Sara Matthews from ODISEE looks at how women's sport is becoming mainstream and the investment by big brands
Back in March we celebrated International Women’s Day.
It is generally agreed across a number of reliable data services that the world population is over 49% female, and yet women are still not being treated equally.
But there are signs of progress – women’s sport is an excellent example. Undeniably it has taken time but sitting down to watch women’s sport on key channels like Sky Sports and the BBC is a real gamechanger.
Barclays have signed a three-year sponsorship deal investing £30m in women’s and girl’s football – this is a new record for investment in UK women’s sport and the bank will be the first title sponsor of the FA Women’s Championship.
In international football, PepsiCo announced a five-year sponsorship deal back in August 2020 with UEFA. Pepsico sponsors both the UEFA Women’s Champions League and the UEFA Women’s EURO. The latter starts on 6 July 2022 with the first match seeing England play Austria.
In wider sport, Mastercard became the founding global partner of World Rugby’s Women in Rugby programme focusing on growing youth participation and raising the global profile. They also became the first worldwide partner for the Rugby World Cup in 2021 and the next one in 2025. They will also be the first global partner of the WXV due to start in 2023.
And Vitality continues their sponsorship of the naming rights of the England national netball team in addition to being the official title partners of the Vitality Netball Superleague.
If you take a look at the Deloitte report on women’s sports revenue it shows the signs of real growth in sponsorship and broadcast rights. Now would be a great time for brands to get in at the ground floor and gain the upper hand in supporting women’s sport and with sponsorship and broadcasting rights comes the opportunity to ensure elite sports women’s pay, bonuses, prize pools and conditions improve too.
Sport can and should lead the way in ensuring that women are treated fairly and equitably for being the elite sportspeople they are. It is 2022, it’s about time we changed the narrative.
Want to know more about how to create diverse and inclusive organisations – contact sara.matthews@odisee-strategies.co.uk or go to the website www.odisee.co.uk
https://www.internationalwomensday.com/
https://womenscompetitions.thefa.com/
https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/
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