Northern Mystics' bosses are frustrated at corporate New Zealand's dismissive attitude towards women's sport, despite securing a landmark sponsorship deal for the franchise.
The Mystics yesterday announced a three-year partnership with SkyCity, joining the Breakers, Blues and Warriors in SkyCity's stable of Auckland sporting teams.
The deal will go a long way easing some of the financial pressure on the franchise after it battled through last season without a naming rights sponsor.
In welcoming the new partnership, Mystics' chairwoman Dianne McAteer urged other New Zealand businesses to have a more open mind towards the sport.
"We hope it is the start of women's sport taking its rightful place in commercial sponsorship," she said.
After losing LG as their key naming rights sponsor in 2013, McAteer and Mystics' chief executive Julie Paterson spent much of last year "knocking on doors" trying to drum up new revenue for the franchise.
But simply getting a foot in the door to present their case proved difficult, with tough financial conditions putting the squeeze on sponsorship budgets and men's codes prioritised over netball. It is a challenge that is replicated around the country, with the four other Kiwi ANZ Championship franchises also struggling to attract commercial dollars.
But as New Zealand's second biggest sport behind rugby in terms of participation numbers, McAteer believes netball offers compelling opportunities - if companies took the time to listen.
"It baffles me why some companies are not more open to the idea of sponsoring women's sport," she said.
"We had conversations last year with a potential naming rights sponsor in a category of the market that women make the decisions, and they opted to support two different men's codes, instead of a female code.
That's really frustrating to me - particularly coming from a marketing background myself. We're serving you up a prime target market for your business and you're choosing to support men's codes?"
"So yeah, I am frustrated. I'm frustrated because the bigger aims of netball can't be served well when we're so badly underfunded - and that's at amateur level as well."
While netball does not pull the crowd and viewership numbers that some of the male codes do, McAteer argues the zone-based structure of the sport allows them to reach consumers at all levels of the game.
"I'm conscious the television numbers are different, but it's not about viewership in isolation, it's about spending power."
"We've got 45,000 players in our region - and that's not including all the coaches, administrators, friends, family and supporters that go alongside that. That's a lot of spending power and because we run not just the franchise, but also amateur netball, we can actually reach out into that community on behalf of our sponsors."
The Mystics also unveiled a new Maori and Pacific-influenced dress design at yesterday's season launch and confirmed Maria Tutaia would captain the side for a third season.
The new dress is one of the more visible changes to the to the franchise borne out of an open and frank review of the Mystics' 2014 failings. The star-studded Auckland franchise finished a disappointing seventh last season, which came on the back of a 10th place finish in 2013.
In an effort to address the Mystics' culture of under-performing, team management initiated a wide-ranging review in the off-season, which highlighted the team's inability to stand up to pressure and a lack of resilience.
Tutaia said the new dress design better reflects who they are and the values they want to represent.
- By Dana Johannsen of the New Zealand Herald
