Dawn of a New Era - Cairns Post

THE NBL has showed it is serious about rebounding as a major national sporting brand after announcing a raft of sponsorship deals at its season launch in Sydney yesterday.

A year after teetering on the verge of collapse, the NBL has done an about-turn, adding a team in the major Sydney market and announcing four sponsorship deals yesterday, including a three-year partnership with naming rights sponsor, internet provider iiNet.

Basketball Australia chief executive Larry Sengstock said the new deals - along with the previously announced move of the sport to free to air television - provided the competition with a strong platform for growth.

What it does is just gives us that ability to market the sport and we didn't have that before," Sengstock said.

Having some more money in the game helps us to do that but also just using the cache that iiNet bring to us and Channel 10 bring to us makes a massive difference."

Sengstock said the deals vindicated Basketball Australia's decision to proceed with an eight-team league last season - one that included a struggling Cairns Taipans outfit.

We've kept our place in the market and we've shown that we're fiscally responsible and we've got some things under control," Sengstock said.

That's why these sorts of companies are saying Yep, we want to get on board'. And having Sydney in the league, no doubt has got Ten back on board and also iiNet because they want to get to the biggest market."

Taipans coach Aaron Fearne said the turnaround in just 12 months had been amazing and was exciting for all clubs - especially the Taipans, given their recent struggles.

Let's rewind 12 months ago. I'm sitting in Cairns thinking, Do we even have a league?'," Fearne said of the uncertain times in the months after he was appointed Taipans head coach.

My family's back (in the States), I'm here (in Cairns), I don't even think there's going to be a league.

So it's definitely 180 (degree turnaround) - I think it's fantastic. We're on free to air TV, in Cairns we played that pre-season game the other day and the stadium was packed out.

It's exciting for the league and Cairns."

Sengstock admitted the turn-around had been a long journey, but one that he always believed would take place.

What we had to do was get things in place and then things would happen," he said.

It's probably happened a bit quicker than I thought it would with One HD. But I was always confident.

We have a good product and confidence was just wavering and it needed to be realigned."

The basis for that belief had always been there because the product was strong.

You've got all these people playing the game - the majority of people in this country have played basketball at some point in their lives.We've got to draw on that somewhere along the line."

As well as iiNet's naming rights deal, Sengstock announced a two-year partnership with Centrebet as the league's official betting partner, the signing of AND1 as the apparel supply partner and Spalding as the official ball of the NBL.

The apparel and ball deal would allow the league to capitalise on merchandising, an area in which it had previously lagged behind other sports.

Credit: Emma Greenwood (greenwoode@tcp.newsltd.com.au)