Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic featured franchises for the first time, with the overall aim of increasing the public profile of the sport in New Zealand. The inaugural competition was contested between ten teams, including the Waikato Wildcats and the Bay of Plenty Magic. At the end of the first season both teams finished at the bottom of the ladder, with the Wildcats 9th and the Bay of Plenty Magic last. Both teams decided to merge for the 1999 season: a new franchise was developed adopting the team name from Bay of Plenty and the colours of Waikato, becoming the Waikato/Bay of Plenty Magic. Bay
Countries dependent on the Bay of Bengal platform, which opened in 1994, was shut down in 2013. India's Reliance Industries began production in an offshore block near India's coast in 2009. The BIMSTEC countries view the Bay of Bengal as a common security space. The first conference of national security chiefs in the region was held in 2017. The Bay of Bengal has non-traditional security challenges of piracy, human trafficking, terrorist networks and drug smuggling, which has led to greater cooperation between the navies of Bangladesh, India, the United States and Thailand. The Bay of Bengal is a prime zone of strategic competition between two of Asia's