Is professional netball in New Zealand now in a death spiral?

Unless something really significant happens to change the trajectory, are we watching the death spiral of a sport?

I think all netball fans should be very concerned about the financial revelation from Netball New Zealand's chair: the organisation is expected to run at a loss of $6 million a year and it does not have enough money to absorb losses like that indefinitely.

The last time I checked, Netball New Zealand had around $12 million in the bank. If that's still roughly accurate, they'll now have about half of that left and possibly even less.

If they can't afford to run the competition next year in the same way they did this year, then surely the most obvious option, though not the only one, is to ask players to either play for free or accept another pay cut on top of the reduction they've already taken this year.

And if players are asked to take another pay cut, or even play for free, isn't the most obvious response for the best of them to leave and play in Australia or the UK, where they can earn reasonable money?

Let's say six players decide they need to be paid for the work they do and head overseas. I'm making that figure up but let's go with it. We've already lost eight players from the competition this year. Suddenly, we're talking about a dozen or 14 players leaving. That's the equivalent of two teams' worth of talent disappearing from the competition.

Now you've got a much less compelling competition next year because the best players are gone.

In that scenario, does TVNZ look at a significantly weaker product and decide, "I'm not sure we want to broadcast that"? And even if they do decide to stick with it, do the rest of us, the fans, tune in and think, "This isn't much good. All the stars are gone," and then stop watching?

If the audience falls away, do sponsors start leaving as well because they're no longer getting the reach they expected for their investment?

And if all of that happens, netball surely generates even less revenue in the years ahead. Does the cycle then begin again? With less money coming in, do players get asked to take another pay cut, prompting more departures and continuing the downward spiral?

You can see how this could keep happening, over and over again, until there's very little left.

That's why there has to be a circuit-breaker. Something has to interrupt the cycle.

I don't know what that solution is. Is it privatisation? Is it joining the Australian league? I don't know. But it's clear that something major will be required to secure the future of Netball New Zealand.

Because if it wasn't already obvious, the numbers should make it crystal clear: professional netball in this country appears to be at the beginning of a death spiral.

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