This women’s sport has fought for more than 50 years to be in the Olympics. Could Brisbane 2032 change its fortunes?

By Emily Blumenthal, CNN

(CNN) — With big blocks, last-minute goals and shocking upsets, netball is making a big impression on the world stage, and it is growing every year.

The sport now appears in the Commonwealth Games and has leagues around the world, as well as the Netball World Cup every four years.

Despite its global prominence, one place it has yet to reach is the Olympics. For more than 50 years, people across all levels and areas of the sport have been lobbying for its inclusion in the Games. In 1995, the IOC recognized World Netball as an International Federation, meaning it could access some additional funds but didn’t go so far as to be in the Games.

Although the IOC has not excluded netball because it’s a majority women’s sport, a lack of investment and global awareness – which both generally affect the development of women’s sports worldwide – have kept it from getting where it needs to be, multiple people told CNN.

But with a renewed push for gender equality in sport and the 2032 Summer Olympics taking place in Australia, a strong netball nation, there are hopes it could possibly join the Olympic program in Brisbane.

Skyrocketing interest

Netball is a team sport most similar to basketball and handball. Two teams of seven players play on a court and score goals by passing the ball around the court and throwing it through the opposing team’s net.

For decades, netball was concentrated mostly in Commonwealth countries – it was first played in the United Kingdom – and was relatively unknown internationally.

“When I initially went over at 16 to train in Bath, nobody in the UK, or really, I think across a lot of the northern hemisphere, knew much about elite professional netball. It was still very much kind of one man and his dog who would come to games and support, or your family,” said Serena Guthrie, a retired netball player who played internationally for England from 2008-2022.

“There wasn’t much commercial interest in the sport either or anything like that. So we all kind of just did it for the love, like most people starting out any kind of sport.”

But during her career, interest in the game in England went “to a different level overnight” – crowds at matches, community club memberships and the commercial value of the sport “skyrocketed,” she said. That’s partly due to England’s gold medal in the 2018 Commonwealth Games, in which they upset Australia.

For a new sport to be included in the Olympics, the host country must put it forward to the IOC. Host countries tend to propose sports that are popular with domestic audiences and where they have a high chance of medaling. For example, in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, softball, baseball, lacrosse and flag football are among the new sports being introduced.

With Australia being the top-ranked netball team in the world and likely to win gold in a possible tournament, the Brisbane 2032 Games could be netball’s time to take the Olympic stage. The Brisbane 2032 Organizing Committee did not respond to multiple interview requests from CNN.

“If you watch the World Cup, if you watch the Commonwealth Games, if you watch any of those games, it is competition. The netball competition is always such a great quality,” said Jenny van Dyk, the coach of Spar Proteas, South Africa’s national netball team. “Why is that not enough if we have women battling it out on a court with a little bit of a different format than what everybody’s used to?”

Much of that advocacy needs to come from World Netball, the sport’s international governing body, said Riana Bezuidenhout, who manages TuksNetball at the University of Pretoria and is on a South African government taskforce studying the professionalization of netball in the country.

“I think the leadership within netball, from World Netball, really needs to take a vigilant stance on it. They’ve got to prove that, in the past 50 years, they have grown netball substantially,” Bezuidenhout said.

World Netball declined an interview, instead referring CNN to its website for information about its work for inclusion in the Olympics.

“World Netball congratulates the City of Brisbane on the announcement confirming that it will host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games and declares its intention to work with Netball Australia to make a compelling case for Netball’s inclusion in the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games,” states a news release after the announcement of the Brisbane 2032 Games.

A sport of ‘female emancipation’

But long before netball became an elite game, it gave women the freedom to play sport at a time when that was frowned upon.

When the fledgling game of basketball was just beginning to gain prominence in the 1890s – around the same time as the founding of the modern Olympic Games – women began playing a version of the game that was modified to fit what people at the time perceived to be a more delicate physicality, evolving a few years later into an early form of netball.

This was a time when women had little access to sport, and for those who played netball, the game allowed a “female emancipation” through physical activity, said Fiona McLachlan, a lecturer at Victoria University who specializes in discrimination in sport and has researched netball.

“In the early 20s to 30s when there’s quite a backlash about women participating in any physical activity, netball was a space and a game that women were allowed to play,” McLachlan told CNN.

The sport has since become highly physical, but it has maintained one aspect of its early days that even today makes it unique – it is still largely run by women for women.

A lack of investment and awareness

It is that trailblazing feature – that which makes it unlike any other game in the sporting world – that has been key in holding netball back from its Olympic dream.

Because it is not an Olympic sport, netball is caught in a catch-22 where it cannot access funding because of a lack of development, but it has a limited ability to develop further without more money.

“What is holding netball back? Money. Money is holding netball back. We want, we need money,” van Dyk said. “We have the skill, we have talent. We have great coaches, but we cannot give all our attention to the sport.”

