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    Media coverage

    All credit to WSC for their wall chart and features in the latest issue. The latest 11 Freunde has a pullout supplement, but it's so flimsy that it seems a somewhat token effort. I tweeted them about it yesterday, but they did the sensible thing and ignored me. Kicker as usual has had virtually fuck all in the build-up so far, and its coverage of the women's game is generally negligible - maybe they'll have something next week if they're not too busy interviewing Bayern players and asking them how fantastic all their achievements are.

    The Guardian seems to be covering the run-up well. Any impressions of media coverage from other outlets and/or countries?

    #2
    The BBC are promoting it and other Women's sporting events heavily this summer (the Netball World Cup is happening in Britain at much the same time). They even have a hashtag and everything...

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      #3
      Who is screening this in the UK, can anyone tell me? BBC or other?

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        #4
        The Beeb's coverage.

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          #5
          Cheers GO. Hope there are some streams as I can't watch BBC.

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            #6
            I've seen a fair few trailers on Fox for their coverage. It's unsurprisingly focused largely on the US team. I've almost always see the trailers with the volume off - I've taken to mostly watching sports muted these days as even baseball commentators irritate me - so I don't know the reason but most of the trailers seem to have footage that looks like it's taken from a video game.

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              #7
              Canadian media generally do a decent job, partly because the WNST is pretty competitive, and the NBA and NHL playoffs are just about done shortly after it starts. This year, though, the WWC clashes with the Gold Cup, so the Women's team will be competing with the Men for attention.

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                #8
                Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                I've seen a fair few trailers on Fox for their coverage. It's unsurprisingly focused largely on the US team. I've almost always see the trailers with the volume off - I've taken to mostly watching sports muted these days as even baseball commentators irritate me - so I don't know the reason but most of the trailers seem to have footage that looks like it's taken from a video game.
                Appealing to the FIFA generation, maybe?

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                  #9
                  An article about Jamaica on 200%, which also promises some more pieces - http://twohundredpercent.net/2019-wo...-jamaica-rise/

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                    #10
                    OTF is a medium, too: a call to arm(chair)s!

                    We often decry the gender balance in the media’s coverage of sport, don’t we? And when we do so, we mostly focus on broadcasters. But actually, whilst they could certainly Do Better, I think we are tilting somewhat at the wrong windmill.

                    I can’t find the article now (searching this evening has only found similar versions, each with some of the following numbers), but I distinctly remember reading a report on this subject which noted that Women’s sport accounts for 10% of the total time of TV sports coverage. But that dropped to 5% of the space in Newspaper reportage. And, and this is the kicker, only 2% online. And, really, online is the true indicator of what people are watching and talking about as people write/post/tweet etc. about what they want to without having an editorial policy to follow.

                    I would expect everyone on here to be supportive of the various drives for equalising what Women Footballers are paid to the Men, the Maltidas being the latest side to point out the differential. But in terms of the income generated, the Women’s World Cup returns a much higher proportion than the Men’s to the players. The 2018 Men’s World Cup realised over $6billion for FIFA from the various commercial revenue streams. Of that $400million, or 7%, was paid back to the competing teams as prize money. The Women’s event will pay only $30million total, but that is from income of $131million. Or, um, 23% paid out.

                    The response to that is TV companies and sponsors underpay for Women’s sport rights. Really? The numbers above don’t support that suggestion at all. Both are putting more into than there appears to be a general appetite for. Whilst the Men’s sports rights market is cut-throat, the Women’s is more of an obligation. If all TV companies were paying what they had to, rather than what they felt they ought to, that number would likely be even lower. TV doesn’t market Women’s sport? Again, have you seen the BBC, Guardian etc. recently? But has it had an impact? Anecdotal evidence can tell us something on this - who, today, had a conversation about this tournament, the pinnacle of the sport for Women and the recipient of a significant marketing push? Or even overheard anyone else talking about it? I hope some of you did, in fact I hope some of you instituted such a chat (we will get to that!), but I know I didn’t hear it or start one. England-Scotland in Football is about as iconic a sporting confrontation as exists in sport in Britain, and yet as far as I can tell nobody where I work cares. I can assure you, that doesn’t happen for the Men’s World Cup or for big Men’s club matches.


