DAZN is the leading global sports streamer that gives sports fans around the world access to sport anytime, anywhere. A new standard for more quality and consistent women’s sports coverage will directly narrow the global women’s sports viewership gap.
Despite the incontestable excellence of female athletes the world over, there is still a massive disparity in the media coverage they receive.
A global survey by DAZN, conducted in partnership with The Female Quotient, found that 64 percent of consumers don’t watch women’s sports because of three key reasons:
Don’t know enough about the athletes and teams
Don’t have as many opportunities to watch
Aren’t aware altogether of where they can catch the events that are available.
This boils down to the following universal trends:
A significant lack of year-round primetime women’s sports broadcast and news media coverage
Minimal year-round promotion of women’s sports events
Storytelling coverage falling short on consistently engaging fans
However, audience and sports fan interest and passion is there with 66 percent of the total population saying they’re interested in at least one women’s sport and 16 percent (314 million people worldwide) saying they are specifically interested in women’s soccer.
Narrowing the gap
We need to fuel this with more consistent and quality coverage, and the potential impact of doing so could be huge. According to a study from FIFA for example, leagues negotiating broadcast rights exclusively for women’s leagues generate, on average, seven times more revenue from broadcast compared to leagues that don’t.
As a broadcaster, DAZN believes we all rise with more eyes and is committed to improving the global visibility of women’s sports and female athletes — by giving fans easier and better broadcast access, surround-sound content, and behind-the-scenes storytelling.
That’s why we’ve made a long-term investment in the Women’s Champions League, partnering with UEFA and YouTube to remove viewership barriers and — as the competition’s first-ever global broadcaster — making it available for fans to watch, all around the world, for free, on DAZN’s new dedicated YouTube channel. With the group stage having just concluded in dramatic fashion in mid-December, more than 14 million views from 200 plus markets have been accumulated already (including plenty of Canadians tuning in to see women’s soccer Olympic gold medalists like Ashley Buchanan and Jordyn Huitema in action).
As the competition resumes in March, one of the quarterfinal matches — El Clásico on March 30, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid — has seen more than 85,000 tickets sold and is set to break the world record for attendance at a women’s club game.
Clearly, the incredible ripple effect that more eyes will have on the game is already well in motion. Collectively, we can level the playing field by closing the women’s sports broadcast, news media, and social coverage gap.
