Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic The Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic are a New Zealand netball team based in Waikato that currently compete in the ANZ Premiership. The franchise was formed in 1999 during the Coca-Cola Cup (later the National Bank Cup) as an amalgamation of two teams from the inaugural season, the Waikato Wildcats and the Bay of Plenty Magic. After the National Bank Cup was retired in 2007, the Magic joined four other New Zealand franchises in the new ANZ Championship, representing the New Zealand regions of the Waikato and the Bay of Plenty. The ANZ Championship ended
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