Women’s Sport Monday on Sport for Business
Since before last year’s conference on the Business of Women’s Sport, Sport for Business has been a passionate advocate of Women’s sport as providing a breakthrough opportunity for brands that want to catch the next wave of sporting excellence.
Over the weekend we were pleased to see two very strong articles in the British and irish media highlighting those arguments and lending weight to the simple notion that Women’s sport provides the scope and skill to deliver for commercial partners.
It is one of the main criticisms of Women’s sport that media coverage lags behind and yes, that certainly remains the case but across print, online and broadcast media Ireland’s women rugby stars received more coverage than would ever have been the case before, and the same was true in Gaelic football where the Dublin women’s team got strong coverage for the start of their season this weekend.
There are so many reasons for promoting women’s sport from equality, to fitness, participation to cold commercial return. This is still only the beginning but we are more confident now than ever before that when the generation of players lining out at age 12 for schools and teams this week get to the age when they will be playing at the highest level, that the coverage and commercial support open to them will have reached a much more natural state of equilibrium.
Helena Morrissey, CEO of Newton Investment the sponsors of what will be the first equally stages Women’s University Boat Race in London next year wrote this compelling opinion piece in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph outlining the disparity between boys and girls participation and how the skills of sport translate to business and should not, must not be denied to girls.
Then on Sunday in our own Sunday Independent, John O’Brien looked at the grassroots growth taking place here within Women’s sport and highlighting how much still needs to be done by looking back at the first stirrings of equality in sport that were created here within Government circles more than a decade ago.
Jenny Jones became Britain’s first ever medallist on snow at the Winter Olympics on Sunday, continuing a trend in our near neighbour’s Olympic tradition where it is women who lead the way. All these single triumphs can add up to a movement that is as important for society as it is within our own smaller world of sport.
