ABSTRACT
Netball, with over 20 million players in 80 nations, is unusual in that it is an international team sport played almost exclusively by women. Major netball-playing nations offer semi-professional, within-nation leagues, and international competitions include the quadrennial Netball World Championships and Commonwealth Games, as well as a short-form, semi-annual Fast5 World Series. As the premiere women’s sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the game enjoys high participation rates, a strong financial base, significant corporate support, an appealing television rights package, and widespread national recognition of the elite players and the national team, the Silver Ferns. Although thriving, it faces potential rifts within the international netball community, focused on tensions between innovation and tradition, and between funding for grassroots participation and funding for elite levels of the game. In addition, there are factors that could cause netball to slip from its currently secure position of cultural, corporate, and media dominance in New Zealand sport space. As an exemplar of how a semi-professional women’s sport understands and engages its sponsors and faithful fan base, the chapter concludes with a profile of the Marketing and Communications Manager for New Zealand’s most successful netball franchise, the Southern Steel.
