Former WNBL boss Jennie Sager has damaged her silence after her shock departure calling the league’s possession group’s resolution to make the CEO position redundant as ‘genuinely disappointing’ and hinting what the management construction will now appear like.
Sager departed the position final week after 15 months in cost and spearheading the WNBL’s greatest season in historical past which noticed crowd figures up 43 per cent, broadcast up 130 per cent, YouTube views up 1,237 per cent and web site views up 74 per cent.
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The league additionally introduced a brand new CBA for gamers which greater than doubled the minimal wage, enlargement with two new groups coming into the competitors, feminine coaches elevated from one to 4 this upcoming season, whereas new industrial sponsors got here on board together with world make-up model Sephora.
“Ladies’s sports activities doesn’t want a seat on the desk. It wants its personal desk,” Sager began her submit on LinkedIn.
“The choice to make the WNBL CEO position redundant, folding it into the broader NBL Group construction, is one I discover genuinely disappointing.”
The NBL and Wollemi Capital Group fashioned a consortium in 2024 to take management of the WNBL.
Whereas the brand new construction is but to be confirmed, Sager’s submit was important of shifting the 2 leagues below the one roof.
“I consider girls’s sport leagues are strongest after they have devoted management and a workers that wakes up daily solely targeted on driving them ahead. With the intention to climb the mountain that exists, girls’s sport wants an unbiased voice and mandate
“That’s not a criticism. It’s a conviction. We’ve seen different girls’s leagues undergo below this mannequin, whereas we’ve watched those who function independently thrive
“I go away figuring out the WNBL is in a greater place than I discovered it, with a stronger and extra engaged fan base domestically and globally, higher circumstances for the athletes, and momentum to proceed pushing ahead
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“To the gamers, the golf equipment, the workers, the followers: you’re the motive the curiosity within the WNBL is at an all-time excessive. I’ll be cheering you on loudly from the stands.”
The Wollemi Group responded to Sager’s assertion, telling foxsports.com.au: “The WNBL and NBL have labored carefully collectively throughout the final season to develop girls’s basketball throughout Australia and that partnership will proceed.
“Whereas the CEO position has been made redundant as a part of the evolving working mannequin, our dedication to making a world-class girls’s basketball league is stronger than ever. The WNBL will proceed to have its personal devoted focus, possession, and governance construction to attain this aim and isn’t being absorbed into the NBL.
“We’re shaping a mannequin to raised help supply for our followers, golf equipment, gamers, and one which continues to construct a robust future for the WNBL. We look ahead to sharing additional particulars sooner or later.”