New regime and look ahead of 2022 season

A new group of businesses has rescued the Manawatū Jets basketball team from the brink of oblivion and ensured the franchise’s future for the next five years.

Now, led by Property Brokers managing director Tim Mordaunt, a group of more than 20 people and organisations in the region have committed their support to fund and create a new business structure for the team.

Basketball Manawatū and Property Brokers are the shareholders. Long-time sponsor Mordaunt, Basketball Manawatū chairwoman Vonese Walker and Craig Nash comprise the board of the new entity, with Nash the chairman.

Kevin Smith, the chairman of the wound-up Jets board, said the old entity had always struggled to get the level of commercial support it needed.

“Every year we got to the end of the year and a magical effort was required to dig ourselves out of a hole. We got to the end of this year and the hole was a bit bigger.”

He said they realised the situation wasn’t viable and the board now has relinquished the licence to the new entity, which had a more sustainable model.

Nash said the city was faced with losing the team, but in the space of five weeks they came up with the new concept and received great support from the community.

“Instead of lurching from trouble to trouble every year we needed to get a five-year window to do it.”

He said they wanted to build a good culture, which would create a pipeline for young players in the region and contribute to a winning team.

Mordaunt has been involved with the team since the early years in the 1980s and didn’t want to see the team disappear.

“We’ve lost soccer out of the city, we’ve lost rugby league out of the city. We’ve got two professional teams, we’ve got the [Manawatū] Turbos and the Jets.

“If there’s not a professional pathway here they will go to Wellington or another town. We’ve got 3000 kids playing basketball every week in Manawatū.”

It wasn’t a money-making venture, he said. Their hearts were in the city.