In the UK, 2021 was a record year for women’s sport as 32.9 million people watched from home, according to the Women’s Sport Trust (WST).
The report cited football’s FA Women’s Super League (5.9 million) and cricket’s The Hundred (4.9 million) as the biggest driving factors to the record-breaking year, with almost 11 million viewers accounted for between the two competitions alone. While the Women’s Super League has enjoyed tremendous growth since its first season in 2011, it was The Hundred’s first year.
The Hundred is a shortened form of cricket, with each side batting and bowling for 100 balls. What made The Hundred unique was that both the men and women’s games were given equal weight with the large majority of matches played back-to-back at the same venue, which meant that attending fans could watch two games with one ticket.
Sky Sports and BBC broadcast all of the women’s The Hundred matches, along with the men’s, and the overall success of the inaugural tournament played a huge role in viewing figures. Interestingly, however, the WST’s findings also show that 25% of viewers that watched either women’s matches from The Hundred or the England women’s cricket team did not watch any men’s cricket on TV in 2021 (a year that included a men’s Ashes test series).
Women’s Sports Viewership on Free-to-Air Television
Free-to-air television channels, such as the BBC and ITV, brought a total of 19 million new viewers to women’s sport in 2021 (again, the Women’s Super League and The Hundred being the driving force). Of those, 2.9 million viewers had not watched women’s sport on subscription channels (such as Sky Sports and BT Sport) despite viewing pay-TV channels during the year.
This would imply that there remains a huge opportunity for subscription television channels to grow their coverage of women’s sport, especially when the report also states that 79% of females that watched did so exclusively on free-to-air channels. Even as television viewing declines overall, with the rise of streaming and on-demand services, women’s sport has bucked the trend and the signs suggest that 2022 will be even bigger.
Tammy Parlour, CEO and co-founder of the Women’s Sport Trust, said: “The importance of free-to-air, alongside Pay-TV coverage, in bringing new audiences to women’s sport should not be underestimated.
“Domestic competitions such as The Hundred and the Women’s Super League are the perfect gateway to viewing more women’s sport and I look forward to seeing the impact other major international events this year will have on future viewing figures.
“We know how important these major events are in growing viewership figures but we want this growth to be sustainable, driving greater habit amongst audiences, to ensure women’s sport continues to be visible, viable and unstoppable.”
Female Role Models in Sport
When girls pick a sport to play it helps that they have a role model to look up to and, with the increasing audience that women’s sports are enjoying, there will be no shortage of women for girls to look up to. In 2021, British tennis sensation Emma Raducanu was featured in four of Sky Sports’ top 10 women’s sports stories online and there were 8 million Google searches of her name in September off the back of her US Open triumph.
As well as Raducanu in tennis, a sport that is generally regarded as being fairly equal between the sexes, another name that has enjoyed great attention in recent years is Fallon Sherrock, who broke the glass ceiling in the otherwise male-dominated sport of darts. Sherrock earned her nickname the ‘Queen of the Palace’ by reaching the third round of the 2020 PDC World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace, becoming the first woman to win a World Championship match.
Raducanu, who was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and Sherrock are just two female role models that young girls have to look up to, with many others to pick from. As girls participation in sport continues to grow, it is fair to expect to see many more Raducanus and Sherrocks emerge over the coming years.
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