As members of the crowd stomped their feet in rhythm with chants of “defence” echoing through the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, Yuxi Zhang found herself chanting along without even realising it.

The MC’s voice rang through the speakers, calling on the crowd to “make some noise”, raising raucous cheers after baskets.

Just weeks earlier, Zhang had bought a ticket not because of any particular interest in the sport, but out of curiosity to see star Chinese basketball player Shuyu Yang, then playing with the Melbourne Tigers women’s team. As she attended more games, however, Zhang found her interest growing. She began noticing details of the sport like warm-up routines, shooting form, and tactical plays.

“Later, I realised I wasn’t only there for Yang anymore,” she said.

“When the team lost, I started feeling upset, too. Basketball itself became interesting.”

When Shuyu Yang joined the Melbourne Tigers women’s team last April – and she has since moved on to join the Sydney Flames in the Women’s National Basketball League – she inspired a noticeable spike in the number of Chinese and Chinese-Australian spectators to games that previously struggled to draw a crowd.

Louie Pau, a junior coach who has worked with the Melbourne Tigers for two years, said the growth in attendance was starkly obvious.

At Melbourne Tigers games last year, the crowd was “four or five times bigger than before,” she said. The year before, “we only saw numbers like this during finals”.

“Most people who came before were club players and their families,” she said. “Now there are a lot more outside fans who weren’t really part of the basketball community.”

The shift comes as women’s basketball continues to grow in Australia. Men’s basketball has long attracted larger and more established crowds, with the National Basketball League (NBL) reporting more than 1.1 million fans across the 2025–26 regular season and 58 sell-outs.

Women’s basketball, while growing from a smaller base, has also recorded rising attendance. The 2025–26 WNBL finals season saw attendance increase by 34 per cent from the previous season, with an average of more than 2,800 spectators attending each of the seven finals games.

The change has also been visible at club level, with National Basketball League One (NBL1) reporting that Yang and fellow Chinese player Mingling Chen helped the Melbourne Tigers sell out most of their home games during the 2026 season.

For many spectators, Yang’s presence provided an entry point into basketball.

“Because of Yang, I started really learning about the game and the team,” Zhexuan Jiang said.

Like many first-time attendees, she had not previously followed women’s basketball.

She said she began paying more attention to what was happening on court — why a timeout was called, what counted as a foul, and why certain defensive plays worked.

Watching star players has always been part of basketball culture. From Michael Jordan to LeBron James, many fans have first been drawn to the sport through individual athletes before developing a broader interest in the game.

Leah Swain, a manager at Basketball Victoria, said attracting new spectators through high-profile players was not unusual in basketball and could help grow women’s sport.

“A high-profile import player will always gain the interest of a new audience,” Swain said. “But without then connecting them to that group in some lasting way, the interest will be short lived.”

Long-time basketball fan Ruby Yao said she had no objection to people showing enthusiasm for their favorite players, but believed support at sporting events should center more on the game itself rather than individual players.

She’s also troubled by some shifts in crowd behaviour.

Yao recalled that during a recent Tigers game, the MC repeatedly encouraged the crowd to stand and support the team, but only a few people responded. Meanwhile some spectators began moving courtside before the game had even ended in hopes of getting closer photos of Yang, which Yao believed affected the atmosphere and the experience for other fans.

“My ideal crowd isn’t one where everyone becomes quieter,” she said. “It’s one where people know when enthusiasm should happen.”

“Enthusiasm should follow the flow of the game. You cheer after a great play, feel nervous during important moments, and join in when the host gets the crowd involved.”

Swain said the attention surrounding star players could be positive for women’s basketball, but warned clubs also faced a challenge if supporters followed only one athlete.

“The only concern would come from individual clubs where if the star players were to move to another team, they might lose that fan if that was the only reason they supported the team,” she said.

That question will likely be tested with the kick off last week of the WNBL season last week, and Yang’s spectacular debut with the Sydney Flames, scoring 20 points. What will that mean for the Melbourne Tigers, and the audience she helped build for them?

“Basketball games aren’t fan meet-and-greets. This is competitive sport,” Pau said.

“More fans definitely improve team morale and visibility,” she said.

“But more importantly, it’s whether they can eventually support the team and the sport itself, rather than only focusing on one player.”