A total of 106,000 women in Britain have taken part in cycling programmes organised in the first six months of 2013 through British Cycling and Sky.
The numbers are ahead of expectation and in line to achieve the ambitious target set after the Olympic Games last year of attracting 1 million new women cyclists by 2020.
24,000 of those involved have participated in races helping to raise the level of competitive sport as well as recreational riding and the figures show what can be achieved when a fully planed and implemented programme is put in place.
As we highlighted at The Business of Women’s Sport Conference at UCD Smurfit Business School earlier this year, Women’s sport delivers a big return on investment for companies looking to access sport.
This week AIB added Camogie to its roster of All Ireland Club Championships in Gaelic Games while Tesco is an increasing supporter of women’s Gaelic Football. The FAI and IRFU are putting resource behind support of the women’s national teams and the Women’s Premier League in soccer is raising standards and has more teams participating this year than ever before.
The simple fact is that the perception of Women’s sport has yet to catch up in business minds with the reality. More and more it is featuring on mainstream television and the Independent newspaper in Britain has given a firm pledge to raise the level of content it carries about women’s sport.
Sport for Business is developing it’s Sport for Daughters initiative which has already drawn significant commercial support and which will be launched early in 2014.
In 2014 Sport for Business will be developing core groups of members with an interest in particular areas to collectively bring fresh thinking to the relationships that exist and can be enhanced between sport and business. Women’s sport will be one of those groups and we will be announcing details of the others later over the coming months.
The next Sport for Business Round Table on Sports Analytics is now full but bookings are still being taken for our seminar on Sports Tourism which will take place at the GAA Museum in Croke Park on November 7th. We will be revealing our full line up of speakers for that early next week but you can secure one of the few remaining places by booking here.
Sports Analytics Round Table ** Sports Tourism Seminar ** Irish Sponsorship Awards ** Sports Philanthropy Round Table ** Youth Sports Conference ** Sport for Business 20/20 for 2015
