The big, bold promise of the Tauihi women's basketball league - and the man behind it

Seated in the sparsely populated stands of the Pulman Arena in Papakura, South Auckland for the 2020 national women's basketball league finals, Justin Nelson felt a sense of frustration nagging away at him.

The defending champions, Auckland Dream, were taking on the Canterbury Wildcats in the finals series, in what was the culmination of a truncated season of just 18 days.

The Australian sports executive, who had landed in New Zealand 18 months earlier to take up a role as general manager in the men's national basketball league, was vexed by the low turnout and flat atmosphere.

To Nelson, the vibe inside the stadium - a community sports facility - felt more like that of a weeknight club game, rather than the showpiece event for women's basketball in this country.

By half-time, he had seen enough. Nelson got on the phone to then-Basketball New Zealand chief executive Ian Potter to report his findings.

"I said, 'Look, this just isn't good enough, it isn't good enough for women's basketball, it isn't good enough for the sport'," Nelson recalls.

"I thought we could, and had to, do a whole lot better and I told him I think I have an idea that will change the landscape of women's basketball in this country forever."

From that conversation, the seeds of the Tauihi Basketball League were sown.

In October, the third season of the revamped women's competition tipped off amid a wave of positive headlines.

Stories about the league doubling player payments, making the women better remunerated than their male counterparts, the recruitment of top international talent, including WNBA star Jordan Horston, a new all-women ownership group for the Northern Kahu, and sell-out seasons all positioned Tauihi as New Zealand's most innovative and progressive sporting league.

There was further big news this week with the announcement that an international team, the Indian Panthers, will join the league from 2025 as part of the competition's bold plans of overseas expansion.

The Indian franchise, which will also field a team in the men's National Basketball League, will be based in South Auckland.

Its home court will be the Pulman Arena - the same venue where Nelson had his epiphany four years ago.

The baker from a 'busted home'

To Nelson, the key to the rapid growth of the Tauihi League is simple: an unapologetically single-minded focus on entertainment.

"I think what we've seen with Tauihi is it has been built off the back of innovation. It's a young competition, it doesn't position itself around history or the way things have always been done. It doesn't have gatekeepers or people sitting at a table trying to protect positions around that sport from 30, 40, 50 years ago, and that has allowed us to fast track, it has allowed us to embrace what fans want and in particular for a game like basketball, what young fans want," says Nelson, who is now an executive with Sky New Zealand.

"And that's really what has allowed it to move so fast. It is a very, very nimble competition with people who are embracing the innovations that I'm bringing to the table."

The above is typical of most of the answers Nelson gives - a bombardment of sports management buzzwords delivered with trademark Aussie self-assuredness. By the end of a one-hour chat over coffee, the word "innovation" had lost all meaning.

For the fast-talking Melburnian, every conversation is a sales pitch; an opportunity to convert a new disciple to his "revenue, fans, brand" doctrine.

Nelson's pathway into sports management came via a circuitous route.

The product of a "busted home", Nelson left school and moved out of home at 14 to train as a baker. "I don't think you can get away with leaving school in year nine these days and go flatting as a 14 year-old. But that's what I did. The 80s, man it was a different world back then," he says, by way of explanation.

By 17 he was a dad. By 37 he was a granddad (he now has seven grandchildren).

A fun fact he likes to tell people as an icebreaker at corporate gatherings is that if his oldest grandchild has a baby at the age Nelson became a father, it will make him a great-grandfather by the age of 54.

"It's always a tough one to beat," he chuckles.

One thing he doesn't share as often is that his oldest child, Ace, is a trans man.

"The opportunity as a parent to have a transgender child, I think it's opened up a whole new world to me. It's been a fantastic journey for a parent to be on and one of learning and listening and understanding."

But back when he was a teen dad still overcoming his own disjointed upbringing, Nelson didn't really see the world as one of limitless possibilities.

"I never imagined when I held a baby in my arms at 17 years of age that I would end up where I am now," he says.

It was a mate that got him a foot in the door in sport. He was asked to join his friend in the radio commentary box as the "colour man" on a local AFL game one Saturday. Soon, at age 20, he was a regular fixture in the coverage, allowing him to hang up his apron and embark on a sports media career.

He commentated more than 600 games of AFL and more than 300 national football league games before branching out into sports administration, first with a V8 Supercars team and then as general manager of the Melbourne Boomers women's basketball league franchise.

