2022 is a banner year for women’s professional sport. But it still remains far behind men’s sport when it comes to coverage, prize money and exposure
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskAs is traditional whenever England’s footballers do well, the country’s newspapers have begun to speculate excitedly that the team could even win the whole tournament ., European football’s governing body, will be happier still. The opening game packed Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, with 68,871 spectators. That was a record for the tournament, beating the 41,301 who watched Germany beat Norway in the 2013 final in Sweden.
Women’s professional sport remains far behind men’s when it comes to coverage, prize money and exposure. More people watched the final of the men’s Euros than are expected to watch the entire women’s tournament. A study in 2019 found that only 5.4% of television sports news in America mentioned women’s events. In British newspapers last year the figure was 3%. Far fewer women are paid enough to play sport full-time than men.
The flywheel may, at last, be starting to spin. Start with viewing figures. Numbers are not always easy to find. But thehas been collecting statistics in Britain for a decade. The first quarter of 2022 saw the highest viewership by some distance, up by around 50% on 2019, the last full year before the pandemic . Women’s sport, says Ms Parlour, is bucking a general trend for people to watch less television.
One of the biggest deals was in 2021, when Barclays, a bank, paid £30m to sponsor the Women’s Super League, the top level of women’s club soccer in England, for three years. In 2018 Aon, a financial-services firm, sponsored men’s and women’s professional golf at the same time. “Fewer and fewer brands are spending solely on men’s sports, says Ms Douglas. “Increasingly, they want a balanced portfolio.
Athletes Unlimited is an American firm founded in 2020 that runs women’s softball, basketball and volleyball leagues. Jon Patricof, a former boss of New York City Football Club and one of its founders, says he was inspired by the mismatch between the popularity of America’s women’s football team—which, unlike the reliably third-rate men’s squad, has four World Cups to its name—and the struggles of the National Women’s Soccer League.
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