Netball Australia chief executive Kate Palmer has celebrated a perfect start for the new Trans-Tasman competition, but conceded Monday nights would continue being a tough sell for the sport.

The first round of the new ANZ Championship was completed on Monday night, with 3,368 spectators attending the match between NSW Swifts and Southern Steel at Sydney's Acer Arena.

It was the largest attendance of the opening round, which also included a crowd of 2,131 at the Brisbane Convention Centre for the clash between the Queensland Firebirds and West Coast Fever.

While the Sydney crowd fell well below the 8,000 mark hoped for by Netball NSW officials, Palmer was still pleased with the attendance and admitted Monday night netball might take time to catch on.

"We thought the crowd on a Monday night, being the first Monday night, was excellent, because we were very worried about Monday night netball," Palmer told AAP.

"I think it will be tough for the teams to attract an audience at the time they play."

The Swifts however did achieve their aim of attracting the biggest first round crowd, even though they fell well short of their hoped for turn out.

"I can understand that (Netball NSW figure) but Monday night I think is a tough one until our netball people get used to it being on that night," Palmer said.

She was especially pleased with the competitiveness of the opening round fixtures in which three of the five matches were decided by four or fewer goals.

"We were very pleased with the results, I think probably the outstanding factor is how competitive the league is," Palmer said.

"Having such close results in round one and each match being very exciting, it was so perfect a start for us".

Palmer was pleased by the television coverage and said she had also received positive feedback from the sponsors.

She said there would be some "general tweaking" after the first round and throughout the competition, but couldn't see any major problem emerging from the first round.

While netball business in Perth kept Palmer from attending either of the Australian based first round games, she was thrilled by what she witnessed on television.

"It was very very exciting, I haven't enjoyed netball so much for years, I have to say, and I've seen a lot of netball," Palmer said.

"The element of New Zealand and Australia, the new look uniforms and the imports, there were a lot of elements that made it exciting and best of all the sponsors were very happy."

"Round one has surpassed our expectations".

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