This transcript has been lightly edited by AI
Sean (27:33.907)
You talked about looking at other leagues and other teams for best practice in, in figuring out where trends are going and where, where places are going. Are there, are there other teams or, or pieces that you're looking at from different parts of the world? You say, yeah, we can do a Hawks version of that. There's some that are giving you that inspiration to say, yeah, we want to follow some of the modeling that they're doing or some of the activity they're doing.
Stu Taggart (28:02.038)
Yeah, and I think we can also look close to home. I think some of the things I've talked about facility, I think I've spent a lot of time looking at infrastructure around the world, particularly when I was working as a futurist in the industry and, you know, seeing what's important to people and making their experiences frictionless when they come out. You know, there are so many things that people can choose to spend both their time and money on as individuals and as families and as partners. So,
You know, I think definitely the US is always a great market. And I know you and I have spent a bit of time over there and that's where I think we first met, um, in the context of different things and there, it's always a place I look to, but increasingly around the world, there's, there's other things that are happening across Europe. Um, at the facility sense, that's a focus for us at the moment. So definitely looking at not just the match day.
experience around a facility, how can we integrate? We're really focused on integrating with the Illawarra Basketball Association at a local community level, an elite training facility, because we see that as a real logical thing to do and a great opportunity to give back to the community, make our playing and coaching staff visible and available to be part of that ecosystem as well. And if it's integrated in the same place and designed well, I think Victoria are doing a great job with the new
basketball center of excellence that will open later this year. $150 million investment, you know, to ultimately have 18 courts. It'll have, you know, an NBL team, the Phoenix Air, WNBL team, Knox basketball, basketball Australia, basketball Victoria. It'll be a real basketball hub. So looking at things like that. And I think coming new to basketball, its biggest competitive advantage in many respects to me is it's indoor.
It's same time, same place. You're not worried about the weather. I can hear rain on the roof as we're doing this interview. So, you know, that ability of the sport and watching facilities being able to be utilized from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. basically every day is a really unique competitive advantage that basketball has. And, you know, the best practice that you can think about differently around what that means is a elite sporting club.
Stu Taggart (30:23.562)
how you can connect with the local community is an exciting piece of the puzzle for us.
Sean (30:34.243)
I can definitely vouch for that as someone who grew up in regional Victoria, Ballarat, refereed all day, played basketball during the day, and then went and saw the Ballarat minors and marveled at Eric Cooks, who was a minors legend and then became a Illawarra Hawks legend when he went and played in the NBL. It very much was the hub of that basketball community.
Stu Taggart (30:51.522)
Yeah, okay. True.
Sean (31:01.591)
and having the same conversations with Geelong Football Club and the redevelopment they're going through with their stadium and how they're making sure that stadium is gonna be ready for the fans. And like you said, catered for the fans because the stadiums of 20 years ago aren't the stadiums that fans want now. They want to go to an entertainment place, have some fun and there's a game happening by the side. So that's an exciting.
Stu Taggart (31:06.638)
Mm-hmm.
Sean (31:29.076)
exciting sort of phase to go into if you can, you know, pull in all those stakeholders to get that up and running.
Stu Taggart (31:37.45)
Yeah, I think it's a challenging opportunity for Australian sport I mean the halo of the FIFA Women's World Cup, you know The the government investment into facilities that we're going to see particularly towards rightly women's sport And you know, we'd love to be part of that. For example as the Hawks as I said earlier with having that ambition to ultimately Have a women's team in the WNBL, you know, it becomes part of that discussion It's they'd said a lot in the lead-up to enduring and post the FIFA Women's World Cup around
can't be what you can't see and proving out really spectacularly the reality of that situation there and I think there's more to come. There's plenty of other major events coming with this green and gold decade heading towards Brisbane 2032. Any of the Olympic sports like basketball should be and must continue to try and capitalize on this runway because it's really special.
Going back to the start of this interview, having experienced an Olympics in my hometown in 2000, it's spectacular and it's an unforgettable opportunity and for not only the city that hosts it, but for the country that hosts it. So we all should be working together to make sure we deliver what only Australia in many respects can't.
