Women’s sport fans still need to be ‘better served’ despite record-breaking viewing figures

January to May was the highest watched five months ever for women’s sport, with many fans believing now is the time to set up a dedicated channel for coverage, a new study has found.

The likes of Sky Sports, BBC, DAZN and BT Sport have hosted major events such as the Women’s FA Cup and Women’s Six Nations this year.

Each broadcaster has seen the investment pay off – with the Women’s Super League (WSL) notably bringing a younger audience over to both Sky and the BBC.

New research, released to mark the launch of a partnership between the Women’s Sport Trust and The R&A ahead of this year’s AIG Women’s Open, found that despite the record-breaking women’s sport TV viewing figures in 2023, viewers feel they deserve more.

Over two-thirds (68%) of committed women’s sports fans would like to see greater innovation in women’s sports broadcast coverage, the study found.

While many recognised the importance of women’s sport being shown on free to air TV -82% of committed women’s sports fans agreed with this – 61% said they would like to see a dedicated women’s sports channel. 

The data poised questions on how future investment could be shaped.

40% of this committed women’s sports fanbase claim indicatively that they would be willing to pay a small subscription fee to access a dedicated women’s sports only channel, with fans claiming £7 a month would be a fair and reasonable price to pay per month. 

The study also shows committed women’s sports fans are more likely to be responsible for the household budget than committed men’s sports fans (70% vs 64% for men’s committed fans).

Tammy Parlour, CEO and co-founder of the Women’s Sport Trust, says accessibility is key moving forward.

She said: ‘While women’s sport continues to demonstrate significant growth, both existing and new fans of women’s sport need to be better served by rights holders, broadcasters and sponsors providing the content formats they most want to consume and making them easier to access.

‘Just as broadcasters such as BBC and Sky have made live women’s sport easier to access on TV and been rewarded with record-breaking viewing figures this year, we need to ensure that a greater range of digital experiences are available to fans to satisfy growing audience interest. 

‘This will help ensure we build greater habit with domestic leagues and competitions and create opportunities to monetise this growing and commercially valuable fanbase.’

In terms of match coverage, the Women’s Sport Trust and R&A research found that best shots/goals highlights packages, player skills, game play and tactical analysis, and player personalities and stories are the content strands which appeal most to committed women’s sports fans. 

However, fans feel these types of content are not always easy to find.

More than half (58%) of committed women’s sports fans wish there was more non-live women’s sport content available and nearly half (47%) of committed women’s sports fans believe it is difficult to know where to find non-live women’s sports content.

Similarly, only half (52%) of committed women’s sports fans feel enough notifications are available to follow women’s sport, in comparison to two-thirds (69%) of men’s sports fans.

The Women’s Sport Trust also found that, in total, there are currently six million committed fans of at least one women’s sport in the UK.

That’s compared to 16 million committed fans for at least one men’s sport.  Of these fans, just 3% (around 180,000) were committed fans of only women’s sport.

The Women’s Sport Trust study, carried out by Gemba, showed that committed fans of women’s sport consume on average two hours less per week than committed fans of men’s sport, which in part may be due to the ease of access of the content. 

Most of the content that committed fans consume is live – 62% for committed women’s fans and 67% for committed men’s fans.

While the BBC, Sky and ITV have seen massive growth in viewership, non traditional outlets have also seen huge success. 

There were 50 million views on DAZN’s dedicated UEFA Women’s Champions League YouTube channel.

And across the 2022/23 season Total viewing figures increased by 17% from the 2021/22 campaign.

The new report has been unveiled at a topical time in women’s sport, after a nervous wait to find out how the Women’s World Cup would be broadcast.

Kicking off in Australia and New Zealand in July, FIFA had claimed bids for TV rights to the tournament were ‘a slap in the face of all the great Fifa Women’s World Cup players and indeed of all women worldwide’.

The BBC and ITV have now agreed a deal to broadcast the Women’s World Cup but other countries, such as Japan, still face the same struggle.

Tammy, who previously spoke to Metro about 2022’s record-breaking figures, hopes the study can help provide clear evidence to companies regarding the ever-rising wave of women’s sport.

She continued: ‘We welcome the commitment from The R&A, through this collaboration, to delve deeper into the fandom of women’s sports and look forward to working with them to help them to use this insight to better serve engaged women’s sports fans and continue to grow the visibility and commercial viability of women’s sport.’

Jackie Davidson, director of Golf Development at The R&A, added: ‘The Women’s Sport Trust’s insight and expertise means they were the perfect partner in delivering insight into what fans look for in women’s sport. 

‘This research is the first of its kind to involve the golf industry and we believe it will be very helpful in shaping our strategy over the next few years to meet the needs of our fans.’

You can read the report in full, here.

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