Huge TV audience for Hawke’s Bay Hawks 2025 NBL opener

Hawke’s Bay Hawks could have a broadcast audience in the multi-millions when they play the opening match of the 2025 national men’s national basketball league against new side the Indian Panthers.

Teenager Jackson Ball, the Napier Boys' High School pupil who made his Hawke's Bay Hawks debut this year and last month won the Supreme Sports Award at the Hawke's Bay Secondary Schools Sports Awards. Photo / NZME.

The match, televised worldwide on ESPN 3 (United States) and via the FIBA’s Your Tube channel, as will all 137 in the NBL, will be played in the Pettigrew Green Arena, Taradale, on March 12.

Club general manager, long-serving Hawk and national representative Tall Black Jarrod Kenny, says: “It’s got huge potential. There are 1.4 billion people in India… imagine if just 10 per cent watched”.

While India is ranked just 76 in men’s basketball worldwide (New Zealand is No 22), NBA viewing numbers on the sub-continent, according to NBA Communications, have leapt 1200% in recent years, with more than 100 million “unique” viewers each season - close to 10% of the population.

The Indian Panthers, whose application for inclusion in both the NBL and the women’s Tauihi Aotearoa league were confirmed just last month, are expecting to include Indian national representatives and players otherwise based in the US, as well as New Zealand players.

It will be the second season in a row that the Hawks have been chosen to welcome new competition in the league, having started last season with an away match against new side the Tauranga Whai.

The match against the Panthers will open the league season on a date that has advanced the start by more than three weeks in the last two years.

For the Hawks, it will be the first of four games in 11 days, the first three at home.

The side has won the league just once, and were playoffs qualifiers in 2023 but controversially beaten in the semi-finals. This year, they missed a place in the top six.

They play the Manawatu Jets on March 15 and Otago Nuggets on March 21, two days before they tackle Franklin Bulls in Pukekohe, the first of six consecutive away games.

The Hawks play their two games against defending champions the Canterbury Rams a week apart in June, with a match in-between, and head towards the playoffs in July with their last five matches at home.

Kenny says while announcements relating to the team and management for 2025 are yet to be made, it is hoped most if not all the Hawks in the first development-level Rapid League last season will be back.

The 12-team competition, with 22 games each before the playoffs, will be the biggest season of NBL basketball in New Zealand since the first competition in 1981.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 41 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.