                    So, what does this have to do with us? We need to acknowledge that we, as a collective, are part of the problem. That is what we need to address. Going back to the title, we are part of that 2% coverage of Women’s sport online. We are a community named after Football, and if our discussion isn’t solely sport, it features quite prominently in what this website is about. But how much of it covers female players and teams?

                    I’ve been tempted to do a count of posts to see how well we stack up against the 2% number for ages as I feel it sounds about right, but I’ve never found the time to trawl through. However, this forums existence provides at least an opportunity for snapshot (thanks Snake). At the kick-off of the opening game of the last Men’s World Cup [which, incidentally, was the Men’s tournament we talked about comfortably the least, something that should make the boycotters feel warm and glowy] we had collectively made 1253 posts. As of right now, our Women’s World Cup forum registers 161 posts (only 4 threads into double figures)… Well above 2% I’ll grant, but if we are around a tenth as interested in something iconic like the World Cup Finals compared to the Men’s equivalent, think how many topics in the rest of the four year cycle for the Women’s sport fail to clear the bar of being worth mentioning at all?


                    So you want to do something political to support the idea of Women’s Footballers getting equal pay? Well, I believe there is a route. And it’s not protesting about the coverage or going on Twitter to point out the sexism of it all*. Leave that to the Women involved to do for themselves, they don’t need well-meaning men (which we mostly are on here) to make the case for them. No, it’s more personal than that. Consume the thing. Watch the games. But more than that, talk about the games with friends and colleagues and on here. Spread the word. Yes, force the discussions to start if necessary. Never, ever let yourself be sidetracked into meta-discussions on the merits of Women playing the sport. These are irrelevancies. Be bemused and confused if others are not watching. Ask the pub tomorrow to turn the TV on for England-Scotland, if they haven’t done so. More controversially but I’m convince this is right – do not use the Women’s event as a stick to beat the Men’s game of its perceived failings. That might be well meaning, but it diminishes the Women’s event by reducing it to a prop or a weapon against others failings rather than something to be seen and judged on for and of itself (would you ever bother saying “The [Men’s] [Football] World Cup is brilliant. It makes you laugh at how pipsqueak the Rugby one is!”]. Basically treat it like any other Football tournament, engage with it to that level as much as you can and act as if this is entirely natural (which, of course, it is) and others are weird not to be doing the same.
                    * - as it happens, my most recent Tweet was to decry the sexism of the French Open Semis scheduling. So, um, yeah…


                    It might be a drop in the ocean at the moment, but if Women’s sport is to succeed it needs to be a bottom up revolution, not a top down one. Because the top down one, which is underway, is happening very slowly and with great resistance.

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                      #11
                      Contra Janik, ask the pub on Sunday to turn the TV on for England-Scotland, if they haven't done so, because that's when the game is happening.

                      Booming post though.

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                        #12
                        Long pre game session.

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                          #13
                          Oh, and the game was on without me asking in my local Chinese takeaway. The man behind the counter was watching it.

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                            #14
                            Big like for that post from me, too. WSC itself, and especially its junior magazine Kickaround, have been really strong on women's football lately. I've certainly been talking about the tournament with my children, and my son has gone to sleep listening to this match on the radio after having stuck his Kickaround wallchart on the bedroom door. I asked him this morning who his favourite England women's footballer was and he was quick to answer, 'probably Lucy Bronze or Ellen White.' So that's all good and bodes well for the years to come.

                            And I try on here, though am guilty of letting things wither on the vine sometimes for other competitions after starting off a thread, often because trawling websites for results, reports and highlights is very time consuming.

