‘Money doesn’t grow on trees’: Netball boss hits out at players over sponsor row
The firestorm around the loss of a major sponsorship deal has spilled out, with a netball boss hitting out at players.
West Coast Fever CEO Simone Hansen has declared players need to be better educated about the value of the sponsorship dollar after her club became “collateral damage” in Netball Australia’s $15m divorce with Hancock Prospecting.
The reigning Super Netball champions lost their $2m sponsor Roy Hill on Saturday as Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting announced it would no longer be financially backing Netball Australia and the Diamonds.
Hancock Prospecting is the majority owner of Roy Hill, a $15.8 billion mining operation in Western Australia.
The crippling financial blow came after revelations Diamonds players had concerns about wearing a team uniform that included sponsorship branding from Ms Rinehart’s company.
Indigenous player Donnell Wallam, who is line to make her Diamonds debut in the upcoming series against England, was said to be uncomfortable wearing a uniform with the Hancock Prospecting logo.
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This was due to comments made by Rinehart’s father Lang Hancock, who infamously suggested in 1984 Indigenous Australians should be sterilised to “breed themselves out” in coming years.
Now Fever CEO Hansen has spoken out to remind players about the financial reality facing netball and women’s sport in Australia.
“Our West Coast Fever and Netball WA, and you can take it much broader than just netball, is very reliant on the mining industry and the success they have,” Hansen told ABC Radio Perth.
“Healthways (a government sponsored health promotion agency) are a key sponsor of ours as well – so we don’t talk to alcohol, we don’t talk to fast food and we don’t talk to gambling (for sponsorship money).
“Our players and our playing group have been and remain 100 per cent behind the partnership that we had with Roy Hill.
“I wish there was (other companies throwing money at netball). It is hard.
“I’d love all players of netball across Australia to understand – I’m pretty confident that our West Coast Fever players have that understanding and appreciation … that it’s not that simple.
“Money doesn’t grow on trees. We need to go out there and work hard and build relationships and get companies to understand the value of being involved in women’s sport and netball in particular – it’s not an easy task.
“Everyone needs to consider bringing money into sport isn’t easy – bringing sponsorship money into female sport is even harder.
“We don’t have the same viewership, we don’t have the same broadcast money coming into netball as male sports do. We need to be, and I need all our players at the national and state level, to be mindful of that because we want to provide the best high performance systems for our players.
“We want the right programs and opportunities for them, and also provide our players a reasonable pay - but that all costs money.
“There are going to be consequences of this (dress row with potential future sponsors) – everybody, not just the administration but the playing group need to understand that there are consequences when things like this play out in the media.
“I think it’s going to be a more challenging landscape for netball, especially in the short term as we work through this.”
Hansen argued Netball Australia and the playing group should have done better to resolve their issues in-house, rather than letting the drama playing out in the public sphere.
She said despite that, she hoped she could hold on to the lucrative sponsorship from Roy Hill despite the Netball Australia scandal.
“We worked hard with Roy Hill to develop this partnership. But there were things happening outside our control,” Hansen said.
“It would have been nice if we could have been to the side and not impacted – but that isn’t how this played out.
“(After meetings) Friday night I went, ‘Oh I think there’s a way through this’, but by Saturday morning it was clear something had changed.
“When this came to light, it came to light in the media. You sit back and go, ‘Why couldn’t this have been dealt with internally?’
“It doesn’t need to go out into the media and the public. We need to do this together to work collaboratively to find a solution.
“I’d like to think it could have been dealt with differently (if kept internal). When it’s in the media, you’ve got other people not even involved in netball today who want to have a comment and a say, and it puts the individual involved under even more pressure.
“It’s not easy to stand up and have a view that’s different to other peoples.
“I do think that for everybody, that if we could have dealt with this internally, it could have been a different outcome.”
Mundine speaks out on sponsor row
Meanwhile, Australian sporting icon Anthony Mundine has weighed in on the Netball Australia sponsorship crisis, coming to the defence of Indigenous star Donnell Wallam and her issue with comments made by Lang Hancock.
“Anyone that thinks like him, speaks like him, believes what he believes, is detrimental to humankind,” Mundine said to the Herald Sun.
“Donnell should stay strong and stay staunch in her beliefs.
“She (Gina Rinehart) could have apologised for her father’s comments, distanced herself from them and told us that she doesn’t believe those things. Instead, she pulled her money out.”
Mundine said there are a lot of people standing behind Wallam and urged her teammates to stick by her side, believing they will try change the narrative and divide the group.
“All the netballers, they need to be staunch and stick behind Donnell, because they’re going to try to turn them against her.
“I just hope that Donnell knows that there are a lot more people behind her than what she may think. She has taken a strong stand, an important stand, and that shows the courage of her convictions.”
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