‘We’ll do for netball what we did for cricket’, says Nine managing director
The managing director of Nine Network has stated her intention to turn netball into a sport viewed by everyone, saying “we haven’t just bought it so women have something to watch on a Saturday night”.
Nine has signed a “revolutionary” deal with Netball Australia to broadcast the national league with a double header every Saturday night and sharing the sponsorship dollars, in a bid to create a new appointment-to-view sport.
Speaking on a panel at last week’s Sports Marketing Summit, Amanda Laing, told the audience Nine had identified netball as “ripe for the picking”, citing its large participation base, a rise in popularity of female sports, and the fact it is “not the women’s version of a particular sport”.
Laing: “If it’s good sport with athleticism and competition, men and women will watch that”
Surely they mean they will do for Netball what TEN did for Big Bash League.
Huge audiences, growing year on year and an awesome vehicle for sponsors 🙂
That’s surely a more relevant comparison
I’d be worried about two potential warning signs.
1) re-styling the uniform ‘to meet televisual expectations’ -It will start with sponsorship logo size and placement issues, but it will wind up with some decidedly unripe potential decisions (remember what happened to beach volleyball?)
2) a drop off in schools coaching and follow through, as people turn off the sport because its been divided into the ‘good potential for team’ vs ‘saddo who just likes to play’ -This def happened in kids rugby, as the will to WIN WIN WIN got bigger. If you can’t bulk up to meet the sports realities in the commercial sector, some schools won’t invest in you.
I go to a pilates class which has occasional basketballers coming in at schools level with pretty serious stress injury. These are year 10,11,12 kids who are already falling into seasoned sports disease patterns. Is this good?
I don’t object to netball going front and center on the TV, but I do worry the demands of (a) professionalism and (b) sponsorship are going to wreck it.