Money really does matter
Leading Silver Ferns are earning $130,000 a year, about a 10th of the salary of millionaire All Blacks captain Kieran Read. New Zealand’s premier netballers have never enjoyed a higher profile. They’re on our TV screens three days a week during winter, playing in a new domestic competition where the tagline screams ‘‘Made from more’’.
Away from the glitzy team photoshoots, the majority of elite players, outside the flagship Silver Ferns, are doing it tough.
Kiwi netballers are the bestpaid sportswomen in the country, other than the Black Ferns sevens team, yet many have to work parttime around demanding training and travel schedules just to cover the bills.
Netball’s dilemma is there isn’t sufficient money for everyone in the competition to be fully professional, but there is enough for the middle to upper level.
Several players have been forced to choose between netball and their career. Last season, a prospective player for the new Auckland-based Northern Stars didn’t take up a contract after a promotion at work, which paid more.
‘‘Our Silver Ferns are able to be completely professional because they hold a [ANZ] premiership and a Silver Ferns contract. If you’re an emerging talent in this system you are juggling,’’ Netball New Zealand chief executive Jennie Wyllie says.
‘‘We would love to move everyone into a different environment. Our semiprofessional athletes of today are forging a path for these future athletes and that’s our current reality unfortunately.’’
Domestic netball contracts are effectively for six months. The minimum retainer in the 10-player squad is $22,500, up from $15,000 two years ago.
Most frontline players in the ANZ Premiership earn between $60,000-80,000 with the odd marquee star commanding close to $100,000 – in addition to third party payments.
The salary cap is understood to be about $380,000 in retainers, but most teams spend nearer to $500,000 after non-playing agreements with players for promotional activities and work in the community.
New Zealand Netball Players Association (NZNPA) executive manager Steph Bond says many long-serving players, who haven’t featured regularly for the Silver Ferns, and promising young talent, are disadvantaged.
With matches played on Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays, it’s virtually impossible for those players to hold down part-time jobs during the season.
‘‘I think it’s got worse with the new competition in New Zealand and the new schedule,’’ Bond says.
‘‘That’s probably the biggest obstacle we’ll have over the next few years is how do we keep the ones who have got through the study and are looking at work options and netball, and are weighing up is it worth it to stay in netball?’’
Collective bargaining will start in early 2018, which comes at an opportune time, two years into the domestic league.
Bond hopes a satisfactory deal can be reached for the players by mid-year, ahead of the 2019 contracting window.
‘‘From my point of view, there needs to be more money coming into netball for that to flow onto players and the work they’re doing.
‘‘If there’s not more money, then we’ll have to cut back on commitment or cut back the competition to enable players to make a living out of it.’’
Shooter Gemma Hazeldine, a contracted player with the Tactix and Pulse between 2014-16, was one on netball’s struggle street.
‘‘You had to have another job. Gosh, we’re not rugby players. I’d love to be a rugby player.’’
Hazeldine balanced sport and work, owning the Rangiora Pita
Pit sandwich franchise in North Canterbury with her partner, during her final season as an elite player. She loves the game and didn’t play to become rich, but says it was a grind.
‘‘You’ve got to literally work, train and try and figure out when you’re going to get sleep and recover and everything else as well. It is quite difficult for your body,’’ Hazeldine says.
‘‘It’s terrible. [The money] needs to be way more. I suppose we’re a semi-professional sport. We’re not a professional sport, but we’re still training and playing as professionals.’’
Bond says they don’t want to lose players, who are establishing themselves at domestic level and could be future Silver Ferns.
‘‘It is a concern. If a player is choosing not to play because of work, then that’s basically a financial reason for that. It’s definitely a concern and I know Netball New Zealand share the same concern.
‘‘Semi-professional players that aren’t moving onto the Silver Ferns . . . financially can’t make it work.’’
Compared to their Australian peers across the Tasman, the Silver Ferns have historically earned more money.
The Silver Ferns are on annual four-tiered contracts, which range from $20,000-45,000 with match payments of $1500 per test on top of that.
Premier Silver Ferns earn more than $130,000 a year, including their domestic contracts, with the top ones also having sponsorship and endorsement deals.
That is small fry in relation to New Zealand professional rugby players. All Blacks skipper Read’s salary is understood to be over the $1 million mark, following a fresh collective agreement in December 2016.
Australian netballers experienced a watershed moment when their Super Netball domestic league was launched for 2017, receiving the largest payday in the sport’s history there.
