It was worth every cent to see Bryce Cotton celebrate a three-point buzzer-beater to send Tuesday's NBL game into overtime like a Tasmanian episode of The Last Dance.

Or Italian maestro Alessandro Diamante orchestrating proceedings in Saturday's A-League fixture like some modern-day Vivaldi.

Or indeed imaginatively-named JackJumpers mascot Jack the Jumper twerking in an impromptu dance-off with a Perth Wildcats mascot whose budget costume looked like it was bought on special when Chickenfeed closed down.

These are treasured experiences money simply can't buy destined to give impressionable young Tasmanians a life-long love of sport, or maybe disturbing nightmares in the case of Jack's twerking.

Given COVID restrictions, and the requirement that tickets had to be bought in advance - something Tasmanians are notoriously reluctant to do - opening fixture crowds of 1385 and 3203 for the basketball and soccer respectively were never going to threaten many records.

Similar hurdles of a virulent and apathetic nature saw the Supercars reach 17,572 over the weekend - a far cry from the heyday of 60,000-plus attendances. It will be interesting to see what impact is made when the state's other regular sporting visitors, the Hawks, play their opening AFL fixture in Launceston on Saturday.

Aside from the COVID-hit 2020, the Supercars and AFL have been annual visitors to Northern Tasmania for decades. Indeed, only Sandown has hosted more rounds of Australia's touring car series than Symmons Plains.

The same cannot be said for the national basketball and soccer competitions.

The Breakers-Wildcats encounter may have been the 238th NBL game played in Tasmania but was just the third since 1996 and first in Launceston since 1982.

Similarly, the Western United versus Central Coast A-League fixture was just the third time Tasmania had hosted a match in a "national" competition established 17 years ago.

The Silverdome came up a treat. Liberal use of giant black curtains meant patrons in the main arena would have no idea they were in a cycling velodrome.

Meanwhile, the on-court action was well complemented by: some quality quarter-time entertainment (mostly courtesy of the aforementioned J.T. Jumper); the excitable behaviour of NZ coach Dan Shamir; the stadium announcer's concerted efforts to get supporters behind the Breakers instead of the Wildcats; and a wonderful "stat pack" provided by the NBL which revealed that had the game been played at the exact midway point of the 5343 kilometres between the clubs' bases in Perth and Auckland, it would have been on King Island.

UTAS Stadium also looked great, even if the pitch was a fair distance away from the grandstands.

In contrast to previous configurations for soccer, the playing surface was plonked in the middle of the ground rather than tight up against the main stand, which meant a lengthy run for Connor Pain to find any spectators after scoring the game's only goal.

Both coaches couldn't speak highly enough of the billiard table surface which enabled the sort of slick interplay that produced Pain's goal.

With another A-League fixture coming up between Western United and New Zealand Phoenix on Thursday and the third of six Silverdome NBL matches the following night, Northern Tasmania will have hosted four national sporting competitions in a week.

Admittedly, the region has a finite number of sports fans - 14,163 when Tuesday's NBL, Saturday's A-League and Sunday's Supercars attendances are combined.

But life as we know it has not ended, the Earth continues to spin and nuclear war has not broken out. Maybe Tasmania can be a part of Australia after all.