More Netball on TV please
Australia v England Netball Test - Adelaide, October 2008
Why isn’t there more netball on TV in the UK? If netball was a male dominated sport, it would be on prime time TV on the major channels.It’s great that you can now catch Superleague games on Sky but what about those of us who don’t have Sky?
Compare this with the situation in NZ. I lived there in 2006 and there was live coverage of games from their premier domestic competition, (the National Bank Cup now replaced by the ANZ Championships), on prime time TV every Saturday and Sunday throughout the whole competition. Women make up 51% of the population in the UK – why not try and engage our attention? To have more netball on TV would be encouraging to netball players at all levels and especially to young girls who tend to drop out of sport sooner than their male counterparts.
In NZ, elite netball players are all household names. The elite games I went to were all well attended by women AND men. If only UK males would learn from their more enlightened Kiwi cousins and take a look at the modern game to see how exciting it really is.
I went to a mixed netball rally recently and some of the men playing had never played netball before or even really watched a game (despite that fact that their wife, girlfriend, daughter or niece played on a regular basis). They all admitted they’d really enjoyed themselves and had a new found respect for netballers. Also, they were all absolutely knackered and that was just after the first 15 minute game. They couldn’t imagine how we managed to play netball for a whole hour at a time.
So, please tell me why there’s isn’t more netball on TV and what can we do to change the situation. What can England Netball learn from Netball New Zealand? I look forward to hearing from netball fans and also any men out there who happen to disagree.
Themocracy
i really hope we can get some coverage on tv if it was cricket then the sport would of gotten full coverage but the sport was form with women in mind really so they dont care even in the caribbean we dont get any coverage at all, especially in trinidad the sport is going down all te media not one of them will show a one hour game of worse yet a live game. i hope we could get together and do something about it and soon. if we really get together we can do it the media must hear us. we are calling for the sport to viewed by all just as cricket and football
The problem is the same for most countries except New Zealand and Australia. New Zealand leads the way as live games from the ANZ Championship are shown throughout the season and the Silver Ferns are all household names. TV coverage of netball in Australia is not quite as extensive but it is improving. Since 2006, the UK Superleague competition is shown on one of the Sky Sports channels which is better than nothing but there is still a long way to go. As you mention, in the Caribbean netball comes a long way behind cricket and other male-dominated sports. Funding is another issue – without investment in the game it is difficult to encourage participants to continue with the sport to an elite level. Please read our response to ill-informed comments made by BBC TV journalist John Inverdale where he claimed it was too easy to score in netball. This just shows how far we still have to go to get netball to be taken seriously.