How women’s sport can survive covid: Blow Sh!t Up

Covid-19 has brought sport to a complete standstill and with it a grinding halt to the momentum women’s sport has gained over the past 18-months.

With women’s sport schedules decimated, salaries cut and advertiser budgets dwindling, women’s sport is struggling to hold on to the gains it has made and is at risk of going backwards.

The only way to ensure the type of future that women’s sport rightfully deserves is to blow the game up.

Covid is sh!tting on women’s sport

The sports world is in uncharted waters but Cheri Kempf, Commissioner of National Pro Fastpitch Softball sums up the current situation for women’s sport perfectly;

“If the seas get choppy and rough and you're out there in a yacht, you can go downstairs and live it up and ride it out. Men’s sports are the ones on the yacht. But if you’re out there in a canoe, and seas get choppy, you’re in big trouble. And that’s women’s sports. You know we’re out there riding around in a canoe”

5 Reasons why women’s sport is about to get battered:

1. Pressure on short-term revenue

While most organisations are onside with the value women’s sport can provide, sport bodies have gone into survival mode and are focused on cash flow to weather the storm. Attention will move to programmes that can deliver the greatest commercial return in the short term and unfortunately in most sports this means the men’s game will be prioritised over the women’s game.

2. Re-shuffled sport schedules

The sports calendar has been wiped clean and the absence of pivotal women’s competitions this year like Wimbledon, Olympics, UEFA Women’s Euro and the launch of The Hundred mean a lost opportunity to build on the momentum women’s sport was experiencing.

On top of that we’re seeing men’s schedules getting priority over women’s schedules. In Australia return dates have been announced for the NRL and AFL with no mention of the NRLW or AFLW re-starting.

3. Vanishing salaries for athletes already on the brink

While athletes across the board have had to take pay cuts, female athletes are being more severely impacted due to their lower salaries. A 70% pay cut for Barcelona’s teams still means a more than liveable wage for it’s male players especially for their star, Lioness Messi who earns €600,000 per week. For their female counterparts it may mean the end of their professional career as they are forced to look at other avenues to make ends meet. In sports like golf and tennis incomes are heavily driven by appearances which in this current environment are non-existent and means young talent coming through may be lost as they struggle to support themselves.

5. Lack of champions pushing the agenda

Head of FIFA Women’s Football, Sarai Bareman acknowledges that women’s sport is often viewed as a ‘cost exercise’ and can be last on the agenda unless there are decision makers pushing it. The majority of management positions have a bias towards older, white males and while a lot do value women’s sport they may not be aggressively pushing the women’s sport agenda like they are the men’s game.

6. A more digital and competitive entertainment landscape

Covid-19 has forced businesses to rapidly transform in order to survive and we’re seeing more sophisticated digital entertainment offerings. You can stream a spectacular Cirque Du Soleil performance, watch live gigs of the best musicians in the world, join real-time fitness classes or stream the world wide cinema release of Trolls. Women’s sport now has to compete for attention in a more digitally savvy and cluttered entertainment environment.

It is time to blow the game apart

Photo by Getty Images partnership with Women’s Sport Trust

The one positive to come from covid-19 is that it has provided women’s sport with a chance to stop and take a long hard look at itself. What is evident is that the game was in a pretty crap position before covid-19 came along. Women’s sport was receiving a dismal 4% of all sport media coverage and 0.4% of total sport sponsorship. Sport bodies fought against their own players in court, telling the US women’s soccer team that they were inferior to their men’s team. One of the best athletes in history; Serena Williams appeared at just 67th place out of the top 100 earning athletes last year and she was the only woman on that list. The top female competition’s were relegated to second-grade UK football fields and the outside tennis courts in Australia.

Women’s sport has been seen as the little sister to men’s sport and has been playing a game it was always going to lose. It’s time for women’s sport to create a different, new game. One it can own and actually win.

Rewriting the rules

Women’s sport already has the foundations to create a bolder game for itself:

1. Less red tape

Many men’s sports find themselves being held back by layers of decision making, stringent sponsorship clauses, player egos and complex rights deals that make it near impossible to create significant change quickly. Women’s sport is predominantly free from these shackles and can be a more creative, flexible and innovative product.

2. Less tradition

While there are huge advantages for men’s sport having a 100-year head start on women’s sport, it is also plagued with tradition and conservatism. New ways of doing things are often met with trepidation. This results in a culture absent of fresh thinking and missed opportunities. Women’s sport relative youth means it is able to operate in a more agile and progressive way.

3. Inclusive

According to Nielsen, people consider women’s sport cleaner and more family-orientated than men’s sport. These are hugely positive traits that can be leveraged to create a brand and community where everyone feels welcome. Women’s sports diversity and scandal-free environment can widen its appeal and fan base.

4. Accessible and relatable

37% of people consider men’s sport to be money driven compared to just 9% for female sports and many male athletes are on obscene salaries with access off-limits. On the other hand, female athletes more often than not can be easily approached by fans and are on incomes more comparable to the average person making them more relatable which can fuel a real connection with people - huge in this current climate.

