Mike's Minute: Sport is business and chequebooks are needed

Doesn’t it feel like the last netballer out can turn out the lights?  By my count, 13 of our best are off.  Eight to Australia, four to the UK, and it could be 16 by the time it's all over.  Like Super Rugby, hockey, and cricket, netball is not, it seems, commercially viable in a national organisation type of way.  TV rights are an issue, and they are an issue because the inescapable truth is a lot of us aren't that gripped by the sports anymore.  The world is full of entertainment and the more accessible it is the more we drift off to new interests.  I read a worthy piece by a bloke called Dr Chris McMillan, who bemoaned private money coming to potentially save these sports.  He argued private money is not good because it put owners before players and, most of all, before the wider community.  The trouble with academics of course is they don’t live in the real world.  What does he want? Netball run as a national organisation going broke (they are millions in the hole), or a millionaire with good intentions saving the sport?  You should read his piece. He tells you everything that's wrong and tells you these are tricky issues but offers no solutions.  The solutions are simple and they are global. Virtually all great, popular, and successful sports are run with private money.  My sport, the NFL, is almost entirely, bar one of the 32 teams, owned by rich folks who are normally old white guys. The sport is booming and the players are wealthy beyond most expectations.  Sport is actually a simple formula: you need eyeballs, TV rights, and a competition that attracts attention.  The NRL is your best local example: a record TV deal, massive fan base, plenty of hype, and an expansion plan.  Sport isn't the problem. I increasingly think not even the running of the sport is a problem.  In NZ the problem is population. If Super Rugby can't make money, nothing locally can. We are too small and the fan is too international.  But if there's a model that can help locally it’s the people with a cheque book. Sport is business.  Arguing it's community-based goodwill is like arguing AI isn't taking your job.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.