Anna Mowbray and Ali Williams have put a new offer in front of Netball New Zealand, one that would see a privately run professional competition take the court next year rather than in 2028, and the national body has not said yes or no.
RNZ reporter Dana Johannsen revealed the revised proposal on Friday. The pair had already been in talks with Netball New Zealand about buying the licence to run a franchise league from 2028, a plan NEWS WIRE covered last week. What is new is that they have offered to bring the whole thing forward by a season and run a paid competition in 2027 as a bridge to the bigger idea.
People inside the game told RNZ the 2027 version would look much closer to the current ANZ Premiership than to whatever eventually replaces it. One described it as a trial run. “It won’t be the fully-realised product that is envisaged for 2028, I guess it would be more like a beta phase,” the person said.
Netball New Zealand would not confirm the detail. In a statement it said “Privatisation is one of the options being looked at, however no decisions have been made and there are multiple options on the table.”
The reason any of this is on the table is money. The ANZ Premiership lost about $3.7 million running the 2026 season, even though the competition pulled its biggest television audience in years after returning to free-to-air with TVNZ. Board chair Alastair Carruthers has said the shortfall would come out of cash reserves and that the organisation could not keep doing that. Across the full financial year to November, Netball New Zealand is looking at a loss of up to $6 million.
The broadcast picture is the knot in the middle of it. TVNZ took a one-year free-to-air deal for 2026 and there is nothing signed for 2027. New chief executive Jennah Wootten, who started in the job on Wednesday, told the NZ Herald the organisation is not talking to broadcasters at this stage, because it first has to settle what shape the domestic competition will take. Without a competition to sell, there is nothing to negotiate over, and without a broadcaster there is no revenue to pay players with.
The Netball New Zealand board meets late this month. Wootten would not commit to a decision being made at that meeting, though the board can call a special meeting whenever it needs to. She also would not confirm whether Netball New Zealand has a professional alternative lined up if the Mowbray and Williams bid is turned down, which is the point that has the players’ union close to boiling over.
New Zealand Netball Players Association general manager Pippa Moore said the association is not aware of any other option for a paid competition next year. “A decision needed to be made ages ago. We’re incredibly frustrated with how slow it has been and how long it’s taking,” she told the Herald. Moore said the association was being kept at arm’s length. “We don’t believe that we’re being brought into the conversation to work alongside Netball New Zealand.”
Her sharpest words were reserved for the possibility that 2027 ends up being played by unpaid athletes. “An amateur league is not the answer for netball in this country. It would prevent a pathway for players,” Moore said. The association has been clear it is not opposed to outside money coming in. “We are open to considering all credible options, including private investment, that can better unlock netball’s commercial value,” Moore said.
For the players, the delay is not an abstraction. They accepted a 20 percent pay cut for the 2026 season under a collective agreement that covers this year only. Until the format for 2027 is confirmed, the six franchises cannot legally offer anyone a contract, so most of the country’s best netballers are sitting on nothing for next winter while overseas clubs can talk to them freely.
Netball New Zealand made that easier when it changed its eligibility rules in July so Silver Ferns can play in foreign leagues and still be picked for tests. The Herald reports that several of the side that won Commonwealth Games gold in Glasgow are in talks with clubs in England’s Netball Super League. Nine current and former Silver Ferns were already committed to Australia’s Suncorp Super Netball this year.
Wootten said keeping those players is the measure she is working to. “My focus is on making sure that what we do land on in terms of the form of our domestic competition in the future is attractive enough to compel many of those players to stay,” she said. She has also argued the league itself has to change, not just its ownership. “We need to be appealing to more eyeballs. We need to be appealing to a younger audience,” she said.
The timing is awkward in a way that goes beyond the balance sheet. The Silver Ferns beat Jamaica in Glasgow at the start of this month for their first Commonwealth netball gold in 16 years, and the Netball World Cup runs in Sydney from 25 August to 5 September 2027. New Zealand has already qualified as the second ranked side in the world. A year spent without a functioning professional competition at home would be a strange way to prepare for it, and a strange way to spend the goodwill a gold medal buys.
Mowbray and Williams are not new to this. They are among the investors behind Auckland FC, the football club that has drawn big crowds since it entered the A-League, and Williams played 77 tests as an All Black lock. Mowbray co-founded the toy company Zuru with her brothers. Between them they bring the two things netball has been short of, capital and a commercial network, and the price is control of a competition Netball New Zealand has run itself since 2017.
The 2026 season ended in late June with the Northern Mystics beating the Southern Steel 56-46 in the grand final at Auckland’s Trusts Arena. Nobody yet knows what those six teams will be playing in, or whether they will be paid for it, when the next season is meant to start.
What do you think Netball New Zealand should do, take the private money or hold the line? Leave a comment below and tell us.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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