Start a new Midnight Basketball location

Welcome from all of us at Midnight Basketball Australia.

We want to help you provide more positive, fun, healthy and highly social activities for all Australian teenagers on Friday and Saturday nights.

From the moment we proudly started our first tournament in the Sydney community of Redfern over 10 years ago, we knew we had something special. Midnight Basketball is a highly regarded, community-driven, inclusionary social basketball competition for teenagers from 12 to 18 years old.

We use the sport of basketball to provide a structured and supportive environment where teenagers can develop a range of life skills while socialising, having fun and building their confidence. Our aim is that every teenager who participates in Midnight Basketball will build the skills and confidence to identify and embrace positive opportunities in their lives and community. We do this through a fun community-run Tournament that combines the benefits of team sport and civic participation and therefore make the process of identifying steps to training, employment, a career and living a good life more enjoyable, believable and concrete.

As a catalyst for community building, it is dependent on volunteers right across communities including cultural, sporting, service and volunteer groups and individuals, local businesses, educators, local councils, parents and many more who bring their expertise and mentoring skills to help out while also building the foundations for a confident and resilient identity and future for the teenage participants.

As it expands across the country, we are constantly rewarded with examples of communities who have embraced Midnight Basketball and are able to see it work and have impact on local teenagers.

Midnight Basketball Australia supports communities in running the Tournaments. We understand that setting up and managing your Tournaments takes time. To help, we have an online Tournament System and a lot more support to help this process. Following approval, we will provide training  to help you build an exciting, sustainable Tournament for your local teenagers.

If you believe Midnight Basketball would help provide a positive, fun and high energy activity in your community, and you can demonstrate local capacity to make it happen, we will provide support to help you set it up in your community.

We look forward to meeting your community and working with you.

Consider the following carefully to assess your viability to get up and running.

Is Midnight Basketball what you are looking for?

• Our About page provides in depth information that describes our Midnight Basketball Tournament Model. This is a great place to start to see just what Midnight Basketball is all about. Please also call us if you would like to talk through - always welcomed.
• Talk through with a range of people in your local community
  • We are huge proponents of providing more positive, healthy, magnetic, high energy and fun activities for teenagers on weekend nights in Australia for many reasons. As you will read on the About page, there are many benefits for teenagers, including hitting the weekend binge drinking culture head on by providing a magnetic, fun alternative.
  • We provide you with a highly automated solution to run Midnight Basketball, however it will rely on you and your local volunteers to make the magic happen. We want you to be sure it will be useful to you, will enhance your community and aligns with local plans and activities within your community. We encourage you to talk to a wide range of people early on to see how aligned you believe we are, if there is a gap for this kind of activity and if this is something your community actually wants.
  • As we have always learnt a lot from the feedback from these discussions, we encourage you to provide feedback openly.
• Our experience suggests the following is required, as a minimum, to bring Midnight Basketball to your community:
  • You have a local established need for Midnight Basketball.
  • You have identified why you believe Midnight Basketball is an activity that will enhance your community.
  • You have a realistic understanding of the commitment and capacity of your community to deliver the Tournament Model effectively, align with our objectives and aim for excellence.
  • You have identified indoor basketball facilities (2 courts min.), including breakout areas/area to eat.
  • You have the ability to recruit volunteers and support from diverse stakeholder groups (different sectors eg the business community, teenager and support services, sport, volunteer groups like Rotary and Lions, a range of local motivated individuals). We also have a well-established volunteer marketing plan to help recruit.
  • You have an intention to commit to Midnght Basketball, if all goes well, for two years or more - with a minimum of two 8 week Tournaments each year (a total of at least four Tournaments over two years).
  • You can identify an organisation to auspice locally and sign an agreement with Midnight Basketball Australia to oversee Midnight Basketball in your community.

Application

We know what a huge effort the community makes to bring this all together and be sustainable, and we are here to help you however we can.

