Hollywood icon Whoopi Goldberg is taking Australian netball to the world along with her new international sport tv community devoted solely to ladies’s sport.
Netball Australia and the All Ladies’s Sport Community (AWSN) introduced on Monday a multi-year broadcast deal to point out Super Netball matches to greater than 65 new nations.
Goldberg stated she was “so proud” to see the Tremendous Netball competitors be part of AWSN.
“I believe y’all are terrific,” she stated in an Instagram video. “I simply watched you play and I see that your followers are actually loving you, so we need to make it possible for we put you all over the place on this planet so that everyone is aware of about you.”
Goldberg and AWSN co-founder George Chung launched the community on the finish of 2024, with Goldberg saying her motivation for the undertaking was sparked by seeing ladies’s sport not obtain the identical protection as their male counterparts.
“I knew that if I couldn’t discover these sports activities and watch the superb feminine athletes taking part in them, others weren’t discovering them both,” she advised Forbes on the time. “I actually hope shining a light-weight on ladies’s sports activities will assist elevate feminine athletes around the globe.”
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Netball Australia’s chief govt, Stacey West, acknowledged the alternatives the brand new partnership would carry the league and netball extra broadly.
“This breakthrough deal places netball on screens throughout the globe and cements our place on the forefront of ladies’s sport,” West stated. “AWSN shares our imaginative and prescient of taking ladies’s sport to new heights. Collectively, we’re making a platform for our athletes and sport to shine like by no means earlier than.”
The response to the announcement was swift and optimistic, with former Diamond and AFLW participant Sharni Layton commenting on Goldberg’s video saying: “That is subsequent stage. Netball goes [up].”
Netball Australia chair and former Diamond Liz Ellis shared the video, including that Tremendous Netball was “going locations”.
The partnership is inked by way of to 2027 and can lead to 41 Tremendous Netball matches being broadcast to the community’s 900m-strong international viewers. Different leagues featured on the community consists of Australia’s WNBL, in addition to the WTA, Uefa Ladies’s Nations League, Sweden’s Damallsvenskan, European cricket, curler derby and softball.
The WNBL joined the AWSN in November 2024, with then league boss, Christy Collier-Hill, saying: “Reaching followers globally and showcasing our unimaginable athletes, golf equipment, and competitors is a serious milestone for the league.”
It’s a a lot wanted win for Tremendous Netball and Netball Australia, which have confronted extensive off-court dramas in recent years, and can assist to solidify the revival the game is present process in Australia.
The partnership additionally factors to the continued development of ladies’s sport, and the enterprise alternatives it affords.
