Case Studies

Background

Netball Victoria is the main body of administration for Netball in Victoria and acts as the governing body for the state. Netball has a long-standing history in Victoria, being played across the state for over 100 years. Almost all netball is conducted by sports and recreation clubs or associations instead of sports centres and educational institutions. The regions form half of Victoria’s netballers, despite only 23% of Victoria’s population living in regional Victoria. This demonstrates the importance of regional clubs and associations and the opportunities that sports memberships bring. 

Netball Victoria delivered three regional netball events (Netball Victoria State Tiles and the Vixens Open Training/Victorian Netball League showcase in Bendigo 2024 and the 2024 Ballarat Blitz) in partnership with the City of Ballarat, the City of Greater Bendigo, and the Victorian Government. These events aimed to provide greater opportunities for current and upcoming members to be involved in netball, increase the range of netball available to regional Victoria, and support the growth of netball in regional Victoria.  

Project Goal

Netball Victoria aims to provide greater opportunities for current and upcoming members throughout regional areas. This aim to generate awareness aligns with the Victorian Government Regional Events Fund’s objectives to support the attraction, development, marketing, and growth of events to: 

• Increase economic benefits – driving visitation 

• Showcasing Victoria’s key regional tourism attributes and building its reputation  

• Strong benefits to the host regions community 

• Developing a sustainable calendar of regional events 

An economic assessment was conducted to estimate the direct and indirect impacts of hosting the regional netball events in the Local Government Area (LGA) of Greater Bendigo and Ballarat and the economic return to Netball Victoria over a 10-year period.  

REMPLAN’s Involvement

REMPLAN supports Netball Victoria by undertaking an Economic Impact Assessment (EIA) of impacts associated with the events on the regional city economies, in addition to a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). The EIAs reflect the regional economic contribution hosting netball events in regional cities has on the economy of Greater Bendigo LGA and Ballarat LGA.  the CBA determined that hosting the three events in regional cities annually will generate the highest benefit of all scenarios analysed.

Results

All netball events supported the growth of netball participation whilst bringing an uplift in economic benefit from the operation of each vent and the additional expenditure from visitors in each LGA. 

The CBA determined that hosting three regional events annually will generate the highest benefit and support the growth of netball in Victoria.