‘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”
She added: “I think we’re going to do for netball what Nine did for cricket over the past 20 years in terms of innovation. Things like Snicko and Hotspot, those innovations we bought to cricket, and it will be unrecognisable from what you’ve seen before to what you see on Channel Nine.”
Sunday saw a pulsating final chapter of the trans-Tasman ANZ Championship before the league switches to an Australian focused league based around five established teams and new sides built from brands of sports teams like Collingwood and Melbourne Storm.
Despite the drama of overtime the match failed to make the top 20 most-watched shows for Foxtel for Sunday, finishing with 47,000 viewers, suggesting there will be work to do for Nine to build interest.
Speaking last Thursday ahead of the final, Laing admitted: “The double header on Saturday night, it’s a big bet. We need to quadruple the audiences that were watching on Channel Ten at midday on a Saturday night.
“Advertisers and sponsors now understand the value of women’s sport, it’s now not just sport that women watch. If it’s good sport with athleticism and competition, men and women will watch that.
“It’s got a slightly different skew to NRL and AFL demographics, but that’s a good thing.
“The demos on audience for World Cup were there were as many men watching as women – we want a broad audience young and old, men and women. We haven’t just bought it so women have something to watch on a Saturday night.”
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
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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.
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