The Netball Show
S7 Ep57: NSL 2.0 is confirmed (04th Sept 2024)
It's Andy and welcome to the Neposha with FlyHulk. Now we know what the League is going to look like as part of 2.0. And before we start, just want to thank everybody that's been associated with Team Bath, Ancestry Storm, amazing teams, amazing history. Thank you for everything you've done for the League over the years. With this morning, Thames in Greenway was joined by Claire Nelson, MD of the Nepos Super League on Sky Sports News. And Claire explained more about what the League's going to look like from next season. We've been talking about this for four years. And here we are today announcing the clubs that are going to be part of the future with us. The tender process that we've been through over the last nine months has been huge, really challenging. And obviously, it's a difficult day for many who will be, you know, we're exiting clubs through this process, but what we've got are eight fantastically strong clubs, some new investors, some brand new models coming in from football. And we believe we've got the infrastructure to really drive our sport forward. And a new role for you as well, Tamzin. So you're going to be the director of netball for one of the rebranded sized London Mavericks. I mean, tell us a bit about that. Yeah, well, it's fantastic. Obviously, Claire's talked about this sort of new process and how clubs have come to the forefront and what we're trying to push as new franchises and clubs. And London Mavericks taking that role on with female investors wanting to do things bigger and better than ever before. I've been involved in what was Saracens Mavericks for the last couple of years as a consultancy and strategic role. And now it's kind of getting hands dirty and be at the forefront of building something that I believe is truly special and something we've been wanting to do for such a long time. And now is the right time to do it. I mean, the big headline in terms of the new clubs in the league and Nottingham Forest, netball, which will be owned and managed by the Premier League football team. How did this come about? And actually, well, what does this mean to the league? And do you think others might actually follow suit? Yeah, so this actually came to us relatively late in the process. But I mean, if you look at, you know, their own evangelist, Marinakis, he operates a multi-sport model with Olympia Cos, who just actually delighted to see that they were successful last night in Europe. But he did a vision for the city quite recently. He had the Prime Minister there and he talked about wanting to use sport and his brand to be able to reach communities. They're all about inclusion. And so when this was presented to them as a proposition, he thought, we're brought into the vision. We'll play every single game at Motorpoint Arena. We will create a thriving, successful elite proposition on the court. But we will also use that to leverage engagement across communities and to get more people active and to empower women and girls through sports. So I love what they're bringing. But I also love the doors that this is going to open because the eyeballs that are on Nottingham Forest on football, well, hopefully some of those eyeballs are going to turn to our sport now. I mean, when we talk about your sport, obviously, tabs and you've been playing and coaching for years, but does that Premier League involvement? What does that tell you about how far netballs come? It's huge. And we know the involvement is massive for pushing our sport forward. And this has to be sustainable. This has to be about clubs that have to invest heavily, that want to take games to big arenas, that want to build even more of a fan base, that want performance forefront and centre, that are going to be paying players differently to something we've never had done before. And I think that was so important about this. So although there'll be some initial disappointment, the actual sport is going to be thriving with some of these investors. And I think that was key to make sure we got the right partnerships moving forward. And I'll be gutted about some of the clubs X thing. I have huge personal relationships to many of those. However, the sport as a whole is in such a good place. And this, we've got to go. This is so exciting. This is so big. This is so huge for our sport and something that needed to desperately happen. And picking up on the clubs X thing and you talked about leading to be sustainable with the clubs leaving, explain how that was decided then. So everyone went through a tender process and part of that tender process was existing clubs actually assessing whether they could meet the new standards. So we set out with expected operating standards. We know we've got lots of different models in there but we needed to drive advancements and enhancements on and off the court. So really looking at investment levels, infrastructure arenas program. So there was a huge piece of work that clubs had to do to determine whether they were able to meet them moving forward. And ultimately not all clubs who are withers at the moment could do that. So we've, you know, we keep saying it's difficult decisions but we have to make the right decisions. We have to, we're doing this on our own. Like we are women's sport. We do not have somebody writing the huge check. So this is about us working really smart to get our product right. We taught transformational but sustainable. And so through these clubs as T said we can build a great fantainment product that is going to drive the commercial value of our sport and allow us to reinvest back as we go on this journey. I mean we talk about investment and we've talked about the Premier League interest but what about also the female investors getting involved? I mean what is it? It seems that he'd say what is it they found attractive because obviously there's so many things but it talked us about the kind of their involvement and getting behind the sport. Yeah well finally to talk about investing into women's sport is a credible conversation and that's taken a really long time. What we've had to work through is that measuring success in female sports has to be done through a different lens. Like we don't have the same ROI but that impact is huge and also where we are in our journey and the projected projected value of women's sport in the future. It's a great investment. I've always said I want more females and want more women getting behind either writing the checks or sitting on the boards and influencing sport. You know that's where we really make change. So through this we've got obviously Lucy Ray and Olivia Hall taking on London Mavericks which is fantastic. We've got Alison backing Birmingham Panthers bringing new investors and driving a huge vision for the West Midlands and so across all of this we've got real powerhouse women bringing money and investment into our sport and creating more careers off the court as well because I've always said the reason why women's sport isn't where it is is because we haven't operated it like businesses, we run sports, we are coaches and communities, men's sport is run like business so the more we can enhance the business acumen skills and expertise around our clubs and our sport the quicker we can we can grow. I mean it will grow as will player salaries as well they'll they'll increase significantly squad sizes as well are going to be capped at 10 so actually talent will be spread across the league that's quite interesting it's plain what it all means to the player then. This is huge news to the player as well. I mean I commit from a performance angle and one of the things I wanted to see was less teams and smaller squad sizes purely because you will disperse that talent you are now going to have the best of the best playing we're going to be challenging the likes of SSN to be one of the best leagues in the world you know for the first time ever we don't have as many of our full-time England roses overseas they're here they're going to be playing in huge arenas for our fan base which is incredible that's who the kids want to see they're the players you inspire and you want to be like as you grow up so that is going to be absolutely huge the salaries are going to increase I think 60% up on the average salary and the minimum salary is almost doubled so this is such good news for those players who can start to transition into that professional era and that's all we've ever wanted to be able to be full-time athletes and showcase the sport in its best entirety and you mentioned the arenas there but I think yeah 50% of gays now to be played at major arenas across the country how exciting is that that's what we're building it's that and that's I think our absolute unique opportunity in our sport like it's end-to-end action for 60 minutes but I mean we've got Manchester Thunder at the AO Arena playing pulse on Sunday they've sold just under 4,000 tickets they've got a celebrity match beforehand they'll be music they'll be live acts they'll be fashion this is what we get to do and to create but we know again looking at the data and we always talk about this whilst our sport is so big and we have a huge participation in membership base we are predominantly women and women still are not committing time and money consistently into being sports fans but what we do know is that they want huge value for money so for us creating these wow factor experiences with great on and off court entertainment is what's going to drive them there so having more arena events is where we need to go and it also looks great for broadcasters so if we through the modeling that we're doing with the dispersion of talent on court can create these amazing spectacles then that is going to drive our audiences and drive our commercial value the net will show is now also available via sky HD sky Q and sky glass select sports and we're on the podcast rail
Claire Nelson and Tamsin Greenway with the initial announcement from Sky back in May 2024