The new competition is one rung below the NBL and Maitland Basketball general manager Trevor Gallacher said local players would no longer have to leave Maitland to pursue their playing careers and get the best opportunity to play at the highest level.

Gallacher said the NBL1 also promised to take the game day experience for Mustangs fans to a new level.

"I think it's a great thing for young players to not have to go elsewhere to get the best opportunity to play at the highest level," he said.

"When you are a young person wanting to grow your game you can do that from your hometown now. That's a huge thing.

"I think gives us to showcase a high level of performance here in town so that local community members can come and watch a great game of basketball.

"Our focus is going to be on putting on an excellent game day experience for people to be entertained and engaged and excited about the sport.

"We can really see some positives for basketball to grow from the program just by building excitement and engagement with the community.

"Those two things are going to be really significant in the first two years of our progress."

Gallacher said the appointment of Opals star and former WNBA player Leilani Mitchell to head the women's program had been a huge coup for the club which had also reappointed Waratah League coach of the year Luke Boyle as men's head coach.

"Obviously we want to put the best teams on the floor possible and having Leilani is going to help us fast track that with the women. Our men's program with Luke's experience and expertise is well on the way to do that as well," he said

"Building our pathway, creating an entertaining product that people are excited about and then hoping to get success on court will be three pretty important things in the first 12 months.

"It will be a lot of work in the background for that but that's the challenge and that's the excitement."

The Mustangs will also be looking at expanding the crowd capacity for watching games at the Maitland Federation Centre.

"We're looking at different funding and grant opportunities and working closely with Maitland City Council to try and develop our facility so that it can house more people," Gallacher said.

"Part of those plans include investigating whether or not we can turn our court three into a show court with concertina stadium seating that could push us from being a 1000 capacity venue up to somewhere in the 1500 to 2000 capacity.

"Of course that project will take some time and some collaboration with key stakeholders, funding being one of those things but also making sure we get the appropriate development applications and approvals through council."

The NBL1 East competition will start in April, 2022.