Over the last decade, women’s football has expanded vastly as a sport.
More and more fans are piling into grounds, with an increase of around 1,400 spectators a game in the 2019/20 season, in comparison to the season prior.
This season, Arsenal’s game against Chelsea in the Women’s Super League brought in 8,705 supporters to the Emirates Stadium, displaying a five-goal thriller that the hosts came out on top as 3-2 victors.
But has the media coverage of the sport seen an increase parallel to the expansion of the sport?
A 2006 evaluation of seven national and regional newspapers discovered that the average space dedicated to women and girls’ sports was just 4.8% of the total, and only 5.2% of all articles were devoted to female sports.
There has of course been a rise since then. Media coverage for the 2015 World Cup was greatly increased. Of 124 articles published, 70 of them were from broadsheets (56%) and 54 from tabloids (44%), with the consensus that all newspapers increased their coverageĀ in comparison to the previous Women’s World Cup. The Independent had featured an article every day of the tournament, bar one.
These figures are only rising – at the most recent 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, over 1.12 billion fans across the globe tuned in to watch, in comparison to just over 750 million for the 2015 edition.
Several top media sites have ran campaigns to push the expansion of media in women’s sport, with the BBC running theirĀ ‘#ChangeTheGame‘ campaign, which delivered live coverage of the Women’s FA Cup Final, Women’s World Cup, Netball World Cup, Wimbledon, Women’s Ashes and World Athletics Championships in 2019.
A MediaCom and talkSPORT survey highlighted the demand for more coverage of women’s football, with the World Cup creating 2.4 million more fans and 66% of viewers enjoying the content.
With so much demand for more coverage, why is there a delay in major publishers pushing it further?
We spoke to Middlesbrough Gazette Sports Editor Dom Shaw, who voiced his opinion on the current coverage of the sport: “Media publishers and media companies are definitely taking more interest and putting more resource behind women’s football.
“Over the last few months I’ve seen several examples of The Athletic, The Telegraph and other major publishers taking on specific women’s football writers.
“This obviously gives more credit to the sport when they have experts who follow it week in week out writing about it.”
Whilst coverage of the top divisions of women’s football has seen an increase, the lower leagues are still suffering from a lack of it.
In Teesside, the Middlesbrough Women are still without a link to the men’s team across town.
The lack of affiliation with Boro has a great impact on the coverage they receive – as other than the media they produce, they struggle to find themselves in the local media.
Graham Falk is one of the media team at the Teesside club, and spoke on the issues on the current media coverage for his side: “Sadly, for many getting into the game, they’re barely aware of anything below what the FA class as ‘elite’ level.
“Obviously I work with a top Scottish Premier League side and a third division women’s English team, and getting coverage for Middlesbrough outside of myself can be really difficult.
“A lot of that comes down to funding. If you’re backed by your men’s team at this level, you can punch a little more, but when you’re not affiliated and you are your own club, then the money and funding is bare bones – it’s not helped by the fact that we would have very little coverage if it wasn’t for our media department, me, Dan and Zoe.
“There are times during the COVID spell when third division media teams would be sharing coverage between each other because the one voluntary media man or woman had a COVID scare or was ill.
“Move up to the Championship or WSL – you don’t have to worry about buying a fancy camera, or editing highlights – it’s done by external media, which then allows you to focus more on fun, promotional stuff which effectively puts them ahead in terms of output.
“It’s clear to see that whilst the media side of women’s football has risen over the last decade, it is still behind the rise of the sport.”
We also spoke to the manager of Middlesbrough Women Andy Campbell, who told us his thoughts of the media coverage in the sport and how it would benefit a club such as Boro:
Whilst we have seen an increase in the media surrounding women’s football, it’s clear to see that this has failed to trickle down the league system in the sport.
The improved coverage of the Women’s Super League and World Cup are a welcome addition to modern day sports reporting, but the lack of media on the non ‘elite’ sides is something that still needs to be pushed.
Hopefully we’ll be seeing teams such as Middlesbrough getting the mainstream coverage they deserve in the next decade.
Second year Sports Journalism student.
