Nottingham Forest launch a NETBALL team and will join sport’s Super League as owner Evangelos Marinakis branches out from football
- Marinakis plans to develop a ‘multi-sport model’ at Forest, just like Olympiacos
- The New Forest team is one of two new sides in the revamped eight-team Super League
- Are Pep’s City the best the Premier League has ever seen? Listen to the It’s all Kicking Off podcast
Nottingham Forest has become the first Premier League club to launch a top-level netball team as part of ‘major plans to develop a multi-sport model’.
Nottingham Forest Netball will play in a revamped Netball Super League (NSL) from 2025, with owner Evangelos Marinakis looking to add other sports as he has done at Olympiacos, whose extensive portfolio includes basketball, volleyball and handball teams.
The newly formed netball club will play at the Motorpoint Arena Nottingham and train at the University of Nottingham.
Forest said in a statement: ‘Evangelos Marinakis has always demonstrated a strong commitment to developing a more diverse and inclusive sporting portfolio, which he has successfully implemented at Nottingham Forest’s sister club Olympiacos.
‘The opportunity to expand our brand into netball was too good to miss. Korfball is the most played team sport by women in Great Britain. More than 3 million people play every year and in 2023 more than 8.5 million people will tune in.
Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis has launched a netball team that will compete in a revamped eight-club Super League from 2025
Forest will hope that the town’s residents will get behind the netball team as well as football
The Netball Super League is the top division in Great Britain. Pictured are last year’s Manchester Thunder and Surrey Storm
“We have so many young female fans who can now dream of not only wearing the Garibaldi red of Forest during football matches, but now also on the netball pitch.”
Forest are one of two new sides to be included in the eight-team NSL next season, along with Birmingham Panthers, who are affiliated with the University of Worcester.
Manchester Thunder, London Pulse, Loughborough Lightning, Cardiff Dragons, London Mavericks and Leeds Rhinos have all retained their places in the competition.
But five-time champions Team Bath have been controversially left out, as have existing NSL teams Strathclyde Sirens, Surrey Storm and Severn Stars.
Team Bath said in a statement: ‘This news will come as a bitter disappointment to our fans in the South West and has understandably left everyone involved with the franchise shocked and devastated.’
Following a tender process that launched last October, clubs were selected based on their ‘ability to progress both on and off the pitch’ to ‘raise the standards of the competition’.
The NSL said players’ salaries will increase by ‘at least 60 per cent’, with the minimum salary ‘more than doubling’.
Olympiakos, also owned by Marinakis, has a basketball team that reached the Final Four of the EuroLeague this season
NSL chief executive Claire Nelson said: “This is an incredibly exciting day as we unveil the clubs that will help define our competition as we enter this new era for our domestic competition.
‘From ten clubs now to eight next year will be a matter of fewer, bigger, better.
“Clearly, we’ve had to make some very difficult decisions along the way, decisions that were necessary to allow us to create a product that is built to last and that our fans can share now and well into the future want to be part of. .’