JackJumpers provide benchmark for NBL expansion

NBL CEO David Stevenson says a connection between club and community is key to setting a new team up for success.

The Tasmania JackJumpers have all but set the bar when it comes to domestic league expansion in Australia, and NBL CEO David Stevenson says while it’s impossible to replicate everything around the creation and the success of the competition’s newest club, the league feels there’s an established framework there.

Tasmania has finished in the competition’s top four teams in each of the three regular seasons it has contested in the NBL, and took a 2-1 lead in its Championship Series against Melbourne on Sunday night.

The JackJumpers now have the opportunity to win their first NBL title should they defeat United on Thursday night.

Tasmania’s fanbase is consistently heralded as one of the most passionate in the NBL, and Stevenson says a connection between club and community is key to setting a new team up for success.

“I think it always comes down to listening first before you speak, because if you spend enough time listening to people in the community you understand what’s important to them, whether that’s the basketball community or the broader community, you tap into that element,” Stevenson told ESPN.

“What we’ve learned with the JackJumpers is we have a model that seems to work, but we always talk about the three elements that are critical for us – strong fan support, strong corporate support, and then ultimately strong government support from an infrastructure point of view with the playing venue and the training venue.

“I think the whole ‘defend the island’ ... what Scott came up with and the club has embraced really talks so much about how Tasmanians view their state and that representation of the JackJumpers has really materialised that.

“That’s not the story that’s going to work for every other city or every other team, but really, it’s about tapping into understanding what that community thinks and feels about their sport, their basketball, and more broadly their community, and I think that’s a recipe for success.”

The Gold Coast has been consistently floated as one of the most likely expansion destinations for the NBL, and the success of the competition’s pre-season Blitz only magnified calls for the league to return to the region.

The NBL already has an extensive history on the Gold Coast. The Rollers took part in the competition between 1990 and 1996, while the Blaze competed between 2007 and 2012.

Both teams struggled to really gain cut through in the community during their tenures in the NBL, despite possessing superstar level talent like Mike Mitchell and Andre La Fleur for the Rollers, and Mark Worthington and Adam Gibson for the Blaze.

Stevenson says there’s one crucial metric that has changed since the Blaze’s demise that makes the region an attractive expansion prospect.

“When we had the Blaze there were 1,000 people playing basketball in the Gold Coast region ... now there’s 10,000,” Stevenson said. 

“You’ve already got a good connection point for their participants – think about little Mary who’s playing under nines on a Saturday morning, there’s a pathway where she can then go and see great, elite level basketball.

“Clearly the Blitz was a good success, we sold a lot of tickets and we were embraced by the community. It’s no secret we’ve gone there because we wanted to test that market in the same way we took the Blitz to Tassie and we’ve seen that success, and we had the Blitz in Darwin as well.”

The question around NBL expansion is almost always inevitably framed as ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, but Stevenson says there needs to be an assurance that any team that comes into the competition can be around for the long haul.

“I’d say in the next few years it’s a pretty good chance of happening,” he said.

“I think it’s getting close, but we’re not going to rush it because we want to make sure every new team that comes in is going to be successful from the start and our sport has had a history of teams coming in and leaving pretty quickly.

“Not under our watch is that going to happen.”