Netball is Australia’s number one female sport and the country’s biggest national participant game, with over 330,000 registered players. The pulling power and influence of netball is attracting great interest from Australia’s corporate sector and the new frontier of digital sports broadcasting.
This year the Melbourne Vixens and the ANZ Championship will enjoy an unprecedented level of television coverage with Network Ten and its high definition sports channel, One HD making no less than seven netball telecasts available to free-to-air viewers every week.
Victoria is Australia’s biggest netball state with around 110,000 participants and the Melbourne Vixens are already a power force of the competition with a star studded line up featuring Australian Diamonds captain Sharelle McMahon and Australian players Bianca Chatfield, Julie Corletto (nee Prendergast), Natasha Chokljat, Renae Hallinan and Caitlin Thwaites.
MARS Red is the new low-fat version of the classic MARS Bar and the MARS Red sponsorship caps off an exciting period for the Melbourne Vixens who are also affiliated with the Collingwood Football Club.
Melbourne Vixens Captain Sharelle McMahon said, “We are absolutely thrilled to be associated with Mars and to be able to promote the new low fat MARS Red. This is a great coup for the Vixens and for netball in Victoria. It’s a further endorsement of the growing power of our game and of female sport in Australia. The team is so excited to have such a big name sponsor like Mars on board and it certainly doesn’t hurt that it’s a chocolate sponsor – and even better, a low fat alternative!”
The Network Ten and One HD coverage of Netball’s 2009 ANZ Championship season commences on the 4th April with the Vixens taking on the West Coast Fever at the State Netball Hockey Centre in Melbourne.
