A Melbourne-based team owned by Craig Hutchison's Sports Entertainment Group and expected to be coached by Tracey Neville will enter the Super Netball league in 2024. 

Netball Australia will act as a caretaker of the side until the end of the year to help with the tight turnaround.

After the Collingwood Magpies opted out of the competition for financial reasons, expressions of interest for a new team to take their place opened in May with submissions closing on June 20.

Although four parties withdrew from the race in the lead-up to that deadline, it was widely reported that Netball Victoria and Hutchison were the final two left in the running.

The national governing body had hoped to announce which proposal had been successful by July 4 but admitted to the ABC last week it had been too ambitious with that timeline.

Now, more than a month on from submissions date, the governing body has at least delivered on chief executive Kelly Ryan's promise to give the Super Netball athletes headed to the World Cup some sort of certainty about the competition's future for next year.

Diamonds players are believed to have been alerted of Hutchison's successful bid on Thursday before they flew out to Cape Town on Friday to begin their campaign, which gets underway in exactly a week.

The rest of the league's playing group, including the imports from other national teams like Jamaica and England, found out on Friday morning, hours before the official announcement.

Hutchison's proposal, based in south-east Melbourne, was more appealing to the host broadcaster Fox Netball than Netball Victoria's bid, which was adamant on starting a regional team that would float across Geelong, Bendigo, or Ballarat and still play some metro games.

As owners of three-time premiership winners the Melbourne Vixens, the state organisation's preference was to establish a new fan base away from the city, considering the difficulties the Pies faced in their seven-year existence trying to build a loyal following in the Vixens' shadow.

Netball Victoria released a statement saying it welcomed the decision to keep two Super Netball teams in the state, even if its bid was unsuccessful.

It will continue to work on developing a regional case for future expansion, while also offering support to the new privately-owned team to ensure both Victorian teams are successful.

None of the eight clubs in the league were operating at a profit before Collingwood left, so how Hutchison aims to form a viable business model under these challenges is at this stage unknown, with more details to come on his plans in the days and weeks to come.

Speaking to the media after acquiring the netball team to add to the four basketball sides his company already owned, Hutchison said despite the financial challenges of trying to launch a Vixens competitor in Melbourne, his team were in it for the long-haul.

"While we've accepted what's been in the past, we're all in and will be fierce at trying to win over an audience," Hutchison said.

"Commercially, this is a fantastic opportunity and we are here for the long-haul. It not working out is not something we've even considered."

Signing former England 2018 Commonwealth Games winning coach Tracey Neville will be a great start, off the back of her success as an Adelaide Thunderbirds assistant this season.

Although Hutchison was tight-lipped about his options in this department, it has been widely reported that Neville is set to take up the role.

In her first year involved in Super Netball, under old friend and former Roses colleague Tania Obst, Neville's impact at the Thunderbirds went a long way to helping them secure their first trophy in a decade in the Australian league.

Neville had applied for a head coaching role with the Queensland Firebirds a few years back but had to withdraw from the process due to the COVID travel restrictions that would have prevented her young family from joining her abroad.

Highly regarded among the netball world for her work with the Roses and long-standing success in the UK Superleague, the pull Neville is expected to have when it comes to attracting athletes is immense. 

She will be the first international coach to work in such a high-profile position in Australia since current Silver Ferns coach Noeline Taurua left the Sunshine Coast Lightning in 2019 and the appointment is sure to ruffle a few feathers among Australian netball traditionalists. 

Whether Super Netball grand final MVP Eleanor Cardwell will follow Neville across from the Thunderbirds to Melbourne is an interesting question, knowing the English import took on such a big leadership role with the club in her first year playing down under.

The pair have a strong bond from their days at the Manchester Thunder and the lure of whether to stay with her new teammates after a premiership-winning season or keep that successful player-coach pairing going will be a tough decision.

Fans will have to wait more than two weeks to find out where their favourite players are headed.

The signing window is slated to open the day after the World Cup final on August 7 if the collective player agreement (CPA) and team player agreements (TPA) can both be sorted beforehand.

The industrial dispute between the players and Netball Australia has been heading towards the September 30 cut-off when the current CPA runs out and all 80 players come off contract.

An interim agreement is reportedly being worked through, rather than the long-term deal the governing body suggested with no pay rise until the end of 2026, as the sport tries to turn around its poor financial status and multi-million dollar debt.

Former Diamonds captain and now broadcaster, Liz Ellis, was involved in carrying out the State of the Game review the sport conducted in 2020.

Among a series of recommendations based on its wide-reaching research on Australian netball from the grassroots to elite, one of the key points made involved private equity in Super Netball and its overall commercial potential.

The findings stated that the current structure and way of working — with state-owned teams propped up by grassroots money — was not optimised for growth in this department.

Midway through last year, Ellis was also involved in a bid headed up by businessman Matt Berriman to privatise the Super Netball league.

Offering $6.5 million as a starting point and hoping to alleviate the financial pressures of running the competition so that Netball Australia could focus on the Diamonds and grassroots, Berriman eventually withdrew his bid after the governing body refused to entertain negotiations.

Hutchison's willingness to invest in netball — despite the financial turmoil the sport has experienced in recent years — indicates he believes there is a way forward.

Speaking with ABC Sport, Ellis said netball needed to remain open-minded about where its investment is coming from but also be honest about its financial status to encourage this kind of growth.

"The tendency is to see private equity as a silver bullet, but that's incorrect," she said.

"There is no 'one thing' which netball needs to do, but rather a suite of measures which need to be employed and what the State of the Game review found is that there are ways netball can increase its attractiveness to potential investors, whether that be private equity or philanthropic in nature.

"Simplifying governance and financial arrangements is fertile ground. Investors need assurances about bureaucracy being minimised and finances being easy to understand.

"Every dollar is precious so the less red tape and the more financial clarity the better and ultimately it's quite simple: netball has to marry two sets of needs in a mutually beneficial way — the needs of the sport and the needs of investors."

When asked about the inability for Super Netball teams to operate at a profit, Ellis said the sport would not get far with constant criticism and instead it needed hard work and the best ideas.

"Over the last seven years a huge amount of money has been invested in Super Netball at both state and national level," Ellis said.

"It's important to not lose sight of the successes achieved and it's too easy to be critical when we need to celebrate the wins as well as look to improve, but long-term sustainability of investment requires a return on investment.

"Netball is capable of achieving that, of this I have no doubt."