World Netball president opens up on future event plans, Commonwealth Games future, Olympic Games bid, super shots and more
World Netball holds its showcase event once every four years, but knows this is too long between drinks. Its president opens up on future event plans, the Commonwealth Games, Brisbane Olympics and more.
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World Netball is considering holding a World Cup every second year as part of a global event strategy to help grow the game as the sport anxiously awaits a decision on its Commonwealth Games future.
In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with this masthead, World Netball president Liz Nicholl revealed the world’s governing body was working on a “portfolio of events” to provide more opportunities for the world’s best players to showcase the sport internationally and to generate more commercial income to reinvest in the development of the game.
Speaking from the United Kingdom, Nicholl also opened up on netball’s potential 2032 Brisbane Olympics bid, key growth regions, rule evolution and the men’s game.
After this week’s confirmation Glasgow would host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, Nicholl said netball remained committed to the “Commonwealth movement”, but said the sport was disappointed to have lost its core sport status.
She remained confident netball would play a key part at a pared back Glasgow event.
But the sport’s governing body has conceded hosting its own showpiece event – the Netball World Cup – once every four years was a “long time to wait” and the sport needed to develop more world-level events for its international players.
Nicholl said World Netball was working on a new global event strategy, which was being developed with the collaboration of the major netball nations.
“I think once every four years, it is a long time to wait for your next World Cup,” Nicholl said.
“It’s once every four years our World Cup, so there is plenty of room in the international calendar for more world-level events.
“We want to see more opportunities for our sport to be showcased at an international level more often.
“There is a significant amount of work going on at the moment exploring new strategies. It’s through events that you can generate more commercial income and that can further help grow the sport.
“We’ve got a new global event strategy, which has been developed in collaboration with the major nations because the most important thing when you have a global event strategy is that you have got an event calendar which actually fits with the major leagues in Australia, New Zealand and England so you don’t want to have a negative impact on those leagues.
“There is work underway now with a portfolio of events – I can’t go into detail on that – but we are in the market for a partner to work with us on that further development.
“World Netball has income coming in once every four years through the Netball World Cup and then we use that to develop our sport over a four-year period. If we can get more events in that four-year period and we get more resources that will help us grow the game faster and that would be a benefit to all our member nations.”
Netball’s most recent World Cup was held in Cape Town, South Africa, last year and Sydney will host the next one in 2027.
Asked about the prospect of holding a World Cup every second year, Nicholl said it was a possibility being considered.
“We may well do (that),” Nicholl said.
“We have got a number of propositions we are just testing out in the market because you can’t do that unless you know that the market place is ready for it and that you know that it is attractive in commercial revenue terms in order to be able to put those on.
“But that’s our plan to create more world-level events that give more opportunities for nations to host and more opportunities for us to engage with the commercial sector to create the revenue that our sport needs.”
Nicholl said the prospect of a world club championship featuring the leading teams from the major leagues around the world had been suggested and “could possibly work” but was not part of the governing body’s “current thinking”.
COMMONWEALTH GAMES FUTURE
Netball was introduced to the Commonwealth Games in 1998 and has been a key part of the event’s program since then.
But netball became an optional sport in 2021 when the Commonwealth Games Federation unveiled a new “strategic road map” when it was announced that there would be only two compulsory sports (athletics and aquatics) at future Games.
Nicholl said it was a move which left the governing body “very disappointed”, but the sport wanted to remain a part of the event’s future and was pressing the CGF for an answer on its involvement in Glasgow.
“We were very disappointed indeed and we made that very clear to the Commonwealth Games Federation at the time,” Nicholl said.
“Netball is an absolutely a traditional Commonwealth sport and it was created in the Commonwealth for the Commonwealth to support the development of women and girls’ opportunities to participate in sport.
“So, we are committed to the Commonwealth movement, we think we are an important sport. We actually had a huge number, 160,000 tickets sold in Birmingham, so it’s a hugely popular sport within the Commonwealth Games.
“We are delighted the Games will be held in 2026 and now is the time for us to start to engage (with the CGF) because no other sport other than athletics and swimming knows that they are included.
“I would be pretty confident that in Glasgow in 2026, netball will be included because it was so successful in Birmingham when it was last held there.
“We are waiting to hear from the Commonwealth Games Federation, we have been chasing them to say, ‘Are we included?’ because we absolutely want to be and we are waiting to hear back from them.”
