The National Basketball League will play regular season matches five days a week from Wednesday to Sunday in a bid to slot neatly into the AFL and NRL off seasons, while taking on cricket's Big Bash League in mid-summer.
The revised schedule starting in October will feature 7.30pm games on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights plus games on Sunday afternoon and evening.
In recent seasons, the NBL has played the vast majority of their Australian based games between Friday and Sunday with the New Zealand Breakers hosting some matches on a Thursday.
NBL officials are confident their revamp will succeed even though they acknowledge the midweek scheduling of games will result in a clash with the wildly popular BBL T20 tournament as well as some A-League matches in December and January.
New executive director Larry Kestelman said the NBL was committed to presenting their corporate partners, potential broadcasters and the public with the best possible product at the most appropriate time and that the revised schedule would be an attractive proposition to all those parties.
The full schedule for the eight-team competition will be released next week, but the regular season will be reduced by one round to 19, as the competition strives to avoid clashing too much with the early rounds of the two major football codes.
"We are positioning the NBL to be the number one entertainment sport in Australia and New Zealand," Kestelman said.
"We have moved to a 19-week regular season so that were not competing head-to-head with the traditional winter sport offering.
"Trying to accommodate an entire regular season of content into that period, using a traditional weekend schedule would have been selling the sport short."
NBL general manager Jeremy Loeliger was confident his league could compete with the BBL for midweek sporting audiences.
"Australia hasn't seen two major league sports compete for midweek numbers for some time, but we are really confident that the NBL will deliver great results over the summer period," Loeliger said.
"Australians love their sport and we think our schedule gives them a new option of consuming a frontline, elite sporting competition midweek."
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