I’ve tried writing this article about four times and each time, I’ve come to understand something new.
Firstly, broadcast infrastructure is essential – a fundamental premise and stating the obvious.
Secondly, whilst essential, broadcast infrastructure is not actually as terribly important as we thought. I’ll get to this in a bit.
Thirdly, women’s sport is continually let down by numerous agents, whether it’s broadcasters, their employees, or the leagues/tournaments that they participate in.
Finally, it’s going to be an arduous process but it will be worth the wait.
So I will start with the obvious.
Broadcasting Is Absolutely Essential…
All the while NWSL highlights are a motion sickness inducing nightmare, or the FA Player is at best OK and at its worst a frustrating hellscape of technical problems, or Premier 15s and women’s Six Nations coverage remains virtually non-existent, women’s sport will be forever seen as a second-class product.
All of us who support women’s sport want it to be front and centre on the TV. We want those big crowds on TV, and we want to see the next-generation talents coming through (think Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez, Sky Brown and Sakura Yosozumi).
We also want the world to stop seeing women’s sport as an ‘also’ choice.
Hence why making sure there are the facilities in place to cater to broadcasting is essential. Gantries, camera equipment, commentary positions and media facilities for press (photographers’ facilities, internet, interviewing areas etc) are all needed to improve production quality and the overall product.
Men’s sport has evolved from physical exercise to a global spectacle – women’s sport deserves the same.
📸: Sky Sports x Women’s Super League
…But It’s Not The Most Important Area Needing Investment
With all this said and done, broadcasting infrastructure isn’t the most essential area to improve and for one big reason: not everyone can afford it and not all sports / clubs are ready for it.
Manchester City’s Academy Stadium is a work of art and a technological marvel. Meadow Park has improved as years have gone by, and Walton Park Hall is on its way to becoming a decent venue for women’s football too.
📸: Manchester Academy Stadium
But what about rugby? What about beach soccer? Where is the money to improve the broadcast capabilities of hockey fields across the world?
Broadcast infrastructure is a result of investment – some sports just do not provide the prize money, or sponsorship funds, to even begin to think about implementing the grand infrastructure that men’s football, for instance, is blessed with.
Even in women’s football, investing in broadcast facilities is out of reach for all but the richest. The Vitality FA Cup’s prize pool for 2020/21 is absolutely embarrassing – the winners receive a paltry £25,000 and the losing club receives £15,000.
The men’s FA Cup? Second round-proper winning teams win more than the winners of the women’s FA Cup at £34,000. I’m not demeaning those clubs as the vast majority will be non-league teams for whom that money is a lifeline – but we’re talking about two sets of professional footballers winning not even comparable sums of money. The FA justified this with the following statement:
Whilst we recognise there is currently a significant disparity between prize money for the men’s and women’s competitions, these are determined by the amounts of money generated through commercial revenue, including national and international broadcast rights.
Nobody is expecting the prize fund for the women’s FA Cup to be £1.8billion, but some realistic figures are expected. The £25,000 paid to the winning team doesn’t even cover a fraction of Lucy Bronze’s reported salary. It would barely cover a month’s salary for eight and a half players earning £30,000 per year (assuming my D-grade maths is right). This doesn’t even factor in the even more paltry sums paid to players in the Premier 15s (bearing in mind Red Roses internationals only started getting paid in 2019).
Outside investment, whether through sponsorships or prize money, or even more substantial marketing presence, is therefore more crucial than broadcast infrastructure investment for the very simple reason of causality. Without that money in the first place, there’s no way teams/organisations can invest in making themselves broadcast ready.
Investing in women’s sport is literally the only way that the sports we love can progress, however women’s sport is still being let down.
📸: Women’s VS Men’s FA Cup prize money
Outside Bodies Continue to Let Down Women’s Sport
As that statement from the FA shows, some organisations are happy to talk a good game about backing women’s sport, but when it comes to doing something, they would rather stare at their piles of money and think “ah well, nothing we can do here”.
I say some, but there are the occasional benevolent organisations out there. The US Open has awarded equal prize money to both male and female tennis players since 1973 – women’s football fans will notice that this is only two years after the 50-year ban on women’s football was lifted.
