Women's sport is "coming of age" as the imminent launch of a "revamped netball league" on primetime, free-to-air TV and the "surprising success" of Australian Football League Women's "recast the value of rights for broadcasters and corporate sponsors alike," according to Mitchell Bingemann of THE AUSTRALIAN. Netball Australia has "big ambitions of emulating the ratings boon" of the inaugural AFLW competition as its "historic" five-year broadcast rights and revenue-sharing agreement with Nine Entertainment Company kicks off next Saturday. Nine's plan to "drive corporate and advertising support" has seen it "elevate netball to a prime time free-to-air slot, a first for the sport." Nine Entertainment Managing Dir Amanda Laing said, "Even Netball Australia was shocked when we said we were going to put it on primetime, but for us that's the best way to get corporate Australia behind it." Unlike other sports broadcast deals that "typically involve a straight monetary transaction for exclusive broadcast rights," Netball Australia and Nine are operating in a revenue-sharing partnership where the two work together on "everything from sponsorships and TV advertising to on-court assets, signage and bibs." Netball Australia CEO Marne Fechner said, "The unique thing about our deal with Telstra and Nine is that we are trying to create a different commercial paradigm for our sport. There's a defined set of (value) that broadcasters have to pay for sports (rights) and AFL and cricket and NRL continue to demand an ever increasing proportion of that." The inaugural game of the AFLW was "not only a sellout, attracting 25,000 fans at Melbourne's Princes Park, but it was also a ratings bonanza," with a total peak audience across the country of 1.6 million on the Seven Network, 7mate and Fox Footy. That ratings "success story" continued over the weekend for Seven as the Saturday night game between Collingwood and Melbourne "scored a combined peak audience of 677,000 on Channel 7 and 7mate." Combined across Channel 7, 7mate and Fox Footy, the match reached 1.1 million people who tuned in for five minutes or more (THE AUSTRALIAN, 2/13).