The NBL is preparing to bounce back

Benjamin Franklin once said that out of adversity comes opportunity, and so it is for many of us as we tackle the challenges presented by COVID-19.

Like most sports and businesses, the Hungry Jack’s National Basketball League (NBL) is not immune to the impact of COVID-19. Our clubs, owners, players and staff have done an enormous amount of work over the past five years to return the NBL to prominence. The league has also experienced immense growth internationally and is now part of a broader, global conversation about basketball.

We enjoyed one of our biggest and best seasons in 2019-20 with almost one million attendees watching world class basketball and record broadcast audiences and media coverage both domestically and globally. The NBL is now considered one of the top professional basketball leagues in the world.

Most importantly, basketball is a family sport and one of Australia’s highest participation sports with an estimated 1.5 million participants. Basketball in Australia employs thousands of people and generates significant economic, social and health benefits for the wider community, including regional Australia. At the moment, the whole sport is affected from top to bottom and those benefits are being sorely missed by so many all around the country.

We are very mindful that so many people and businesses are doing it tough and their wellbeing, is, quite rightly, a key priority for governments as they work to support the many people who have lost their jobs and are suffering financial hardship. However, it is incumbent upon us to explore all avenues to help ensure that basketball navigate its way through this period to ensure the sport springs back into action as soon as possible so that it can continue to grow and be enjoyed by so many.

As Australia continues to lead the way when it comes to bringing COVID-19 under control, we have commenced work with our clubs and other key stakeholders toward identifying a start date for the 2020-21 Hungry Jack’s NBL Season.

We are encouraged by the progress other professional sporting leagues are making as they seek to return, and we will monitor them and work with the relevant health authorities and governments as we look to bring basketball back.

We are doing everything we can to be able to accommodate fans at games even if it means ramping up attendances as the season progresses. Ideally, we would of course like to start the season with fans in venues if possible.

As the landscape is constantly changing, we are taking a positive and proactive approach and will continue to assess options and hope to be in a position by mid-year to be able to confirm plans for the upcoming season, but we are also exploring opportunities for alternative basketball content to be played in the meantime and some of the innovative ideas being borne out of this adversity are very exciting in terms of how they may translate into the future of the NBL, long after the challenges of coronavirus are behind us.

Like any crisis, from all of this will also come opportunity. It will force all of us to look at our business models and reassess how we work. There will be opportunities to do things differently but also, hopefully, even better than before.

As a business and a sporting league that prides itself on innovation and continuous improvement, we will find and take the positives from this experience, we will adapt and we will, in the long run, be stronger for it. It will enable us to expand our thinking and way of operating and ensure the NBL and Australian basketball remain not just viable but continue to grow build on the successes of recent years. In the meantime, we have no doubt the NBL will remain exceptional basketball, with great talent from all around the world continuing to provide the incredible entertainment to which we’ve all become accustomed and we can’t wait to bring it to you.