Game on. That’s the message from Australia’s netball bosses, who today threw down the gauntlet to other elite female sports – or should that be, wannabe elite female sports – by announcing an unprecedented pay deal for the new national league’s 80 players.
Like a snarling Sharni Layton bodying up to a hapless shooter at the start of a quarter, it sends a memo with meaning. Netball means business – and it can attract the best female talent in the country.
Netball Australia’s deputy chief executive Marne Fechner, who hammered out a collective playing agreement with the Australian Netball Players’ Association, revealed the eight clubs in the still-unnamed national league will have $675,000 to spend on 10 contracted players – a total payment pool of $5.4 million. Last year’s cap was a paltry $270,000. The boost comes primarily from a broadcast deal with the Nine Network and Telstra.
Next year, the average player will earn $67,500 – which sounds suspiciously like a wage a player could live on. At the lower end, the minimum salary, for a player who may not get much court time, will more than double, from just $13,250 to $27,375. Ten years ago, the average wage was less than $1,000 a year. The figures don’t account for payments for representing Australia or personal sponsorship deals.
While defined as “a select group, superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a group or society”, the term “elite”, when applied to sport, rightly or wrongly, means more. And let’s get real, money is a big part of that. While it’s possible to be the “best of the best” without being highly paid or fully professional, the general public views elite athletes as those who not only excel at their chosen sport, but primarily dedicate their life to it and make some kind of living out of it. Strictly speaking, netball has been elite for many years, but that has now been confirmed in the eyes of many.
This is the deal everyone in the game had hoped for after Netball Australia announced it was ending the trans-Tasman ANZ Championship in favour of a new, expanded netball league – and adding teams aligned with AFL sides Collingwood and Greater Western Sydney and the NRL’s Melbourne Storm, which will base a team on the Sunshine Coast. For those who were heartbroken at the loss of the Kiwi connection and worried about the future of the sport … it’s time to smile.
The “landmark” agreement between netball’s governing body, the players’ association and the eight participating clubs in the new league, which will be screened in primetime on Channel 9, dwarfs anything else in Australian womens’ team sport.
It makes the cash currently on offer in next year’s first women’s AFL league – $200,000 across 25 players – look like spare change, especially given the unceasing fanfare from AFL House about the “elite” female form of Australian rules football.
It seems even marquee female AFL players, who will pocket an additional $25,000, won’t get close to a netball wage. While womens’ AFL is in its infancy, the rhetoric from the AFL about “poaching” the best female talent and the money it is throwing at the sport, has seen many consider it a potential threat to netball.
“We want to ensure that netball remains the code of choice ... there was a story that potentially netballers are leaving the sport for AFL and our job is to ensure that over half a million girls want to be Diamond or a championship player,” Fechner said. Purely on the figures, netball doesn’t have to fear Australian rules football.
The new deal also embarrasses the W-League, which has a salary cap of $150,000 for 20 footballers, but only mandates that clubs spend $35,000. The best female cricketers in the country, playing for the Southern Stars and in the Big Bash League, earn about $80,000, but can earn into six figures – as can the top netballers.
It feels like a turning point … because it is.
