Tall Blacks need $2m to meet costs
‘ We are reaching out to anyone we think who can help us.’ BASKETBALL NEW ZEALAND CHIEF EXECUTIVE IAIN POTTER
ANYONE got a magic wand? Basketball New Zealand is staring up at a Tall Blacks funding crisis so dire that even their arch-rivals from across the Tasman are expressing their sympathies.
In a best of times and worst of times scenario, Basketball NZ must be wondering whether to laugh or cry over the brave new world they’ve been thrown into with the International Basketball Federation’s (FIBA) re-organisation of its international game.
On the one hand they’ve been given a fantastic new opportunity with Oceania’s move into the Asia zone and a rejigged global landscape guaranteeing regular, varied and meaningful international hoops contests. Plus a much better shot at the Olympics.
On the other, there is the cost of this opportunity, estimated at around $2 million in travel and assembly costs just to get the Tall Blacks through to the 2019 World Cup in China.
For a Basketball NZ organisation receiving a paltry $125,000 of government-backed High Performance Sport NZ funding this year (hockey, by comparison, receives $2m), and a whopping $25,000 increase on that in 2018, it leaves them between a rock and a hard place. With that they’re supposed to fuel the Tall Blacks and Tall Ferns, not to mention the Under-19 men who have qualified, ahead of Australia, for their world championships in Egypt from July 1-9.
Contrast that with the support Basketball Australia gets across the ditch and you have a Prince and the Pauper hoops parable of the highest order.
Basketball Australia received A$6.5m (NZ$6.9m) in funding in 2017 as part of its federal government Winning Edge strategy. Around $5m of that is ear-marked for the national teams programme.
BA chief executive Anthony Moore said he was aghast at the lack of funding support accorded New Zealand and it was incomprehensible how they could compete in the tough Asian zone on that basis.
‘‘I don’t know how [Basketball NZ chief executive] Iain [Potter] does it. Without government support it’s like you’re going into this thing with both hands tied behind your back,’’ Moore said.
‘‘New Zealand are a rival, so in one sense you can look at it and say, ‘good luck trying to find those funds’. But as a colleague and a compatriot, I worry about the capacity for the organisation to fund their programmes.’’
Potter is well used to rough hands being dealt in a country seemingly blind to the global significance of what New Zealand achieves in the world’s secondbiggest sport.
But even he admitted a crisis situation could be looming as the requirement hit home to fund not just attendance at the upcoming FIBA Asia Cup in Lebanon (August 10-20) but the six home-away FIBA windows between November this year and July 2018, as well as next year’s Commonwealth Games.
‘‘We’ve got a massive financial challenge. Basketball NZ is going to have to find the best part of $2m over the next two years,’’ Potter said.
‘‘While being in Asia opens up commercial opportunities, the reality is we have to meet the costs of being in that system before we can realise any of the benefits.
‘‘It is a double-edged sword. [Going into Asia] is an opportunity too good to turn down, but the cost of participation is considerable. I don’t have the answers as to how we’re going to find the funds, but I have to believe that we’re going to.’’
Basketball NZ does have a significant income stream from the TAB (around $1.8m last year), though that’s the pot of gold that funds the entire sport.
Potter had already met with Tall Blacks representatives around commitments for the new programme.
‘‘They told me, ‘we know there’s no money in the pot and we know we do it because we want to play for New Zealand’. It’s such a wonderful and remarkable thing to hear in this world of professionalism and I feel so grateful to them.’’
His message at the recent AGM had been to ‘‘survive and thrive, because if we survive we’ll thrive’’.
The Kiwi hoops boss said it was now about thinking outside the square, with the government’s Trade and Enterprise agency a potential target, given the Tall Blacks are about to make a big splash in China as part of the same World Cup qualifying group.
Basketball is huge in China, now a key trading partner with New Zealand. At the 2015 Asian Cup, over 122 million Chinese people watched their team’s five games, with more than 38 million viewing the final alone.
‘‘We are reaching out to anyone we think who can help us,’’ Potter said.
‘‘The players are already doing a job for New Zealand in that they perform outstandingly well and for the love of their country. We’d like to see some support for them to do that.’’
The Tall Blacks’ future may rely on it.