No wage increases planned in Netball Australia’s newest CPA

As the push for pay increases in women’s sport intensifies, netball is lagging behind — and it could lead to a major talent drain which could hurt the sport’s future.

Netball is in danger of losing the high ground in the women’s sport pay race, with the governing body proposing to hold off on wage hikes in the next Collective Player Agreement.

A new CPA is a priority for Netball Australia and the Australian Netball Players Association, with every player in the league off contract at the end of the 2023 season.

But News Corp understands preliminary discussions have indicated there will be no wage increases offered to athletes in a deal head office wants to extend until the end of the current broadcast deal in 2026.

Super Netball players won pay raises of up to 22 per cent in the 2022-23 CPA, in a deal that made them the highest-paid female domestic club athletes in Australia.

But cricket has since eclipsed that – on the domestic scene alone, before the six-figure salaries of the 15 athletes on Cricket Australia contracts and 14 players picked up in the inaugural Indian Women’s Premier League (WPL) auction are taken into account.

A freeze – or even a slight indexation – of netball wages would be a huge blow given the strides being made by other domestic leagues towards establishing their athletes as full-time professionals.

The new CPA will unlikely have wage increases for players. (Photo by Matt Roberts/Getty Images)

But Netball Australia has made no secret of its financial woes and unlike the AFLW, NRLW and cricket, whose hefty broadcast deals for the men support the wages of their women’s leagues, there is no such scaffolding available.

Super Netball, as the best league in the world, arguably remains undervalued and under invested in and Netball Australia cannot afford to engage in an arms race with sporting juggernauts such as the NRL and AFL at the expense of the sport as a whole.

“Netball Australia’s goal is to secure long-term sustainability and success for the sport, from the grassroots to the professional level,” a spokeswoman said.

“Our approach to the current negotiations is solely focused on achieving that objective.”

In the past few weeks alone, the NRL has announced an almost fourfold increase in the minimum wage for its players for 2023 – from $8000 to $30,000, rising to $50,600 in 2027, while the Federal Government has announced it will tip $2 million into women’s rugby, handing 35 Wallaroos XVs players wages of between $30,000 and $52,000.

Minimum wage in the AFLW is now just a few thousand below Super Netball and the league has made no secret of its goal of being the domestic leader in women’s sport pay, a mark it could hit as soon as 2026 if the AFLPA’s hopes of pushing for a full-time competition that year come to fruition.

Super Netball players used to be the highest-paid female domestic club athletes in Australia. Picture: NIGEL HALLETT

Pay parity and the struggles of Australia’s best athletes to make a living wage from their sport is an issue that will be examined in this week’s issue of Insight Sport, a News Corp publication taking a deeper look at the issues and athletes in women’s and inclusive sport.

For all the exciting moves in women’s professional sport over the past few weeks, there continues to be a significant gap between men’s and women’s wages in sport, just as in the rest of society.

A 2019 study found the full-time gender pay gap in ‘Sports and Recreation Activities’ was 30 per cent – almost double the national average.

In addition, women make up only a fraction of board chairs and CEOs in Australian sporting organisations.

As Australia’s leading sport for women and girls, netball has long been a leader in the professional space.

But as other professional leagues – offering many more contracts than the 80 available in Super Netball – close the pay gap, netball is in grave danger of losing the next generation of talent to its rivals.

It’s a difficult tightrope for the sport to walk.

The players will rightly baulk at any wage freeze though – both for their own advancement and that of the next generation – and a protracted and tense negotiation is likely to be ahead.

Originally published as No wage increases planned in Netball Australia’s newest CPA