The NBL is experiencing constant growth in attendance, interest and hype both domestically and internationally. This compares to the feeling around the often dubbed ‘peak’ of the A-League around the 2013-14 season where attendance and viewership were high, the league had marquee talents such as Alessandro Del Piero and the national team was filled with A-League graduates.

Australian search trends for “A-League” (via Google Trends, 2014-2019)

Since then attendance and viewership have declined each year putting the young and supposed-to-be growing league into crisis.

The A-League presents a cautionary tale for the NBL, a perfect example of a league in the midst of rapid growth forced to face a decline in almost every metric only a few years later.

A-League average attendance figures 2005-2019

Avoiding the fate of the A-League

1) The failure to remain fresh and exciting, rather, becoming stale.

With Australia being isolated geographically (and due to league rules) naturally the majority of Oceania’s best players will always chose to play in the NBL. The A-League fell into the trap of recycling these players living on constant one-year deals consistently switching teams to the point where the league became repetitive.

Failing to capitalise and expand at the right time resulted in the same players and the same ten teams every season, resulting in a loss of interest to casual fans. It would be six years since the aforementioned peak of the A-League until the A-League introduced a new team to the league.

The NBL has recently expanded to include South East Melbourne Phoenix for NBL 2019-20, with rumours of a new Tasmania team entering the league a sign that they have seen the erroneous ways of the A-League’s and instead look to expand into new markets.

2) Failing to attract talent

Commonly, the A-League and other sporting codes focus on recruiting players to the country via the lifestyle pitch, which is fair given the natural financial and quality divide between itself and Europe. Where the A-League faltered was the fact that the USA league, MLS, can and does make the same pitch to overseas players while being able to offer considerably larger paychecks.

Since the USA hosts the premier basketball competition, the United States does not pose so much of a threat (or at least currently) to the NBL pitch of lifestyle in its market, especially being able to pitch as one of the few leagues outside the NBA offering English as a familiar language – this was a key reason the likes of LaMelo Ball have decided to come down.

The NBL needs to establish its competitors more distinctly and realistically than the A-League has done in recent years, rather than trying to battle Goliath’s, and ultimately being left to feed for scraps and accepting rejects to play in the league.

3) Failing to establish an identity

The A-League never established what sort of league it was, marketing itself as a competitive league at times, a platform for Australians to go to Europe and a place for big names to come when they are done in Europe. Unsure of what quality level it was at, the A-League tried to put itself into all markets, rather than establishing itself into one. This is a key challenge identified by Richard Hinds:

“Both are blessed and cursed by enormous international profile, the reflected glow of the NBA and European football leagues also creating unflattering comparisons with the local product.”

The NBL has potentially seen this and done well in broadening its identity slowly, rather than all at once like the A-League. It has extended itself to be more of a platform for young players, both Australian and international, to make the NBA, especially through the Next Stars program.

A-League likewise did have this going for them, especially before and around the time of its peak, seeing talents like Mile Jedinak and Maty Ryan come from the A-League.

However, it is no coincidence that the level of young players that leave the A-League nowadays is not as high as those in years past showing where complacency gets you. The NBL graduates in the NBA, both Australian (like Mitch Creek) and foreign (like Terrance Ferguson) not only show the success of Australia’s basketball league but highlights the need to continue on this path in the future to avoid the A-League’s troubles.

4) Failure to show people the actual product

The A-League has received major criticism for its failed attempts at marketing the game… they try, but they don’t send the right message. They show players who have made it from the league and say “You’ve gotta have a team” – yet, the actual product is not shown.

The consensus among even the most frustrated A-League fans is that the quality itself actually has been quite good (relatively). When people ask “Why would I watch the A-League if I can watch the best in Europe?” the A-League has never dared attempt to answer that question.

The NBL has and will likely always face the same problem. The NBL does not have Lebron or Curry and that’s not going to change. The best thing the NBL does right now is constantly force-feeding highlights of its product (including Australians overseas) across social media; this is it showing what the league has to offer.

It should continue to show what the NBL offers which other leagues cannot – this season, be prepared for an abundance of Lamelo Ball and RJ Hampton highlights, which is what will captivate interest. Actually seeing the product being offered gets people’s attention, something the A-League failed to do and has paid for.

Australian search trends for “NBL” (via Google Trends, 2014-2019)

Really, the parallels of the successes and downturns of the NSL and the A-League to basketball in Australia are too similar for the NBL to ignore.

A review of Google trends easily shows the steady growth the NBL has achieved over the past 5 years. If you ignore the huge spike in 2018, a result of the global interest in the melee between Australia and Philippines during FIBA qualifiers, you can see clear growth during the periods of off-season, regular season and play-offs year on year.

For the NBL to continue this growth curve it would do well to learn from errors made during the A-League’s decline, heeding those failures as reminders of the necessity in establishing and standing by an identity while maintaining an exciting league for fans to continue to return to.