The battle to get netball on TV: How did it come to this?
Photo:
Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz
Analysis -
How has New Zealand's top netball competition gone from attracting millions in broadcast rights, to having to fork out some of its own money to get it on TV?
Just six years ago the Silver Ferns were on top of the world after beating Australia in the final to win the 2019 Netball World Cup.
Fast-forward, and the national body finally secured a broadcast deal this week for next year's ANZ Premiership, following months of drawn-out negotiations.
Sky Sport had been the major broadcast partner since 2008, but the national body is going back to TVNZ - marking the return of the sport on free-to-air television.
RNZ understands that Sky TVs offer was so much lower than any of its previous deals, that Netball New Zealand didn't actually have too much to lose in rolling the dice.
The new broadcast deal does not include rights for Silver Ferns matches - Netball New Zealand is still looking for a home for Test netball from 2026.
How much TVNZ are actually paying for the rights, if any, won't be disclosed but it seems inevitable that players will face pay cuts.
Netball NZ is taking a calculated risk that a bigger TV audience will draw more commercial revenue to make up for a massive shortfall in broadcast revenue.
The one-year agreement also buys Netball New Zealand some time if it wants to explore joining the Australian league from 2027 in some capacity.
It feels like netball is back where it was in 2007 before the dawn of the semi-professional trans-Tasman competition, which promised so much.
But at least then the country's best players were still playing in New Zealand. Next year, nearly half the
Silver Ferns could be playing in Australia.
Netball World Cup 2019 winners.
Photo:
© SWpix.com (t/a Photography Hub Ltd)
Netball New Zealand's stocks were high following the Silver Ferns' victory at the 2019 World Cup.
When Spark emerged as a player in the sports broadcast market in 2019, Sky quickly locked down the netball rights until the end of 2024, despite having two years to run on the existing deal.
In 2023 Spark Sport came to an end and Sky has had no real competition since.
Tougher economic times means a lot of sports are now looking over their shoulder. Talks over a new broadcast deal between New Zealand Rugby and Sky have dragged on for months.
Sky Television's profits
have taken a hit
, and they are tightening their belts.
Sky Sport's 2025 ANZ Premiership broadcast looked a little different to previous years.
The weekly Netball Zone programme was dropped, one on-site host fronted regular season games instead of two, and remote commentary was used for four of the matches.
White Fern Amelia Kerr is now one of the most recognised sports personalities in NZ.
Photo:
Photosport
Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of women's sport globally and it's not really netball's fault that this has happened - it was always going to.
As traditionally male dominated sports have invested more in their women's programmes, it's helped increase the profile of codes like of women's cricket and rugby.
Netball used to be essential in Sky Sports' line-up because it was the only female sport it would broadcast on a regular basis.
Women's rugby gets far more coverage on Sky than it used to, including Super Rugby Aupiki, the Farah Palmer Cup, the Black Ferns, and sevens.
The same goes for women's cricket and next year will see the return to Sky of the White Ferns playing domestically.
Sky also broadcasts the New Zealand women's basketball league, rugby league's NRLW, and football's A-League women's competition.
And if Sky want the rights to All Blacks and Black Caps matches, New Zealand Rugby and New Zealand Cricket can leverage that to get better coverage for their women.
Sky TV's Anna Stanley and Anna Harrison.
Photo:
PHOTOSPORT
When Australian Diamonds sides used to tour New Zealand, they would be jealous of the level of media coverage the Silver Ferns got.
But former Diamonds coach
Lisa Alexander told RNZ earlier this year
that she had noticed a shift.
"There was so much more coverage in New Zealand [back then] and I think you've taken it for granted to be quite honest because it's really hard to get it back," Alexander said.
"In Australia we are fighting very very hard to have our slice of the media pie and it's still very tough …but I'm now a columnist, I write about netball - I wouldn't have dreamed of that 10 years ago."
It probably took Netball NZ too long to recognise that with more female sports vying for eyeballs, it had to actively generate more intrigue in its showpiece competition.
A concerted effort to attract top-tier quality import players to the ANZ Premiership from the start would have helped it compete with the Australian league.
But a one import player per team limit and a lack of ambition in targeting a pool of top talent, meant that ship sailed a long time ago.
NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark and players at the launch of the ground-breaking ANZ Championship, March 2008.
Photo:
James Ensing-Trussell
Oh how the tables have turned.
Between 2008 and 2016, revenue generated from New Zealand propped up the former trans-Tasman ANZ Championship.
Broadcast revenue from Sky was divvied up equally among the franchises on both sides of the Tasman to cover the salary cap. But after banking more than $10 million from Sky for eight years, eventually Australia didn't need New Zealand anymore.
Netball Australia finally started carrying some clout with their broadcasters and secured a paid broadcast deal for the first time.
Australia's Suncorp Super Netball (SSN) competition struggles to break even, but crowds and viewership have been growing and the SSN pays the highest salaries of any league.
England Netball launched a new-look Netball Super League (NSL) this year, marking a significant step towards professionalism.
For the first time all games were available to watch, and the average salary increased by at least 60 percent.
New Zealand was a couple of decades ahead of the curve when TVNZ started broadcasting netball regularly from the 1980's.
It's only been in the last few years that other countries finally figured out that broadcasting women's sport is actually pretty cool.
Any novelty factor has long gone in New Zealand, but England Netball and Netball Australia are riding that wave of momentum - and they operate in bigger economies.
Kelly Jackson
Photo:
PHOTOSPORT
It would be easy to conclude that the quality of the ANZ Premiership must be declining, that less people are playing netball, and viewership is dwindling - but that's not the case.
Netball NZ said this year's domestic competition saw record-breaking crowds.
Its 2024 annual report described last year's ANZ Premiership as the most popular season yet and that viewership was up over 1.7 million viewers - "another large increase year-on-year for the competition."
It reported a 50 percent increase in ANZ Premiership viewership and over 35 percent increase in Constellation Cup audience in New Zealand.
Silver Fern defender Kelly Jackson said the country's top netballers were still among the best in the world.
"I think the hardest part of all to accept in these troubling times is that the product we are putting out on court is still to a really high standard and that's not being reflected in what's going on," Jackson said.
The Silver Ferns beat Australia 3-1 in the Constellation Cup last year, suggesting the ANZ Premiership can't be too bad.
Players' Association boss Steph Bond said participation rates were still miles ahead of other female sports.
"The community game is still growing … there is definitely the fans and the people that are supporting the game just at this point in time we don't seem to be able to be getting that turned into dollars and making that a difference at that level," Bond said.
The National Bank Cup final in Invercargill, 2005. The Southern Sting had a huge fanbase.
Photo:
Richard Jones
Netball New Zealand's move to free-to-air might see some short-term pain for long-term gain.
No longer will people
miss out on watching the domestic competition because they can't afford
a Sky subscription.
In the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s most budding young netballers would have been able to name every member of the Silver Ferns and that helped netball hold its own against male codes.
In 2024, Netball NZ trialled free-to-air coverage of the ANZ Premiership, and this year Saturday games were screened exclusively on TVNZ.
If fans are the bedrock of professional sport then opening up the sport to more of them could ultimately pay off for Netball New Zealand.
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