That lack of investment is linked to a lack of awareness around the world. Despite being one of the most popular women’s sports in the countries where it is widely played, netball gets little media coverage compared to sports like soccer or rugby.

“If you break it down to the basics, for the sport to develop, there must be investment in the sport. A lack of investment will obviously roll out a lack of development,” Bezuidenhout said.

For people in the netball world, she said, “That is your bread and butter: doing netball. You tend to think that it is the ultimate sport, and it’s very important in your own little world. But if you look at it globally, and you look at how well-known it is in 80% of the other countries, you find that some of the countries don’t even know what netball is.”

The professionalization of the sport has proven difficult globally, with only a handful of countries hosting professional leagues and others, including South Africa, with semi-professional leagues.

Guthrie has hope that if athletes and governing bodies work together, netball can “smash through that glass ceiling and investment will start pouring in for the sport.”

“Anyone who’s ever been to a live netball game that’s an international, it’s close and it’s physical and it’s aggressive and it’s raw. They’re fully converted within one 60-minute game,” Guthrie said. “So we’ve just got to get more people through the doors watching this sport, and the right people getting eyes on the sport in order to truly believe that it’s something that’s worth investing in.”

Is gender parity hurting netball?

Netball’s latest push for recognition comes as the Paris 2024 Olympic Games became the first to achieve gender parity in the number of athletes participating.

In its Gender Equality Review Project from 2018, the IOC recommended “full gender equality in athlete quotas and medal events for both genders” from the Paris Games onward. The Games has eliminated some male-only events, but has also emphasized mixed gender events.

Ironically, this focus on gender parity is hurting netball’s chances to become an Olympic sport. When considering new sports to add to the Games, the IOC is emphasizing mixed events or ones played by both men and women. Any new sport must be played by men in 75 countries across four continents and by women in 40 countries across three continents, according to the Olympic Charter. More than 20 million people play netball in 76 member nations across five continents, according to World Netball.

One potential solution would be the inclusion of men’s or mixed netball. Although historically it has been a women’s sport, the men’s and mixed games have been growing in the past few years. In England, around 20,000 men play netball fortnightly and many more boys play in elementary school, according to the England Men’s and Mixed Netball Association (EMMNA).

“With the Olympics, you need the sport to [have] participation for both men and women whereas netball has been traditionally female only,” said Ryan Allan, the president of EMMNA.

While there was once a taboo of boys and men playing what was considered to be a women’s sport, that has lessened, Allan said. In the past, there was some “trepidation” in the netball world about men playing but that has faded away and everyone is now largely supportive, said Lewis Keeling, a player on the Thorns, England’s men’s national netball team. Allan said that female netballers have been “the one group that has always been accepting of us coming into the sport.”

“There was a little bit of noise where the positioning was, men are coming to take over and they’re going to take over our sport. But that was a couple of voices that’s completely gone over the last four years because that’s completely not the case. We celebrate this being a women’s led sport,” Allan said.

Keeling noted that in the men’s and mixed netball world, there is always recognition of the importance of the women’s game, and the men’s and mixed sides are only looking to add to the sport around the world.

“I think that everybody can see the growth of the sport on the men’s and mixed side and how that can only help netball as a whole. I think one of the key things about how we’ve always approached it is that our female athletes deserve all the recognition they can get, so anything we can do in a small way to assist the visibility of these awesome athletes, then that’s got to be a win for the sport,” said Keeling, who is also the managing director of the men’s and mixed side Knights Netball.

If the women’s game struggles with a lack of funding, the men’s and mixed games are working with even fewer resources. World Netball and its national federations do not fund men’s and mixed netball, so community clubs and even national teams rely entirely on private funding and contributions from members. Those sides that could be crucial to netball’s inclusion in the Olympics have done a lot on a shoestring budget, but are slowed in their development. They recognize, though, that with funding, it’s important for the women’s game to take priority.

“Female athletes have been pretty much self-funded for years before we came on the scene and have done the hard yards to get to this point and, quite frankly, I feel like men’s netball should do the hard yards as well to establish ourselves. I don’t feel like anything should be given to us just because we’re coming into the sport,” Keeling said.

Looking to the future

For Bezuidenhout, the biggest thing netball can do to improve their chances for the Olympics is to expand to more countries. Although establishing netball in a new country can take years and is costly, she says it is necessary to sustain the sport. She notes that the sport must also conduct outreach on an ongoing basis, outside of World Cup cycles.

There are some voices in netball that don’t believe the drive to become an Olympic sport is a priority. But even if netball doesn’t succeed for Brisbane 2032 or other future Games, the campaign could bring other benefits.

“I’ve been asked this question about the Olympics quite a lot. Essentially, the usual question I get is, ‘What if netball doesn’t get in the Olympics?’ And my response to that is, well, if by us all working towards trying to get in the Olympics increases participation of the sport globally, then I think that’s still a success. I think that’s still a win for the sport,” Allan said.

“But obviously, I want it in the Olympics.”

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