What the ANZ Premiership’s new broadcast deal means and how it will impact players

Saturday, 2 August 2025

Tactix captain Erikana Pedersen lifts the ANZ Premiership title on Sunday after beating the Mystics in the grand final.

Non-Silver Ferns may need to decide if the security of a full-time job outweighs playing in the ANZ Premiership in netball’s cash-strapped landscape.

Netball New Zealand (NNZ) announced this week the elite domestic competition will return to free-to-air TVNZ next year. Sky, the home of netball since 2008, did not make an offer for the broadcast rights.

NNZ’s deal with TVNZ is understood to be substantially less than previous years, which will all but force premiership players to take pay cuts. The governing body is even investing its own resources into the production and delivery of the 2026 competition, NNZ chief executive Jennie Wyllie said in an email to stakeholders this week.

This year, NNZ trialled free-to-air coverage of the ANZ Premiership, showing Saturday games live on TVNZ. NNZ produced the Saturday game, which screened exclusively on TVNZ, and was shown on Sky on delay.

Airing games on free-to-air TVNZ would increase netball’s viewership and allow commercial partners to reach a wider audience.

Tactix players Martina Salmon, Ellie Bird, and Te Paea Selby-Rickit celebrate with the ANZ Premiership trophy after winning their first title in team history.

The New Zealand Netball Players’ Association (NZNPA) were in collective bargaining with NNZ around the 2026 competition, which they hoped to have sorted within the next week. Until a collective had been reached, teams were unable to present contract offers or sign players.

While the salary cap for the competition had not been finalised, it was expected teams would be working with less money.

Under the previous agreement, the top retainer for an ANZ Premiership contract was $56,000 (which can be bumped up with non-playing agreements). The minimum retainer was $26,000.

Silver Ferns players also earn national contracts and match payments on top of their domestic deals. Silver Ferns contracts include a retainer (with tiers from $30,000 to $56,000) and match fees ($1500 per test).

ANZ Premiership stalwart Fa’amu Ioane, who has never played for the Silver Ferns, might need to weigh up her future in the sport under the new broadcast deal.

Players who were not on Silver Ferns or Silver Ferns development contracts might need to decide if they were better off prioritising full-time employment over netball.

“It gets to a certain point where you have a mortgage or you’ve got things to pay and at that point it actually becomes really tough for some players,” NZNPA executive manager Steph Bond said.

Netballers not on national contracts usually balanced part-time work or study around the ANZ Premiership in the past, but it would likely be even tougher under the new broadcast deal.

Players who already had a degree and experience in the work force and had played several premiership seasons, but not cracked higher honours, might assess their future in elite netball, Bond said.

Auckland’s Trusts Arena pictured during last Sunday’s ANZ Premiership final.

“Those real solid experienced ANZ Premiership players that are super important to the competition we need them to keep the standard of the competition. Those are the ones who I think are most vulnerable in this system.

“Players are going to have to sit down and work out if this is going to work for me next year and can I make it work? Can I look at different options and different times in which I can do other jobs to make it work for me?’’.

With NNZ’s board updating its Silver Ferns' eligibility criteria in July, leading Silver Ferns will only have greater incentive to follow Grace Nweke and play in Australia’s Super Netball.

Tactix and Silver Ferns star Karin Burger will be in demand from Australian Super Netball clubs.

NNZ’s revised regulations now allow athletes playing abroad the opportunity to be considered for Silver Ferns selection through a formal exemption process.

Super Netball teams will no doubt be aggressive trying to sign New Zealand’s best netballers, including Karin Burger, Kelly Jackson, Maddy Gordon, Amelia Walmsley, and Kate Heffernan. Former Silver Ferns captain Ameliaranne Ekenasio, who has stepped away from elite netball for the rest of 2025, could be another having grown up in Queensland and started her career with the Firebirds.

The Post revealed last month top Silver Ferns could earn as much as $60,000 more by playing in Super Netball.

Taking out a handful of the country’s best netballers and some in the next layer underneath too would be detrimental to the ANZ Premiership on-court product.

Bond believed the move to TVNZ was a boost for netball in terms of growing the audience and labelled it the right platform for the premiership.

She described it as a “turning point” for the sport and said the realities of the broadcast market tightening up financially meant there needed to be a rethink.

“It is a chance and an opportunity for the sport to actually work out what their medium to long-term future may be in a sustainable way. Sometimes that is quite exciting.

“Sometimes you can get down in the dumps about things, but potentially this might be a shift in terms of how the [financial] model looks and how it plays out over the next period of time and enables it to look different and that could be better and we could be better off.”