Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic absence, to cover the loss of young defender Sulu Tone-Fitzpatrick. Several young players have been signed on with development contracts. The franchise is administered by Waikato/Bay of Plenty Magic Franchise Ltd, formed in 1999 when the Waikato Wildcats and Bay of Plenty Magic merged. The franchise catchment area covers the two netballing regions of Waikato and the Bay of Plenty, and both Netball Waikato and Netball Bay of Plenty have two directors on the club's eight-member board. The regional netball bodies also report to Netball New Zealand, while the franchise reports to Trans Tasman Netball Ltd (TTNL), which oversees the
Bay of Plenty in the region struggled: the climate was ill-suited to sheep farming and the geography was inaccessible, further hindered by a lack of infrastructure. By the end of the century the population had started to dwindle. But after experimenting with different crops, settlers found success with dairy production. Dairy factories sprang up across the Bay of Plenty in the 1900s, with butter and cheese feeding economic prosperity throughout the early 20th century; local Māori continued to live on the fringe of this prosperity. Timber also became a major export in the 1950s, as kiwifruit did later. The present Bay of Plenty