The ABA should reorganize!

[CRUSADERSFAN]

The ABA needs to think up a different name or give up and reorganize or change their name.I support giving up and reorganizing.Here would be my "ideal" ABA, divided into divisions and cities.
EASTERN DIVISION
Baltimore
Louisville
Norfolk
New York
Buffalo
Tampa Bay
WESTERN DIVISION
Los Angeles
Tuscon
Las Vegas
San Diego
St.Louis
Chicago

Please Tell Me what you think!

[notoriousap]

Buffalo doesn't want a team. We can't support it.

[statman77]

Why not! Buffalo is a big enough city

[Pounder]

I'm not terribly worried about there being enough of an ABA to reorganize.

I also want to emphasize something- there is no need for another national basketball league, there is no MARKET for it, and whatever money is in it is going to slide to no more than 2 or 3 people. This ABA is already a neo-pyramid scheme, it's not worth this aggravation... so, hopefully, this is the last time I treat this seriously.

All that being said, in addition to my Walla Walla and McCall franchises, I'd like to announce the creation of a team in Nome, Alaska. I'm sure Joe Newman will mention that you only feel the cold if you think about it, but he's proud to have such a famous American city represented in the ABA.

[Ken, Steelheads fan]

CRUSADERSFAN,
Your reorganization plan would be a good idea if the beforementioned cities actually wanted minor league basketball. Those cities are all first class status. Are their taxpayers more inclined to subsidize an independent minor league or are they more inclined to subsidize a major league? Are they more inclined to do neither? I don't think a team (minor or major league) can survive for very long without significant support from local government.

statman77,
It seems like notoriousap is from the Buffalo area, therefore...probably has a better feel for the atmosphere around Buffalo than an outsider. The "bigness" of a town has nothing to do with it. Will the town support a new sports franchise? That is the question that needs to be answered. The ABA has done a pretty poor job of scouting their markets and getting an answer to that question in my opinion.

[South Atlantic]

The ABA is trying to match the NBA in number of teams but not worrying about the marketing side of the cities that are being selected. They should or plan on having teams go belly up mid season and cause headaches for the everyday fan.

Where are they playing their games at? Most of these cities will sign leases with local Civic Arenas that seat 5000 and maybe draw 1000, maybe. Their attendance figures to break-even need to be around 2200 for what they will be paying and that will be tough to nail.

I wish the ABA luck in their quest to rival the NBA and create an alternative game but be careful with the everyday fan cause once we are gone, no third chances allowed!

[agc7528]

I see your point, but they are moving in the right direction in some ways. They have some venues that aren't in NBA territories but are in large cities and it was good that Minot moved to Utah. I still think Mahwah and Pensacola and a couple other locations are going to have a rough time. You are right about most of the arenas being small. However, Cincinnati will be playing at the US Bank Arena for example which supposedly can seat 15,000 for a basketball game. I think the league needs to get a lot more attention from the media to attract fans and show how they are a unique league that people should be interested in. I don't think they need to reorganize, but rather need to have a successful season to start to prove themselves to potential fans.

[Sam Hill]

Or, they could just, you know, sell tickets the way teams do and not lean on the crutch of "Oh, the media is ignoring us, how can we be expected to get any fans there?"

Hire sales people. Hire people who have a clue to train and lead them. Don't think that tickets are going to sell themselves. Don't hire 24 year old general managers and 22-year old head coaches. Don't hope that gimmicks will be your long-term strategy.

Right now the ABA looks like a Ponzi scheme, with the new expansion teams helping to cover the losses of the first few years and then being cast adrift to fend for themselves because the league office doesn't have any more of a clue than any ten people you could find at the local public library, if you dropped them in an office and told them to create and run a basketball league.

[statman77]

Has anybody heard if the American Basketball Association have signed a tv deal with a network yet?

[Sam Hill]

I thought I recently read somewhere that they had or were about to. I'll believe it when I see it, though.

[Pounder]

Larger markets mean more expensive advertising, an attitude of "if it isn't the big 4, it's crap," and depending on the market, if you have a facility that can't serve beer (because, for sure, you can't afford the rent of a bigger building), you're in the hole and counting the days until the daisies are pushed.

If you want to mention the "success" of the old AFL, ABA, and WHA, let's recap the other developments that have taken place in the last 30-40 years:

ABC, CBS, and NBC were the only networks around at the time, and they only had so much time to devote to sports... so you didn't know to feel guilty if an upstart league put a team in your town. NOW, with ESPN basically ruling the sports roost, they basically set the sports agenda (that means the sports focus, once locally centered, is now heavily nationalzed), and it is exponentially harder to start a competing league.

I also have a hypothesis (created especially to help my fellow soccer fans understand why it will take time for MLS to take hold) about the time required to "establish" a league. Both the NFL and NBA had watershed moments around their 30th to 35th year of existence; before that, the college version of each game was arguably more popular, or at least the TV networks didn't give them the respect they do now. 30 to 35 seems to be about the time it takes for a grandfather, father, and son to all root for the same team, for their own reasons, which cements more than one bond in the process. Now that the big 4 are entrenched, people have to be given a "hell or high water" reason to break that bond, even if they're based thousands of miles away from the team of choice, even if tickets are priced way out of their range (to quote a hockey fan I know, all big 4 sports these days are essentially television experiences).

Just thought I'd add that.

[Ken, Steelheads fan]

statman77,
The Gwinnett Gwizzlies announced awhile back that BOTH their home and away games would be telecast by Comcast. I'm assuming these are regional broadcasts, but please do not put much stock in this announcement. More and more ABA franchises seem to be telling Whoppers (with the hope that no one notices) as the start of the season approaches.

Don't get me wrong! I'm not saying the Comcast deal is an out-right lie, but I AM saying that I don't believe both home and away games will be telecast as announced. I've often been inside the Gary Genesis Center hours before a regional CLTV Steelheads broadcast. We are talking about hours of preparation for multiple camera locations with the laying of cable (gaffing?)--all to a control room parked outside the arena in a trailer.

I don't see them taking that kind of a show on the road. It just wouldn't be feasible.