This transcript has been lightly edited by AI
Sean: You describe yourself as someone that solves complex problems. You're coming into the NBL, you know, it's not, there's not complex problems there per se, but you're still trying to maintain that growth trajectory. What have been some of the things that you've had to tackle to sort of keep the MBL on an upward path? Because it's not like you were coming in as a fixer-upper, hey, we need to correct things. Larry and Jeremy had it on a really strong path and you've got, you know, committed, committed owners of teams wanted to continue the growth. What were some of the things in your remit to say, Hey, Dave, this is what we want you to focus
Dave: Yeah, there's a couple of things that you're absolutely right. think Larry, Jeremy, Vince and the team had done a phenomenal job. it certainly wasn't a turnaround brief, but there's really three things that were my big priorities. Firstly was this idea of unifying the sport. You know, as I said, we're very fragmented as a sport. So one of the most biggest priorities for me is how do we, how do we get the whole sport working together? So spent a lot of time with Matt Scriven and the basketball Australia team.
A lot of time with the States, a lot of time with the NBA. And that really came to life in the Hoops Fest concept that we're able to announce. And we're excited for that to execute in September in Perth, where the whole sport comes together. So you've got WNBL plus NBL. So you've got the elite, you've got community as well with 40 18s playing the under 18 Australian championships. You've also got the off court culture piece.
With Sneakerland and that's a unique part of our sport. And then you'll see some announcements over the coming weeks, but the NBA component will also be a part of HoopsFest. So that was a big priority, how do you get the whole sport to work together? And that extended itself into the clubs as well. And so a lot bigger connection in with the clubs to be able to make sure that the sum of the parts is going to be better than everyone individually.
The second big priority was to continue the growth journey. Again, when you're coming off 30% growth and 20% growth, it's really hard because you've an anniversary that growth. And again, we're not really a business that just wants to stay flatline. And I'm not a leader who gets excited about flatlining the business. So, you know, very aggressive goals. How do we take our broadcast audience and grow by 30%? How do you grow your social media? How do you grow attendance? And I was really proud of the fact we had 26% growth in our broadcast coming off the back of a number of years of 20 and 30% growth. We had a 50% growth in our social media.
Dave: We had 40 sell-outs, a staggering number of those, highest attendance we've had in our history on a per game basis and the second highest on total. In 25 years to be able to get over a million people through the gate. So that was the biggest focus from the business side is how to get growth on top of growth. And again, fantastic there. And then the third part is how do you set the table for future growth opportunities? And so looking at those new products, I mentioned Hoops Fest, WNBL has been something that's been a big priority.
And so was very pleased to be able to play a leadership role in getting that WNBL deal done, working closely with an incredible leader like Robin Denholm and Basketball Australia with John and Matt. How do you look at new growth opportunities like Harlem Globetrotters that have just finished well over 100,000 people going to those games. So it's thinking about those new product opportunities and that was really the third biggest