Under the collective agreement, a total payment pool of A$5.4 million (NZ$5.93m) was created. Each of the eight clubs has up to A$675,000 to spend on its list of 10 contracted players with the average salary increasing to $67,500 (NZ$74,100).
The minimum salary more than doubled from the former trans-Tasman deal from just A$13,250 to $27,375 (NZ$14,550 to $30,060).
While the money sounds nice, Bond says it’s important to note the Australian salary cap includes everything.
‘‘Once you take off the value of cars and health insurance, players going from New Zealand to Australia aren’t any better off,’’ she says. ‘‘New Zealand is better off at the moment mostly. They’re comparative at the moment and not far apart.’’
Australian netball faces a growing threat New Zealand doesn’t have – the advent of rival professional women’s sports competitions.
Female cricketers in Australia received a massive pay rise this year, becoming the country’s highest paid sportswomen. The average wage for an Australian women’s international rose from A$80,000 to $179,000 (NZ$87,800 to $196,540).
The women’s Australian Rules football league kicked off in 2017, while Football Australia’s W-League women’s competition took a large stride towards professionalism last year in its 10th season.
Wages more than doubled with the average pay for a W-League player being A$15,500, rising to $17,400 in 2018. A minimum A$10,000 playing contract was also created.
New Zealand netball great Laura Langman competed in the first season of Australia’s Super Netball last year for the titlewinning Sunshine Coast Lightning.
After playing for the Sydneybased NSWSwifts in the final edition of the ANZ Championship in 2016, Langman returned to Australia to challenge herself and play a different style against some of the world’s best netballers.
This year, former Silver Ferns defender Leana de Bruin, 40, who played 104 tests in the black dress, will finish her career with the Adelaide Thunderbirds.
Ex-New Zealand shooter Cathrine Tuivaiti also signed with the South Australian club after being unwanted for higher honours, despite being one of the most accurate goal shoots in the country.
NNZ’s stipulation players must play domestically to be eligible for the Silver Ferns will ensure only a select few consider Australia.
De Bruin was ready to retire, but says the opportunity to extend herself with the Thunderbirds and learn more about Australian netball ahead of a possible future move into coaching was appealing.
South African-born de Bruin has been a professional netballer since arriving in New Zealand and joining the Invercargill-based Southern Sting in 2001.
She’s never held a job outside netball and had to purchase her first car last year, having always had sponsored team vehicles.
‘‘I’ve been pretty lucky in that sense. I haven’t had to work. I don’t know where I would have fitted in a job. I’ve been one of the fortunate ones.’’
De Bruin was frustrated many semi-professional players in New Zealand weren’t paid accordingly given the training hours and sacrifices they made.
‘‘Some girls are well off and others are not so well off. I would like to see that change just because the commitment from everybody whether you’re a training partner or whether you’re in the starting line-up is pretty much the same.
‘‘We’ve come a very long way and we’ll probably never be like the Super Rugby boys, but we put a lot of effort in as well, so I’d like to see that change.’’
Former Steel and Mystics chief executive Julie Paterson, now Tennis New Zealand’s boss, says the ongoing conundrum is how to generate greater money in netball.
NNZ earned $5.2 million in sponsorship in 2016, compared with New Zealand Rugby’s $55 million.
Paterson set up Women in Sport Aotearoa in March with professor Sarah Leberman of Massey University, the first national advocacy organisation for women and girls in sport.
‘‘Netball is a prime example of this.
‘‘It’s an incredibly professionally run league on TV week in, week out, yet there’s still a lack of value attributed to women’s sport,’’ Paterson says.
‘‘How does netball turn that around? They need to keep banging on doors and doing what they do, which is an incredibly good job, but continuing to talk to people about the value of women’s sport.’’
NNZ’s Wyllie says they have some fantastic, loyal partners in the sport, but would always love more.
Women are the key decision makers and purchasers in the home and many netball families back products and companies, who support the game.
If New Zealand netballers can’t get an improved deal in the next collective agreement, Bond and the NZNPA fear they never will.
‘‘From my perspective, it would be awesome to see more money coming into netball and women’s sport,’’ Bond says.
‘‘There’s been a massive movement around the last 12 to 18 months around women in sport and this whole equal pay for equal work in the media. It would be awesome if businesses started to invest in that philosophy.’’
Only time will tell.
‘‘We’re not a professional sport, but we’re still training and playing as professionals.’’ Gemma Hazeldine, former Tactix and Pulse shooter