"The other thing that is very, very important in terms of how I ended up here is that for 10 years, I travelled to the United States three times a year. That was to learn from the best. I visited some of the biggest teams over there, the biggest leagues, because the Americans are the best when it comes to revenue, fans and brand and that's the model I've taken forward with me since."

Blue Sky thinking

When he landed in New Zealand in 2019 to take up a role as general manager of the men's NBL, Nelson had only planned on a three-year tour of duty. He figured he would soak up the experience and use it as a launch pad to bigger roles back in Australia.

He was coming towards the end of that time just as the vision for Tauihi was coming to life, thanks to a deal brokered between Sky and BBNZ, in which the broadcaster owns the commercial and management rights to both the men's and women's leagues.

"It is very uniquely different, but I think from what everybody can see so far, successfully different," Nelson says.

"What it is, is a concerted focus on building entertainment products through change and innovation that attracts new, diverse and larger commercial investment.

"There's a very clear-minded perspective of where we want to take these products, and thankfully commercial partners are wanting to come on board."

Having helped engineer the partnership between Sky and BBNZ, Nelson then joined the broadcaster himself. His job? The curiously titled head of commercial and fandom.

It is a broad-sounding role, but one with some very pointed goals, including how to engage younger audiences with sport.

Nelson sees Tauihi as the blueprint for how sports can grow their audience if leaders are prepared to try new things and focus on the needs of young fans.

To emphasise his point, he rattles off some stats.

"The attendance is up 268 percent this season year-on-year, so we have had a massive jump in attendance. And we're seeing that the league has really hit its mark with the broadcast audience, so that continues to be a real strength," he says.

"A lot of that has to do with the class of the players. You bring in more commercial revenue, that means you can attract top international talent. This season we have 25 internationals alongside our 35 contracted Kiwis. It just takes the level of everything you're doing up. There wouldn't be a domestic competition in New Zealand that has the depth of international talent."

But within the wider sports community, there are questions about whether Sky's bold marketing claims really stack up.

Sky has not disclosed the raw data on attendance and viewership numbers for the league (and does not routinely do so for other sports), so RNZ could not independently compare them against Nelson's statistics.

However, the Northern Kahu's opening win over the Southern Hoihoi last month was attended by around 1200 fans - a sell-out for the franchise.

In fact, the Auckland-based team have sold out all their home matches - but that is thanks to its partnership with BNZ, which bought up all general admission tickets and offered them to fans for free.

There is some cynicism, too, when it comes to the league's headline-grabbing play to double the player payments, apparently putting their compensation above that of the men, and "on par" with the money offered in other women's professional leagues like netball, rugby and cricket.

Scratch the surface of that claim more deeply, detractors say, and that is not quite the case. While the women get paid more on a pro-rata basis, the NBL is a 16-week regular season while Tauihi only runs for 10 weeks - meaning the men are still bringing home larger salaries.

Nelson will not disclose what the salary caps are for each of the leagues, but he says the top players in the Tauihi League are earning around $3000 per week.

Much of the pushback seems to be driven by discomfort over Sky's cosy relationship with basketball while it plays hardball with other codes. The lack of genuine competition in the sports broadcast market following the exit of Spark has left sports with little bargaining power when it comes to negotiating broadcast deals.

"Why is it," one sports executive asked, "that this league is getting all this investment and exhaustive coverage, when other sports have to beg or even pay to get coverage?"

"I think it raises some really interesting questions about what subscription TV models are obligated to provide subscribers."

Nelson counters that his role at Sky is to drive the commerciality and fan engagement for all sports in the company's stable.

"I'm an open book, I'm really happy to share different perspectives and innovative ideas with other sports. Some sports are really quick to embrace it, basketball being the best example," he says.

As an example, he points to the league's decision to move the Tauihi season away from its traditional mid-year slot to the less cluttered October-December window.

Nelson says the move means Tauihi is no longer fighting with some of the bigger codes like Super Rugby and NRL to get eyeballs.

"It is about identifying [that] there is an opportunity in the last quarter of the year to increase fandom, increase viewership, increase commercial assets and in this instance Tauihi has been courageous and bold enough to take that step. Maybe some other sports have missed an opportunity there and [Tauihi] has moved into it."

Were other sports offered that window?

"I can't answer that question," Nelson says.

"But what I can say is, true to its nature of being an innovator and a leader in this country at the moment, basketball saw an opportunity and embraced it.

"I guess that is my number one message to other sports. You can't sit on your hands, you have to act."