One criticism I forgot to make in yesterday’s NBL Beyond a joke post was the absolute lack of transparency by basketball businesses, administrators, marketers and promoters.

Fans of all types love talking about their favorite things. Basketball has been in crisis for a long time both in Australia and the USA. However the people at the top act as if Basketball is the dominant sports entertainment business and they try to manage the message to the fans. All this does is turn fans off and drive them to other more engaging areas.

As one of the highest participation and interest sports available, how would basketball look if it had an engaged fan base? The only way to get this is to stop trying to spin a message to that fan base. Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Admit the problems, look for options to fix it and engage with the people who most care about the sport. That’s the fans.

I had lunch with a friend who likes basketball, but asked if it was still played professionally in Australia as he hadn’t seen anything about it in years. Those are the people Basketball needs to attract to fill venues at the professional level. In the nineties those people knew about their local team, were not die hard fans, but attended a couple of games per year to enjoy the spectacle. Normally they went because a fan invited them, not because they saw some advertising about a game.

Am I oversimplifying the problem? Do you agree, disagree or think I have no clue? Comment below.