Please complete the Application Form to clarify initial requirements - to provide more certainty that it will be successful and sustainable. We use this information to assess whether you have the base fundamentals required and highlight initial gaps for discussion. We have run over 250 tournaments around the country, mostly amazing, however we also learnt a lot when it didn't work and carefully assessing why that was - there are elements that, along with communities, we found not to work as well and what is imperative to success - we will provide the input of this experience from many communities.

If you would like to proceed complete this online form and we will be in contact within 1-3 days.

New community application form

Review by Midnight Basketball Australia

• We will review and call you to discuss.
• Once assessed and we both agree a local Tournament is viable, we will setup access to your own local online Midnight Basketball Tournament System and public website to get started.
• How Midnight Basketball Australia will support you
  • We bring the collective experience of over 250 Tournaments around the country over 10 years and help wherever we can - where it makes sense to support nationally. From enterprise technology to Tournament kits, we want to get every Tournament off to a great start by providing communities with a heap of support.
  • The online Midnight Basketball Tournament System which automates the Tournament running, registration, scheduling and much more, including support materials to help you plan and run a launch event and your first tournament.
  • Your personalised local public community website is automatically updated with the details you will enter as you setup the Tournament.
  • Loads of other support:

    Support provided by Midnight Basketball Australia

    Aside from bringing together the collective experience of over 250 Tournaments around the country over 10 years, we help wherever we can.

    Midnight Basketball Australia is committed to continuous improvement of the Tournament Model in response to community needs and the provision of items we can provide through national partners, sponsorship arrangements, pro bono expertise or other innovative means. From amazing enterprise technology to fantastic Tournament and Marketing kits, we want to get the Tournaments off to a great start by providing communities with a heap of support and these will grow as we re-launch and grow the brand.

    What we provide to communities to run Midnight Basketball

    To do this, Midnight Basketball Australia provides communities with the following items, subject to available resources:

    • A professional Midnight Basketball kit: team singlets, bags, display banners, volunteer lanyards, player awards and trophies.
    • Skills sessions support and advice.
    • MBAustralia staff visit each community during the initial two year period and ongoing as required, for initial community forums to help spread the word, Management team and Tournament night volunteer team training and as otherwise required for the purposes of helping, assessing and supporting outcomes and effectiveness.
    • MBAustralia available for radio, newspaper, podcast and other interviews and talks when pre-agreed.
    • Zoom, telephone and email support before, during and after each Tournament as required.
    • Evaluation - loads of ways for you to evaluate the performance and outcomes of your Tournament.
    • A dynamic, online, enterprise Midnight Basketball Management System providing an out of the box solution which includes:
    • localised dynamic public website with automatically updated Tournament information
    • online registration for players and volunteers
    • leaderboard results, local contacts and more
    • automatic rostering, scheduling, collection, analysis and management of data and much more
    • manuals / guidelines, auto-checklists and all relevant systems, forms, materials and templates - helping you to run a great tournament
    • automated online reporting including graphical spatial data management
    • dashboards and checklists and other portfolio support for Management team to manage each Tournaments and their individual portfolios
    • marketing, media and public relations support, including Media Pack (to support media and photo shoots), an automated marketing portal with checklists, templates, and other support for generating local marketing and media material

    What is provided to Players on Tournament nights

    • Midnight Basketball is free for all participants
    • Dinner - a nutritious meal (water is provided all night)
    • Team uniforms (player singlets) which are worn all night including the basketball games
    • Skills sessions
    • Bus home - all dropped to their front door at end of night (or collected by an authorised Parent/Guardian)

Setup and run your first tournament

Details and guidelines are available as soon as your Portal is launched. In summary these will be the key steps:

• A local organisation will sign agreement with Midnight Basketball Australia.
• Local volunteer Management Team members will create account and register online.
• Plan and hold Midnight Basketball Launch event to build profile and gain support.
• Register the rest of the volunteer Management Team.
• Tournament night volunteers create an account and register online.
• Finalise your tournament setup using the Midnight Basketball Tournament Builder.
• Parents/Legal guardians will create accounts for players and register online.
• Run your first Midnight Basketball Tournament using the online Tournament System !