,000 aged 50 and over.

At the state and territory level, Victoria led with 340,000 playing basketball, followed by NSW around 300,000, Queensland around 150,000, Wester Australia almost 120,000, and South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and NT having the remaining 100,000 basketballers.

With money also attracting young Australians to the sport of basketball, especially with the NBA being one of the most rewarding sporting leagues in the world, Australian NBA players now dominate the list of Australia’s highest paid athletes.

As of 2019, not counting Ben Simmons five year $240 million contract, Australia’s NBA players had 7 of the top 15 annual earnings behind Daniel Ricciardo (motor racing) with $29.1 million. They included 2. Joe Ingles $18.1 million, 3. Patty Mills $16.7 million, 5. Ben Simmons $15.1 million, 6. Matthew Dellavedova $14.8 million, 7. Dante Exum $14.1 million, 10. Aron Baynes $7.5 million, 15. Thon Maker $4.1 million.

In terms of basketball providing more domestic opportunities for Australians to earn a living, there is also a hope that basketball can grow at the domestic level after crowds averaged 6500-7000 from 2017-18 to 2019-20 prior to the coronavirus disaster which affected attendances for all of Australia’s major sports.

While the NBL presently only has nine teams (Adelaide 36ers, Brisbane Bullets, Cairns Taipans, Illawarra Hawks, Melbourne United, New Zealand Breakers, Perth Wildcats, South East Melbourne, and Sydney Kings), the inclusion of a Tasmanian team from 2021–22 season will make it one of the few major sports to include all Australian states and New Zealand.

The NBL has come a long way since 2015 when Larry Kestelman took ownership of the league in 2015 when purchasing a majority stake in the entire league for $7 million, and declared he would make the NBL the biggest code in Australia after a period when the national league had multiple clubs on the verge of bankruptcy because of poor crowds, ratings, and rising costs.

Kestelman, along with league commissioner Jeremy Loeliger, adopted a number of reforms that enhanced the NBL, making it more attractive to viewers and sponsors. They included promoting fast-paced, high-scoring outcomes; increasing pay and conditions with the support of the Australian Basketball Players’ Association; providing incentives for players to remain in the NBL; introducing new rules on the new ‘soft’ salary cap; and entertaining fans with game-night experiences that include pyrotechnics, DJs and giveaways.