5. Less to lose

The one upside to having such a poor investment and coverage track record is there is less to lose. This often means more appetite for risk which can produce ground-breaking initiatives from sponsors, sport bodies and athletes that can push the game forward.

Adding rocket fuel

While women’s sport has the foundations to build a bolder future for itself, it needs to adopt a radical new mindset and take brave action.

6 principles that need to be adopted across all stakeholders:

Principle 1: Amazon’s ‘Institutional Yes’

Many sport ogranisations have fueled a culture where it is easier to say ‘no’ than ‘yes’ as they may not want to rock the boat. This mentality holds the whole ecosystem back from thinking creatively to progress the game.

Women’s sport needs to embrace Amazon’s ‘Institutional Yes’ to encourage fresh ideas and better ways to solve problems. Amazon’s default answer to new initiatives is ‘yes’ and their leaders are constantly looking for a way to say yes which is a great way to establish an environment where nothing is off-limits. Hiring the right people and having senior leaders instill this culture is key to its success.

Principle 2: ‘Dream Crazier’

Nike told women to dream crazier and this is the mantra women’s sport needs to live by. Initiatives that have worked in the past should be put on steroids and new ones need to be pushed to the extreme. Women’s sport has to become the biggest, boldest and most exciting version of itself to accelerate growth.

Nike’s Dream Crazier marketing campaign featuring Serena Williams

Principle 3: Cross code and cross country collaboration

While there is some great cooperation that occurs between organisations there needs to be more ambitious collaboration across nations and sport codes.

An example would be content collaboration between England’s Lionesses and the US Soccer Team who could take advantage of TikTok’s popularity with female athletes via a dance battle. It would provide a cost effective opportunity for both teams to cross pollinate audiences, reward football fans, build up their player’s personalities and leverage their rivalry (who can forget Alex Morgan’s tea sipping celebration during their anticipated World Cup semi final clash).

Another example could be a sponsorship collaboration between NZ Football and NZ Cricket who team up to offer a bundled sponsorship package that provides an integrated 12-month calendar of action, wider audience reach and more comprehensive benefits that work harder together for enhanced sponsor value and fee.

Principle 4: Collective action

Real Heroes Project featuring 13 of the top sport’s leagues supporting health workers

Women’s sport can be more than the sum of its parts if there is focused collective action rather than siloed efforts, messages, talent and learning. While there are fantastic global organisations that bring stakeholders together and advocate for women’s sport, is there an opportunity to super-charge these forces in a more integrated and ambitious way?

We’ve just seen the biggest sport’s leagues including NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, MLS, NSWL, WTA, WWE, NASCAR, ATP, USGA, EA Sports and Blizzard eSports unite for the first time to honour the pandemic’s ‘Real Heroes’. Could a unified global campaign by women’s sport sponsors, who essentially fund media outlets through advertising revenue, apply a collective voice and pressure to ensure women’s sport receives half the sport’s news coverage?

Could it be as simple as creating a talent pool of the best minds that could be accessed by the women’s sport community, enabling best-in-class work and a seamless flow of learning. It could be a more scaled and global version of the likes of Manaaki that was put together to help NZ small businesses navigate covid-19.

Principle 5: Embrace failure and new technology

A culture of not being afraid to fail fast needs to be embraced. Encouraging women’s sport to test, learn and adapt will lead to innovation, improved efficiencies and better experiences. Emerging sport start-ups are desperate to break into the sport’s industry and often willing to test technology prototypes for free. Women’s sport needs to become early adopters of this technology and deliver ‘world firsts’ to excite fans, sponsors and drive the game forward faster.

Principle 6: A hyper-focus on fan experience

In a world with so much choice and such little time, fan experience has to be put at the heart of everything. The sports that are delivering what fans crave rather than what they want to do are coming out on top. Women’s sport can ensure a sustainable future by providing a truly fan-led offering focused on experience. Whether that’s creating the best physical entertainment at the sports arena, injecting fans into the game, creating personalised mobile content during ticket purchase or sponsorship activation on match day, it all needs to be focused on adding value to fan’s worlds.

Summary

Covid-19 has completely disrupted the world and brought a grinding halt to sport with women’s sport set to see the biggest impact.

However, it has also presented an opportunity for women’s sport to disrupt itself and create a new bolder and braver game that it can own and gets the media coverage, investment and opportunity that it deserves.

Women’s sport already has the foundations to succeed:
a) Less red tape
b) Not bound by tradition
c) Inclusive
d) Relatable and accessible
e) Less risk

Covid-19 could be the most exciting thing to happen to women’s sport but it requires a brave new mindset and bold action that includes:
a) Adopting a ‘Yes Mandate’
b) Living Crazier
c) Collaboration across countries and codes
d) Leveraging collective action
e) Being agile
f) Truly fan-centric

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How Women’s Sport Can Survive Covid