This morning the NBL announced that Channel 9 will be it’s new broadcast partner for the next three years beginning with the upcoming 2018/2019 Season.

The deal described as a “revenue sharing arrangement” both parties “will work together to commercialise the advertising inventory and broadcast monetisation of all matches across the regular season and finals series.” Fans will see two games a week aired live on sister station 9GO! With NBL boss Larry Keslteman telling SEN breakfast radio that the games will be aired between the 3pm-5pm timeslot on Saturday and Sundays.

Under the terms of this deal, the digital rights of the NBL are also included that allows live simulcasting of the games airing on 9GO! will be streamed on the 9Now app and archived games will be available on the 9Now app as well, regardless of what network the game has aired on.

Nine’s Director of Sport, Tom Malone said “this signals yet another innovation in sports rights, where the value of Nine’s spectrum has been recognised in lieu of a rights fee and production costs, while Nine has secured exclusive rights to commercialise the broadcast and sponsorship opportunities within and around the game day production, for distribution on Nine, Fox Sports and NBL.”

This an absolutely fantastic deal for the NBL and opens up the doors for a sustained future on free-to-air television. While some will argue that this deal is more or less the same we got last season with SBS Viceland, we can all agree that being partners with the Nine Network carries more gravitas with the mainstream than being on SBS.

Three years is a long time, especially in the entertainment space, so two games a week on 9GO! is only the starting point on this new journey for what is realistically, only a league going into its fourth year. There’s a world of potential here and the NBL has a chance to make not only 9GO! their own but to showcase just what a great competition it is and finally remove the remainder of that bad stigma left over from past years and hopefully we can watch that in high definition.  

The digital aspect of this deal is intriguing as well, with more and more content being consumed away from the television set and into portable devices it opens up the opportunity for a return to the studio show we all loved, “The Free Agents” that aired on NBL TV last year and we’ve all longed for a magazine style show, the 9Now app is a perfect home for this sort of content.

The NBL has delivered on getting the product to as many eyeballs as possible and with the support of the public, we could find ourselves back in the oft-said “good old days” of basketball.