WNBL locks in season, broadcast deal is next

Authorities hope the certainty created by announcing dates for the Women’s National Basketball League later this year will help its quest to find a new broadcaster.

The WNBL is due to restart in late November. Picture: Sarah Reed

Basketball authorities hope the certainty created by announcing dates for the 2020-21 Women’s National Basketball League later this year will help its quest to find a new broadcaster for the competition.

Basketball Australia will on Wednesday reveal plans for a full 21-game season and finals series to take place from late November to March 2021, having undertaken financial modelling that authorities believe will allow club owners to survive at least part of the season with no fans. It will also seek to maintain current minimum player payments for Australian athletes.

The move comes at a time when several sports are still grappling with season start dates and schedules beyond blocks of a few weeks at a time, let alone exact timing for final series and grand finals.

But BA will announce the next WNBL season will begin on November 20 — about six weeks later than usual — and that its eight teams will play each other three times before finals commence on March 12 and a grand final series between March 25-31.

At this stage it is unlikely the competition will include any foreign imports, handing local players more opportunities to make their mark.

The WNBL already has a supportive blue-chip major sponsor in Chemist Warehouse in place but BA’s executive general manager of basketball Paul Maley told The Australian he hoped the season announcement would help clinch a broadcast deal, with the league’s last contract with Fox Sports having expired.

“We’ve been talking to everyone about a broadcast deal, and there’s been a broad amount of interest. So we hope by announcing the dates this will give a potential partner some certainty when it comes to their programming.”

The eight WNBL clubs have annual budgets in the vicinity of between $800,000 to $1.2m each, but BA says as part of the financial modelling for the upcoming season it has planned on a scenario of games being contested without fans in attendance until Christmas, due to government restrictions on mass gatherings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maley said though that the amount that the governing body spends on the league (BA spent about $3.7m on basketball operations in 2019) would remain unchanged and that the league was seeking cost savings by looking at travel budgets and the venues the WNBL clubs hire for matches.

“The support BA has given the WNBL in recent years has increased and we made that decision when COVID-19 started that the funding would be maintained,” Maley said. “This is an elite women’s basketball competition with some of the highest playing standards in the world.”

Maley said the league would also provide ideal preparation for the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo for the Opals national squad, and that hosting the 2022 World Cup in Sydney would also provide the women’s game with a boost on and off the court.