Time for Nine to give NBL top billing

National Basketball League owner Larry Kestelman has implored Nine Entertainment Co to move the sport to its main channel.

NBL owner Larry Kestelman. Picture: Luke Marsden.

National Basketball League owner Larry Kestelman has implored Nine Entertainment Co to move the sport to its main channel and broadcast it in high definition, arguing its growing popularity means it deserves to be showcased in prime time.

Rich-lister Kestelman, who has poured an estimated $35 million of his fortune into the NBL after taking ownership of the struggling league in 2015, told The Australian he would tell Nine management the sport needed better coverage on free-to-air rather than being shown on its secondary 9Go! channel for the remaining two seasons of a three-year deal clinched last August.

“The deal was done pretty late in the piece with Channel 9, and I think there may have been some challenges with them taking on tennis as well. So I rate us a five out of 10 in our first season.

“We are about to start our conversation with Nine for next season and we certainly believe we deserve, and our aspiration is, to be on their main channel and in prime time. That is what we would like, at least one game per week. A second game would be on a Sunday in a late afternoon timeslot that is a family-friendly time. I think we rated well where we were shown, but these days you want to watch sport in HD. So we believe that is our next step.”

NBL ratings have risen about 5 per cent this season on FTA compared with the 2017-18 season and 40 per cent in four years, but Kestelman believes the league’s popularity — a record of more than 800,000 spectators have watched games this year and the NBL has blue-chip sponsors such as MG, Bunnings and Hungry Jack’s — could grow even more with better timeslots.

“We feel we have done our part as a partner, and every other parameter is on the way up. Attendance and awareness is on the way up, and we’ve used the past few years to get match fit and we believe we are ready now.”

The NBL will begin its finals series on Thursday evening when Melbourne United host the Sydney Kings. Kestelman and his NBL management will then return to the market for some basketball rights that need to be clinched within months.

Governing body Basketball Australia has struck a deal with Kestelman for the NBL to sell the rights to two high-profile matches between the Boomers and the star-studded US team in August in Melbourne along with other Australian national men’s and women’s matches.

The Boomers-US matches will be the biggest for the sport in Australia for years, potentially featuring Philadelphia 76ers star Ben Simmons and fellow NBA players Patty Mills and Joe Ingles against a US team that could include the biggest names in the sport.

Kestelman believes those matches, set to be played at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium in August in front of crowds of 50,000, and the NBL’s re-emergence should give television and corporate supporters full confidence in the sport.

“We are confident that they will be on free-to-air. They are important, and there will be other games the Boomers will play as part of a warm-up for that. Then in the following year there will be warm-up matches for the Olympics next year as well. So there will be lots of basketball.”

The NBL will also enter talks with its other partner, Fox Sports, to extend its existing deal.

“They have been a very good partner but we feel we are ready and deserve as a sport to get some remuneration from them. They certainly have written big cheques for a lot of sport, and while we are not pretending for a second we are AFL or NRL, we think we are second only to the NBA product-wise and quality-wise. It will be a tough conversation but between Fox Sports and (streaming service) Kayo we are a valuable partner.”

Kestelman owns all of the NBL, Brisbane and a small stake in Melbourne United after selling most of it last year, to value it at about $10 million.

He said any expansion team would need to pay more than $10m for a licence, and hopes to have a 10th team — South-East Melbourne Phoenix joins later this year — in place by 2020.