The season will kick off on April 27 and, with more international athletes than ever before, the league will truly showcase the world’s best netball talent throughout 2019. Starting with a bang, the first few weeks of the season will see a Round 1 derby between the NSW Swifts and GIANTS Netball, a Round 2 Grand Final rematch between West Coast Fever and Sunshine Coast Lightning and a Round 3 showdown between the two Queensland teams.
Netball Australia Executive General Manager of Events Chris Symington says going by the results of the 2018 season, netball fans can’t get enough of the Suncorp Super Netball league with the average home-and-away match viewership on Channel Nine channels up 25.9% and views on Telstra’s streaming services up 23% on 2017.
“We couldn’t be more impressed with how Suncorp Super Netball is being embraced in arenas across Australia and on broadcast, both on free-to-air and digital channels,” he said.
“We saw more than 35 million minutes of the 2018 season viewed live and on demand across Telstra and 9Now platforms including the Netball live app, and more than one million viewers tuned into the Grand Final on Nine, so we’re incredibly excited to see what the fierce 2019 season will bring with the support of our broadcast and league partners.”
Like the 2018 season, two Suncorp Super Netball matches per round will be broadcast live on Nine’s main channel during family-friendly timeslots and two matches will be exclusive to Telstra TV, with all four matches available on the Netball Live app, both live and on demand.
For the first time, a match will be played on the Victorian Queen’s Birthday holiday between the Melbourne Vixens and the Collingwood Magpies and across the season there will 12 matches played during Saturday night timeslots. Suncorp Super Netball will be taken to regional Australia on two occasions with the Collingwood Magpies taking on the West Coast Fever in Bendigo during Round 5 and the Magpies playing the NSW Swifts at the Silverdome in Launceston in Round 13.
The season will feature two theme rounds with Give for a Goal Round in Round 4, raising funds for Netball Australia’s Confident Girls Foundation, and Indigenous Round in Round 8, which will celebrate Australia’s rich Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
All eight Suncorp Super Netball clubs will continue to play each other once at home, and once away. For the first time, the season will break for a four-week period from 23 June during the 2019 Netball World Cup, and then resume on 27 July for the final five home-and-away rounds before a three-week finals series, to be contested by the top four-ranked teams.
The 2019 Suncorp Super Netball Grand Final will be held on the 15 September.
NOTE: Given the recent USC Stadium redevelopment announcement, it’s unlikely the venue will be completed in time to host the first Sunshine Coast Lightning home game – a replacement venue is currently being sourced and will be confirmed as soon as possible.
There are currently three West Coast Fever home matches with venues to be confirmed in Rounds 10, 12 and 13. These will also be confirmed as soon as possible.
Netball Australia.
2019-SSN-Fixture – Click here