OLYMPIC GAMES BID
Beyond the Netball World Cup and Commonwealth Games, Netball Australia launched an official push in 2021 for the game to be included at the Brisbane Olympics with the support of World Netball.
Nicholl said the governing body had engaged an independent consultant to investigate the sport’s bid for inclusion at the 2032 Games.
While she acknowledged it would be a major inducement for the world’s top netballers to have the Olympics to aspire to, Nicholl said the sport needed to know if a push for inclusion in the Games was “realistic” before it devoted bulk time and resources into a bid.
“First and foremost for the players, I think every athlete wants to be an Olympian if the opportunity arises,” Nicholl said.
“There is a journey to go on with this. We have actually collected a lot of information about what we would need to do to make a strong bid for inclusion.
“We are conscious that we don’t want to put so much people, resources and time into that if it is not realistic because there is so much more to do for our game more broadly than diluting our impact across the board by too strong a focus on the Olympic proposition.
“But it is important and we have got a consultant actually looking at that to give us some independent perspective on the opportunity and what we would need to do to get there.
“Although we know a lot already, we wanted it to be independently validated so that if we start on this journey we know what we have got to take on to get there.”
Nicholl said World Netball would need to have a clear picture by the end of this year or early next year if a serious bid for the Olympics was “feasible”.
One of the areas World Netball needed further clarification on was the men’s game and how critical that was to the Olympics’ gender balance requirements.
“We need to know whether in fact having a men’s proposition is critical to us considering putting some real resourcing behind that opportunity for 2032,” Nicholl said.
“Men’s and mixed netball is growing across our world, there are a number of countries supporting the development of representative national teams and we absolutely welcome that.
“One of the key cornerstones of our sport is that it is open to all, so we support our nations in developing these opportunities.”
RULE EVOLUTION
World Netball announced rule changes relating to player safety and game management in late 2023, but Nicholl said nothing was “ruled out” when it came to innovative changes to the game in the future.
Asked if the governing body would ever consider the super shot as featured in Super Netball and Fast5 in the international Test matches, Nicholl said any potential rule changes needed to be considered by a rules advisory panel.
“That’s not for me to decide, because we have it (super shot) in Fast5, so that is another area where we can trial rule changes to actually consider for the game,” she said.
“What I think, doesn’t make a difference, I know I am president, but congress and our members will make these decisions.
“Nothing is ever ruled out of our sport and especially when you see innovative changes being trialled in other countries, but those are opportunities to consider new potential rule changes, but we have a formal process to go through.
“We have a rules advisory panel that leads on a rule review process … so there is a process which has been used for many years which is causing expressions of interest in terms of what rule changes may be considered. The rules advisory panel reviews all of those and then makes recommendations to our congress.”
GROWTH REGIONS
Nicholl said World Netball now boasted 84 full member nations across the globe with growth beyond the traditional Commonwealth netball markets.
“Where we have got 84 countries in membership, our estimation is that across 100 counties we have got about 23 million playing netball globally,” Nicholl said.
“Last year alone, there were about 250 international netball matches held and that has doubled in the last decade, so the sport is continuing to grow quite significantly.
“We are seeing that growth in the Americas and in Europe and in non-traditional netball nations actually getting engaged.
“There are individuals in those regions that are making fantastic strides to support the increasing interest in our sport.
“It is traditionally a Commonwealth sport …. so it’s just great to see it growing beyond the Commonwealth nations and so we are looking at that really positively.”
Nicholl said World Netball was working to help streamline the governance of the sport in the USA in a bid to help push growth in that region.
“In America there are two associations; one which is the member of World Netball, which is the USA Netball Association and there is another organisation called Netball America. So, our interest here has actually been about trying to bring those two organisations together because together they would be incredibly strong,” she said.
“There is no shortage of interest in netball in America, no shortage of people wanting to be involved at a national level and developing opportunities.
“But the most important thing for us is that we have the one national association to be able to take overall responsibility, then we can engage right across America in a more effective way.
“Whereas we have got 84 countries in membership, our estimation is that across 100 counties we have got about 23 million playing netball globally.
“Last year alone, there were about 250 international netball matches held and that has doubled in the last decade, so the sport is continuing to grow quite significantly.”
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