Netball New Zealand announces Tasman Trophy

MEDIA RELEASE 12 March 2007

Netball New Zealand announces Tasman Trophy

Netball goes semi-professional in Tasman Trophy Netball League

Today Netball New Zealand and Netball Australia confirmed a major new initiative which will see them joining forces in 2008 to deliver the first trans-Tasman Netball league.

This is the result of the organisations being able to secure the largest broadcasting deal in the history of Netball with Sky and Fox TV.

“This is a groundbreaking day for women’s sport, on both sides of the Tasman,” says NNZ Chair Don Mackinnon.

“It’s going to be bigger than anything we’ve ever seen before. It will deliver more top quality netball between the two leading netball nations in the world of Netball,” says Mackinnon.

“In order to make the competition more financially viable for the teams we’ve increased the number of top level games but the tradeoff was the number of teams on each side of the Tasman,” says Mackinnon.

The number of teams in the current competition will need to be reduced by three. Mackinnon confirmed the New Zealand teams to be included in the 2008 competition have yet to be finalised. He said NNZ will be inviting its regions to tender for a position in the new competition. The documents have been forwarded to each of the eight franchises.

“This is the next logical step for netball, building on a successful Franchise competition and taking it to the next level,” says Mackinnon.

“There’s still a lot of detail to work through in regards to rolling out the competition, and we’ll be working with key stakeholders, broadcasters and sponsors to finalise this over the next 12 months,” says Mackinnon.

ENDS

© Scoop Media