Come along and ask us all about our new sponsorship deal ... provided it's not the most pertinent question.

All relevant parties were present including the chiefs of the team involved (the Tasmania JackJumpers), the business sponsoring them (Spirit of Tasmania) and the competition they will play in (the National Basketball League).

But when it came to how much the three-year deal is worth, Simon Brookhouse, Bernard Dwyer and Larry Kestleman had about as much to say as Jack the Jumper, the team's imaginatively-named colourful, cheeky and mute mascot.

The "commercial in confidence" card was played by the first three (and possibly fourth - he wasn't saying).

This would be fine if Spirit of Tasmania (or TT-Line as it was once known) was a private company.

But it's not. It is state owned. Owned by the state government on behalf of all Tasmanian tax-payers who finance the state government, and therefore also Spirit of Tasmania.

So this undisclosed sum of money we are not being told about is our undisclosed sum of money.

This is like asking for a mate's bank account details, telling him you've got a great investment idea involving an oversized, green, venomous insect with triangular eyes and peculiar antennae, and then acting surprised when he has the audacity to ask how much of his money you were thinking of spending.

Furthermore, Spirit of Tasmania has sailed into similarly choppy waters before.

Almost exactly a decade ago, after Tasmania's then Labor Government had declared it would not use tax-payers' money to fund a second AFL team in the state, it announced TT-Line as the financial backer for North Melbourne to play games at Bellerive Oval for the next three years - thereby indirectly using tax-payers' money to fund a second AFL team in the state.

In an uncannily similar scenario, North Melbourne boss James Brayshaw and AFL chief Andrew Demetriou flew in to Hobart for the announcement with Premier Lara Giddings. Sadly, articles from the occasion do not record whether North Melbourne's mascot - unsurprisingly, a kangaroo - attended, or indeed spoke on the subject.

It also remains strangely unreported how many Victorian fans travelled to those games in Hobart by using a ferry which docked at the opposite end of the state.

NBL owner Kestleman used last week's JackJumpers "announcement" to criticise under-funding of the Silverdome, which was fair comment, as the multi-sport Launceston venue does indeed require more investment.

It was also typically astute of a successful league boss who knows how to play the political game, but also a bit cheeky because, at a time when he was calling for more public money to be spent, he was being coy about how much public money was already being spent.

The saga cranked up a notch the following day when the Greens called on TT-Line to disclose the details of the JackJumpers sponsorship deal.

"TT-Line are a publicly owned company," party leader Cassy O'Connor said. "They should be open about sponsorship deals. Regrettably, they seem to take their cue from the Liberals, who've made secrecy an art form."

Aside from this being a zinger of Bill Shorten proportions, it also prompted some splendid reader reaction.

When the story was posted on The Examiner's Facebook page, it went feral, as long-haired youngsters would probably say.

One reader referred to the endless whinging of "the tree-hugging Green parasitic group", while, in the interest of political balance, an alternative viewpoint was the observation: "Red necks would never understand ... and our state is full of them."

However, things got personal when one person commented: "Always moaning to upset things - your not running Tasmania it's a Liberal majority" which prompted the cutting reply: "I bet they know the difference between "you're' and "your."

Grammatical mistakes on social media are like icebergs in Bass Strait - best avoided.

Further comments included: "As a taxpayer I believe I am entitled to know what this is costing" and "Tax-payers money, we have a right to know."

However, one reader from Carrick provided the perfect counter-argument to this with the reasoned response: "I don't pay taxes it don't affect me."

The Tasmania JackJumpers team is scheduled to make its NBL debut in October.

After decades of calls for further Tasmanian representation in national sporting competitions, this is a development to be warmly embraced.

And financially supported.

However, as the ones providing that financial support, Tasmanians have every right to know how much they are paying.