In the hoop: Bullets aim to return to glory days of 1980s

Self-confessed rugby tragic Malcolm Watts had never even watched a basketball game before taking on the top job at the Brisbane Bullets. Now he is leading the team back to glory.

New Brisbane Bullets CEO Malcolm Watts.

Self-confessed rugby tragic Malcolm Watts had never even watched a basketball game before taking on the top job at the Brisbane Bullets. But the man who knows more about drift defences than double dribbles, is helping lead the iconic team back to the salad days of the 1980s when stars such as Leroy Loggins and Larry Sengstock took the Bullets to NBL glory.

As part of a club rebuild, Mr Watts is putting the finishing touches to the Bullets’ new training facility at South Bank complete with custom-built showers for its super tall players, high performance gym and a basketball court imported from Japan.

More importantly, Mr Watts believes he is putting the mojo back in the club, enlisting former players such as Loggins as unofficial brand ambassadors.

The former software entrepreneur and Queensland Rugby Union administrator admits the Bullets had slipped from the public eye in recent years despite having a longer history in the city than both the Brisbane Broncos and the Lions.

“There was infighting within the administration and it played out in the media,” said Mr Watts. “The players weren’t happy and performances weren’t great.” Yet Mr Watts said the Bullets were regularly selling out their home base at Nissan Arena, which is also the HQ of the Firebirds netball team. “Even the Broncos and Lions, if they’re not performing, people stay at home,” he said. “So I thought that’s an anomaly. And it’s either we have really rusted on fans that are quite a different audience, or we’ve got a capacity issue.”

Mr Watts decided it was both. From October. the team will move back to its spiritual home at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre at Boondall, a much larger venue that will allow the razzamatazz that is now expected at most modern sporting games to better play out.

“I hadn’t been to a game until a year ago and I was blown away by the quality of production and entertainment,” he said “We’ve got the big screens, we’ve got a professional cheer squad coming out at different stages, giveaways and DJs.”

New Brisbane Bullets CEO Malcolm Watts in the new training centre.

He said ticket purchases were skewed heavily toward children and young people, who expected to be entertained. “The best part about that is they’re unashamedly engaged,” he said. “So when we ask the audience to do something, the kids are on board. Adults at other codes will normally just sort of sit back with their arms crossed and watch the game.

“At our games, because the kids and the atmosphere is up, the adults are getting up and also dancing and clapping.”

Mr Watts conceded the Bullets had experienced its ups and down financially in the past. Despite narrowly missing out on a grand final appearance in the 2007/08 season, the Bullets departed from the league after former owner Eddie Groves was forced to sell the club, handing back the license to the NBL. After years of public outcry to reinstate the club, moves were finally put in place to have the Bullets return to the league for the 2016–17 season.

“The club had lost its way,” Mr Watts said. “I go back to that 40 years of history. Before the Broncos, before the Lions, we were a Brisbane Bullets town. But there’s been no player awareness, no brand of the Brisbane Bullets that I could see or were even aware of myself having lived in Brisbane for 15 years. We were playing in a state netball centre. So the players were out of sight, out of mind the whole time.”

He said bringing a former star like Loggins, who still lives in Brisbane, back into the club fold was important. “When I got this role I was like, where’s Leroy?” he said. “I decided I was going to reach out to him. I told him I just wanted to sit and hear his story and just connect. So we met at the Norman Hotel, had a steak and built that trust. I wanted him to feel like this club is his, he’s a part of the club and we don’t need anything from him more than for him to turn up and feel welcomed. And it’s been great, he’s a great mate and outstanding human. To go back to the Entertainment Centre, where his statue is, it’s going to be a pretty special moment, not just for myself, but for the whole club, I think there’s a lot of nostalgia.” He said the club’s older demographic had been sitting back “waiting for the Bullets to be great again to start coming back.”

New Brisbane Bullets CEO Malcolm Watts says the team is on its way back.

Mr Watt said sport remained a business and part of the investment in the new training centre, which also houses the club’s management and coaching teams, was to lift its professionalism. “I’m really passionate about the business of sport, so I talk about a championship team needing to be a championship organisation first and foremost,” he said. “And I’m no different to the head coach in that I’ve got a team of people that need to be excellent and I need to be able to give them the support and the tools to achieve that excellence.

“So that was a big change this year. We’ve changed culture, which normally takes quite a while but I was actually surprised how quickly we were able to impact that.”

Mr Watts said he decided early on that he didn’t want the location of the Bullets new HQ to be isolated in an industrial estate. “We wanted everyone in a one-stop shop in the heart of the city,” he said. “So I was quite fortunate in finding this site. I don’t think there’s any club in Australia that could boast a high performance centre this close to a CBD. And it gives us a real edge from a brand perspective. We have four and a half million cars a year alone coming past our doorstep, being opposite the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.”

The new facility also will be used to identify and train new talent, supplementing schools and academies. “We can prepare young kids that might miss out on an NBL spot. We can get them through our contacts into Europe, Japanese or Chinese leagues that are paying good money for good talent,” Mr Watts said.

“And Aussies are getting recognised on the world stage now for our basketball talent. I mean, this year alone we had five NBL players drafted in the (US) NBA and then there’s been another two signing since then, so it’s coming on, that’s for sure.’