There is a league in Australia that is elite in every sense of the word.
Our Women’s National Basketball League or the WNBL, has been at the top of its game for a decade but you would never know.
Make no mistake, our female basketballers are world class performers in what is a world class league but unless you go to a game you don’t get to see it.
Surprisingly there is no free to air coverage on television, in addition to a distinct lack of promotion by the WNBL themselves.
With team’s starting taking action and live streaming games, it has certainly taken a step forward in the publicity stakes but fundamentally it’s the forgotten women’s game.
Led by the Women’s Big Bash League and the gamble taken by channel 10 in televising women’s cricket, women’s sport is a hot commodity.
With extraordinary TV ratings and games attracting over 400,000 viewers, the newly minted queen of women’s sport, outperformed A-League soccer and the state based Men’s cricket Cup last year.
In what must be a bitter pill for the WNBL, Women’s cricket or least the twenty- twenty version, leads the way for female sport in Australia.
Add into the mix the emerging AFL women’s league which kicks off in 2017 and further pressure is applied to women’s basketball in Australia.
The new AFLW will surely attract attention and carve up an already shrinking television pie.
Following the ABC’s axing of its WNBL coverage two years ago and with television channels multiplying like rabbits, it’s astonishing that the second best women’s basketball league in the world doesn’t have a broadcast partner.
With the Men’s national competition, the NBL, being run privately and not part of the Basketball Australia equation, the WNBL is Basketball Australia’s premier national competition.
With basketball in the top bracket of participation sports in Australian and just under half of those participants being female, it begs the question, what are the WNBL or more particular, Basketball Australia doing?
For Justin Nelson, General Manager of WNBL club The Melbourne Boomers, it’s a sense of frustration and a growing concern.
“Basketball Australia manages the WNBL and some dedicated focus on promotion wouldn’t go astray. The league needs to better promote itself. For example, I’ve spent time with V8 Supercars and everything is flat out promotion, you can’t just expect people to turn up. You have to work hard for your audience and then even harder to keep them. That’s what competition is about right now in the sporting world.”
Nelson believes that more work needs to be done at the top level to help not only the WNBL clubs but the game itself.
“I want basketball to fully realise its demographic and successfully gain a piece of the sponsorship pie, because if we don’t drive this game commercially it will fall further behind the football codes, and the likes of netball and cricket”.
With the Australian women’s basketball team, the Opals, in the top bracket of teams across the globe coupled with the success of the WBBL and the fact we have arguably to second best female basketball league in the world, surely the time is right for the WNBL or basketball Australia to pounce……or not as seems to be the case.
