@taniwharugby said in All Blacks vs Wahs - what are you watching?:
I think it is the likes of B-ball that is a bigger threat, well along with kids playing no sport at all.
I mentioned elsewhere, there are not alot of.tall players running around Northland club rugby, but i do know alot of kids play B-ball and there seems.good development programmes, with tournaments and kids going on trips overseas (parents doing alot of fundraising)
I think it is maybe a "threat" in terms of participation, much less so as a spectator sport.
Pre-covid the NZ Breakers were quite popular in Auckland, now you'd hardly even know they exist. I'd suggest that in Auckland there is a fair degree of crossover between NRL fans and basketball fans, and the rise of the former might have dampened interest in the latter (purely anecdotal and I understand that this is contradicted by evidence from Australia, where the NBL has grown a lot over the last few years).
Likewise the NZ NBL attracts only a few hundred spectators to most games.
Participation definitely isn't filtering through to spectator interest, at least not domestically.