The Singapore Slingers, this island city’s first professional basketball team, announced that they are pulling out of the Australian National Basketball League (NBL) for financial reasons. The Slingers, who bear the cost of not just their own airline tickets but that of all visiting teams, decided that it was not viable to continue doing so in the upcoming season. The Slingers played in the NBL for the last two seasons, making the playoffs in their maiden season but failed to do so last year.
The Slingers will now turn their attention to the potential of the Asian region.
Explaining the decision to withdraw from the NBL, the Slingers Chairman Tony Fernandes, who is also Group CEO of Air Asia said, "Since getting on board six months ago, I've firmly believed that the long-term future of the Slingers is in an Asian Professional League rather than in the NBL. The recent turn of events provided the catalyst to start looking more closely at the feasibility of playing professionally in Asia."
"I am a big believer in ASEAN, with its fantastic market of 600 million people. Considering the potential sponsorships and television viewership, it makes tremendous commercial sense to go in this direction and take advantage of the popularity of basketball in the region", he added.
REDpoll
Feel free to take part in the REDpoll. Multiple answers possible.
Loading ...
why must wihhdraw from nbl is so interest to watch them play in nbl rathe then asain team
anyway, jus jiayou for em bahhs. hahas^^ they’re still our nation’s onlie bball proffessional team whatts. shld support!hahas!
hahas, coz its a proffessional bball team formed in spore tats y their jerseys are printed with tat “singapore” on em. i feel tat if thers spore players in it might make it more significant for the team bahhs. well, jus some personal tots niahhs…lols
so what its called singapore slingers ?
its not even singaporean playing for it