With basketball booming in Australia and Asia, it seems some are betting on the New Zealand NBL following suit, and they are getting in on owning some of the action.
Chris Anstey and sports media company Media8 have purchased the Taranaki Airs and joined the Otago Nuggets, owned by Perth Wildcats owner Paul Hutchison and SEN) as NZNBL teams with Australian ownership.
Taranaki Airs general manager Cole Brown noted that the club’s decision to sell followed a realisation that the volunteers who had worked tirelessly behind the scenes could no longer keep up with the expanding demands of competing in the New Zealand NBL.
The Taranaki Airs have struggled to maintain consistency during their time in the NZNBL, having entered the completion in 1986 as the New Plymouth Bulls before adopting different names, including the Taranaki Bears (1994-1998), Taranaki Oilers (1999) and Devon Dynamos Taranaki (2008-2009) before a lack of funding saw the club drop out of the league through 2000-2002 before being resurrected the following year.
Despite its struggles, on and off the court, the club has recently found on court success, finishing on top of the ladder during the 2022 season. Brown said the sale made commercial sense with Media8, especially Anstey, able to provide resources to deliver the growth the sport was facing in the region.
“The whole thing for us is about the increase in capability, the people within Media8 and the network that they have, the access to coaches, players and sponsors and for us, it’s about globalising.”
Since retiring from a playing career that saw Anstey excel in the NBL, NBA, and Euroleague, the former Australian Boomers centre has also been coaching at in the NBL and state competitions, he’s begun promoting events with NBA stars like Dirk Nowitzki as well as hosting a successful podcast and organising tours to watch US sports. It’s this basketball and events background that has the seven-footer placed as the ideal man to steer the course of the Airs as the NZNBL begins to take off.
“I’ve worked with Media8 for over a year, and we’ve got some fantastic ideas, and I’ve been around basketball for a really long time,” Anstey said this week.
“Once we set foot in Taranaki and met the people on the ground, we had a lot of conversations, not about taking over, but about assisting and providing benefit where we could. But I don’t think you can do something like this without being hands-on,” he said.
Anstey’s first task will be to select a new head coach with the position vacant after former coach Trent Adam took up a role coaching in Japan. It’s expected that there will be more Australians than just Anstey being a part of the Air’s program in the future, with confirmation that Anstey be talking to prospective Australian coaches for the team’s vacant head coaching role as well as aiming to bring more Aussies into the squad as import players.
“We are going to see increased resourcing in coaching in the community and support staff and the average punter is going to turn up next year and be blown away quite honestly with what we are going to deliver in match experience.” said Brown,
With Larry Kestelman originally purchasing the Australian NBL for $7m, and less than ten years later, we’ve seen it become the recipient of a $60m deal for TV rights and generating $40m annually, while some NBL teams are now valued at over $10m.
You have to get in early to make the most of a ‘boom’, and when it comes to New Zealand basketball, it seems like a number of fast-moving Aussies have already placed their bets.