Super Netball expansion plan: four teams in talks to join league by 2027

This weekend’s pre-season Team Girls Cup in Melbourne marks the opening of the sport’s five-year deal with Fox Sports, running until the end of the 2026 season.

Expansion will not happen until then, with the sport concentrating on rebounding from two seasons in the Covid bubble that was a massive financial drain on the sport.

But speaking to News Corp exclusively at the Fox Sports season launch in Melbourne on Wednesday, Ryan said adding to the current eight-team structure beyond then is “something we will continually look at and want to contemplate”.

Ryan, who has an extensive background as an AFL executive that included getting an AFLW team off the ground from scratch, is well versed in not only the structural issues around expansion but the need to remain dynamic in a market that is consuming more and more women’s sport.

“We want to make sure that our existing eight (clubs) are sustainable and strong,” Ryan said.

“But naturally, I don’t think we want to just sit here and just expect that the eight teams will continue to go around forever and a day.

“So as we grow the sport, as the interest level grows, we’ll absolutely be having public conversations on expansion.”

And there will be no shortage of candidates bidding for inclusion.

The Gold Coast Titans will enter a team in Queensland’s state league this season, with the ultimate goal of bringing a Super Netball franchise under their umbrella, as the Collingwood Magpies and Melbourne Storm – through the Sunshine Coast Lightning – have already done.

Netball Tasmania has made no secret of its desire to win a licence, while former Diamond Sharon Finnan-White is working towards having an Indigenous side in the league, with the first step fielding a team in Townsville’s Premier League this season.

“We receive calls regularly to be honest about people inquiring about how they can go about getting a license and what are the things that they should do today to position themselves for a license in the future,” Ryan said.

“That’s a great signal that there is plenty of interest and appetite – but for now, we are just fully committed to our existing eight being sustainable and strong.

“And off the back of two years of Covid, we’ve got a lot of work to do as an industry to make sure that we can get netball back into a really financially sustainable position.”

Netball holds a powerful position as the number one sport for women and girls in the country, with more than a million participants, a world-leading competition and the best domestic wages for professional female athletes in the country.

But with the NRLW and AFLW competitions continuing to expand and more player contracts available than the current 80 in Super Netball – almost 20 per cent of which are held by overseas players – Ryan knows the sport cannot remain stagnant and has to continue to create opportunities for athletes.

“Obviously we’re aware of them but the decisions that other industries make won’t be the driver for why we will just automatically make change,” Ryan said.

“We will make change in a way that will make sense for our sport.

“To continually grow it is our overall aim, to make sure there’s more people playing, there’s more people in our pathways and there’s more people wanting to engage at the elite level.

“So that still remains our core philosophy.”

The stability of the five-year deal with Fox – which has already come with wins including timeslots to appeal to fans, free games on the Kayo streaming platform and magazine-style shows that will allow players to develop their personal brands – will allow the sport to plan properly for the future.

More Coverage

Star-studded commentary team leads netball’s new era

Emma Greenwood

Being hunted sits comfortably with Swifts — this time

Emma Greenwood

“The fact that we’ve now got a partner that really wants to work with us to help grow the sport … is really exciting for us,” Ryan said.

“We’ve got a good few years to try and work out what the right model is for us as we build towards whatever happens beyond 2026, which in netball sense is really exciting because we’ve got the World Cup (in Australia) in ‘27.

“There’s still plenty of great opportunities for netball beyond this five years but it gives us a really good opportunity to really cement netball as a tier one sport.”

Originally published as Super Netball expansion plan: four teams in talks to join league by 2027