Letter from the Hoops Capital executive director Matthew Denholm

To our 2024-25 members.

On behalf of the ownership group here at Hoops Capital and the Sydney Kings, I want to thank you for your support throughout the year. The 2024-25 season was a rollercoaster of a season, but we feel confident that this was a building year leading to bigger and better things heading into the 2025-26 NBL season. 

We had another bumper year for attendance and membership, seeing more than 155,000 through the doors and now have 6,000 members - the most in the club's history. Your voices were heard throughout and in one of our marquee games of the regular season, 16,705 fans turned out to show your support for the Pink Hoops game - with both the Sydney Flames and Sydney Kings taking home wins on the day. We raised over $55,000 to support the McGrath Foundation and we acknowledge all of the important work that they do. We couldn’t have achieved any of these things without you, our members. 

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We are also thrilled with how our partners continued to engage with us all season long. We wanted to thank our principal partner Harvey Norman, who in our second season together, took the partnership and fan engagement to even greater heights with their popular three-quarter-time activation being a highlight with fans every game. A huge thank you as well to our major partners Beyond Bank, AAMI, Hostplus and Waterview - their support throughout the year has been immeasurable.  The NBL is heading from strength to strength with the Sydney Kings leading the way. We saw TV ratings grow 30 per cent through ESPN and saw games return to free-to-air screens, with a 2.30pm Sunday afternoon game on Channel 10 and the general presence of the club and the league, at an all-time high. 

It was a year that saw a successful ownership transition, with Wollemi Capital Group - the Denholm family office led by Robyn Denholm - transitioning from minority to majority ownership of the club, while Paul Smith, Paul Kind and the TSE Group remain in the ownership group which also includes Andrew Bogut and Luc Longley. We believe this group will be able to steward Sydney Kings basketball into the future and back to a championship-winning team our members strive for. 

It is a crucial off-season for the Club as our basketball department looks to build a championship-contending team once again. Coming into next season, we believe we have the building blocks on the court to continue our growth trajectory - with eight players from this year’s team currently contracted for 2025-26. We recognise the importance of having a strong coaching foundation and continuity year-to-year and are excited to have coach Brian Goorjian back leading the team with a full off-season under his belt as we prepare for a promising season.  

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We have big plans coming into next season. All of these pieces will help to bring consistency and a high level of accountability to the organization. While the season didn’t end the way we wanted it to, we want all of our members to know that culture matters to us both on and off the court and that when building any world-class multi-generational sports organization, it has to be front and centre. The standards we set as an organization matter to us and to our fans. We are committed to upholding those standards and will continue to improve each and every day. 

While our Sydney Kings season is over, our Sydney Flames have made the semi-finals for the first time since 2016-17 which we are incredibly proud of and look forward to cheering them on their series against Bendigo. After game one on the road, game two of that series will be at home on February 27 at Quaycentre, where our organization will be cheering them on into the grand final.

Hoops Capital executive director Matthew Denholm.