Who Invented Netball?
The real origin story of netball: how it developed from early women's basketball in 1890s England, rather than being invented by one person on one date.
Netball doesn't have a single inventor or a single invention date — it developed gradually, over roughly a decade, out of an adapted version of basketball being played by women in England.
It started with basketball
Basketball was invented in the United States in 1891 by James Naismith. Within a year, it had been adapted into a version intended for women, reflecting the social conventions of the time around women's participation in sport.
Martina Bergman-Österberg's role
In 1893, the Swedish physical education pioneer Martina Bergman-Österberg — often referred to as Madame Österberg — returned from a visit to the United States and informally introduced a version of basketball to students at her physical training college in Hampstead, London. Two years later, in 1895, an American lecturer known as Dr Toles introduced a more formal set of rules, and in 1897 another American visitor, Miss Porter, brought over further rules drawn from women's basketball as it was being played in the US.
Becoming a distinct sport
At Österberg's college — by then relocated to Dartford, England — these rules were adapted and reworked over several years into something distinct from basketball: restricted playing areas for different players, no dribbling, and eventually a raised, backboard-free goal ring rather than a basketball hoop. The first codified rules of "net ball" were published at the start of the twentieth century, and the sport spread from there through the British Empire.
So who "invented" it?
There's no single inventor. Netball is better understood as an evolution — credited most directly to Martina Bergman-Österberg and the staff and students at her college, building on basketball as introduced by American visitors, refined into its own sport over roughly a decade rather than created in a single moment.
Where to go next
See history of netball for how the sport developed and spread after this early period, and netball vs basketball for how the two sports differ today as a result of this shared origin.
Source
This summary draws on published netball history research, including Our Netball History and World Netball's own history pages. See our sources page for more on how we approach historical claims.