The "powerful" numbers behind Gold Coast's expansion push

The Gold Coast continues to firm as one of the potential favourites to land the 11th NBL licence, if the Hungry Jack's competition decides to expand in the coming years.

Following NBL chief operating officer Vince Crivelli saying 'fan demand and commercial appetite were strong enough in the Gold Coast region to justify a franchise', NBL CEO David Stevenson has also commented on the viability of a team returning to South East Queensland.

In a recent interview with ESPN, Stevenson highlighted the growth in popularity in the sport since the Gold Coast Blaze were there in 2012.

"There's a lot of things that have changed since then and one of the most powerful stats that I was talking with the Basketball Queensland CEO (Joshua Pascoe) is when the Gold Coast Blaze were there, the number of local participants in the Gold Coast region playing basketball was a thousand people. Today, that number is 12,000 people," Stevenson said via ESPN.

"The growth of basketball has been off the charts. The population's obviously grown. For us, the big key is the venue and the way that the council and the government are talking around the venue. That's what's going to make a big difference because in all of those cities, what we can't be playing in the 3,000 and 4,000 seat venues on a regular basis. We need to be in bigger venues.

"We had 55 sellouts last year and already we're 10 sellouts higher than where we were this time last year.

"We think that Gold Coast is a really interesting option, but like everything, we don't want to just expand for expansion's sake. It's got to have all of those elements ready.

"We've seen the benchmark, which has been the Tasmania JackJumpers. We know what that takes and so we're not going to compromise on any of those things until all of those elements are ready."

Round 18 of the NBL26 season tips off on Wednesday night with an Ignite Cup double-header, starting with Melbourne and Brisbane at 5.30pm AEDT,, before South East Melbourne hosts New Zealand at 7.30pm AEDT.

Both games will be broadcast live on ESPN.