England Netball – Growing an audience through free-to-air, D2C and social content

England Netball chief commercial officer Mark Foster talks to Broadcast Sport editorial director Jake Bickerton about the federations new broadcast rights deal with Sky Sports and the BBC, which sees one live match a week across the regular season of the Netball Super League (NSL) streamed on BBC iPlayer and on the BBC Sport website and app.

Another live match will be broadcast on Sky Sports’s YouTube channel. The season opener, semi-finals and grand final will all be shown both on linear TV through Sky Sports.

Matches will also be made available on the global netball OTT platform, Netball Pass. This consolidates games from the three major domestic netball leagues around the world in one platform.

As well as its recent rights deals, which focused on the value of a mixed rights portfolio including pay-TV, free-to-air and an OTT D2C platform, Foster talks about the role of athlete-led social content in helping attract a new audience to netball, and the value of the data and insights in driving and growing audience engagement.

He also explains what highlights packages are most appealing to fans of the game, and how these are distributed to fans.