The All England Club, the organisers behind arguably the most prestigious tennis tournament, Wimbledon, have awarded equal prize money to both male and female players since 2007 – people with eyes will notice that this comes some 34 years after the US Open instituted its policy.
The FA have taken some steps towards lessening their status as villains by ensuring that both sets of England international footballers are compensated equally while on international duty. This was also recently agreed between the FAI and the Republic of Ireland international women’s football team and came after agreements between the teams and governing bodies in Brazil, Norway, Australia and New Zealand.
So, yes, sometimes the organising bodies are putting their money where their mouths are – but not often enough. The FA’s marketing and commercial prowess could easily help facilitate big sponsorship deals for the women’s competitions which would inevitably increase the global profile and prize money of those cups. Vitality’s impact as a sponsor can’t be understated (and their willingness to sponsor the Netball Super League, IT20 contests and England Hockey must be commended), but they don’t have the same international reputation or allure that UAE-funded Emirates do for the men’s competition.
Outside investment does so much to progress things – since Barclays’ originally agreed to become the first title sponsor of the WSL in 2019, it’s safe to say that generally, things are looking bright. According to a Sky News report in April of this year, Rothschild, an investment bank, were being tapped up by the FA to investigate the potential to create a spin-off commercial arm dedicated to the WSL. Private equity giants CVC Capital and Bridgepoint were reportedly keen on acquiring a stake in this new commercial arm which would open-up astonishing opportunities for the league, the Championship and all of women’s football in the UK. While private equity is not always a good thing, its interest in the WSL bodes well for the long-term success of the league.
The last of the positive examples concerns DAZN and how obscenely good the deal between it and UEFA is. Rather than geolocking or hiding behind a paywall, the London based streaming-service has made all UWCL broadcasts from the group-stage onwards, for the first two season of its four-year deal, completely free to watch and available on YouTube. The deal is mind-boggling from the point of view of accessibility meaning that more countries will see greater numbers able to watch the Champions League and greater visibility for potential sponsors and investors. So, while the broadcast deal itself is essential, it’s even more crucial in how outside investors will have no excuse to see its quality first-hand.
📸: DAZN & YouTube x UWCL
As a whole, sport organisations and governing bodies need to do more for women’s sport, both on and off the pitch. I first wrote this article without knowledge of the horrific and disgusting abuse of power that’s been exposed within the NWSL.
I think it’s crucial to acknowledge that alongside the issues of prize money and broadcasting infrastructure, one other area of womens sport need investing in: making sure that abusive men are allowed no place within womens sport.
The old boys’ networks that persist within sport, both male and female, only lead to abuse, harassment and assault.
Leagues need to invest in proper investigations, proper transparency and proper leadership. That the WoSo community was more aware of the issues than Lisa Baird publicly wanted to admit speaks volumes.
Nobody should ever feel like sport cannot be their safe space, their release, their home. Investment in womens sport should also mean investment in protecting and supporting players.
All of this brings me, rather neatly, to my final point.
It’s Going to Take a While – But It’ll Be Worth It
I can’t educate anyone on the virtues of patience from the perspective as a white man. I have had everything handed to me from birth just by virtue of those two characteristics. I can’t tell women’s sports fans that the process of increasing investment in women’s sport is going to take a while, because many of you have been following these athletes since well before I was born.
All I can say, from the perspective of someone who has recently joined this incredible world, is that yes, we need more women’s sport on TV. Yes, it’ll take outside investment to make that happen. Yes, governing bodies need to step-it-up. Yes, the process will be arduous, and God-damn will there be drama – but the wait will be worth it.
Will the money ever be as obscenely high as it is in men’s sport? Maybe – maybe not. Women’s sport is already a massive spectacle (the UWCL final couldn’t have been more entertaining even if it tried), all it needs is the investment to propel it front and centre.
While the road to improved gender equality in sport will be long and tedious, there are many victories to celebrate and history being made by sport organisations and governing bodies globally which makes the growth journey of women’s sport even more exciting and worth following!
Written by James Whitehead
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