                            The third prong, yes, duly taken on board. I will make sure I talk to colleagues at least about the England-Scotland game next week. I'd been mulling over doing a sweepstake too, as I did last year. Wish I had :-(

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                              #15
                              There has been quite a lot of coverage in Norway before this World Cup, a percentage breakdown of which would yield the following results:

                              80% about Ada Hegeberg's not playing
                              15% about the Norway team
                              5% whatever's going on

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                                #16
                                Here in Australia telecoms company Optus have the main rights, with free-to-air broadcaster SBS having the opening game, all the Matildas matches, and all games from the quarter-finals onwards. SBS radio has all 52 matches live and in multiple languages.

                                Optus had the main rights to the men's World Cup last year due to government funding cuts leaving SBS with no choice but to sub-lease them. Then it all went belly up for Optus when their app couldn't cope with the demand, everything crashed and lots of angry folk demanded a refund. Cue an embarrased government demanding Optus allow SBS to broadcast the games after all.

                                With the streaming issues now fixed, Optus has gone on the front foot this time around and given the app away for free this month, providing you have a child of school age up to the age of 20. Their marketing spiel is that every school child should have free and easy access to this tournament. So I popped in to one of their stores last Saturday with my son and was given a code which has given me free access. As they never asked for proof he was my child, I could easy loan him out to anyone that needs a kid for this offer.

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                                  #17
                                  Solo is a very divisive figure here, but knows her stuff

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                                    #18
                                    I back Janik's call to tweet, discuss etc.

                                    Here in the media room before Germany-China, it looks about 70-30% in favour of male hacks. Hopefully that will level out more over the coming years. There's a ton of press here from both countries, plus some very posh English voices around, probably The Guardian.

                                    Kicker apparently had a 15-page tournament guide in Thursday's edition. Here in the host country, both L'Équipe and France Football have ramped up coverage this week with specials and previews.

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                                      #19
                                      Record ratings in France: 44 percent audience share,

                                      [URL="https://twitter.com/tf1pro/status/1137253655143432192?s=21"]https://twitter.com/tf1pro/status/1137253655143432192[/URL]
                                      Last edited by ursus arctos; 08-06-2019, 12:17.

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                                        #20
                                        As we went to the Wales women's game on Tuesday my mate said he was trying to persuade the guy who does the office sweep to do one for the WWC. Hadn't been successful at that point.

                                        While I agree with most of what Janik said I want to try and avoid making a virtue out of watching women's sport. If you didn't watch France v Korea last night you missed a good game. That should be reason enough to watch imo.

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by Janik View Post
                                          Consume the thing. Watch the games. But more than that, talk about the games with friends and colleagues and on here. Spread the word. Yes, force the discussions to start if necessary.
                                          I've had two exchanges about the Women's World Cup - one in which I asked a male football fan in my office if he was likely to watch any of the tournament (puzzled expression and a straight No in response) and one in which an email about an office sweepstake was forwarded to me by a female friend, who said she'd drawn China and was wondering if they were any good.

                                          I understand this isn't exactly Janik's point, but at the end of the domestic season just finished I attended a couple of local women's games in the lower reaches of the pyramid. During the matches I texted a few friends with comments on the play. One of them responded with a comment passed on from his girlfriend that I must be "a dirtbag" to do such a thing on my own; someone else sent me a link to one of the players' saucy Instagram account.

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                                            #22
                                            Media coverage in Spanish sports newspapers has been pretty good and free of comparisons with the men's game, The only aspect I find annoying is their habit of calling female players by their first names whereas in the case of males surnames are used,

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                                              #23
                                              That bothers me as well, but appears to be an ingrained part of Spanish football reporting. It is very much a thing in la Liga Iberdola as well, and can make social media confusing (especially as a number of the names are not at all unique).

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                                                #24
                                                Tangentially, most if not all Spanish media change the names of members of the royal family into Spanish; so Prince Charles becomes Carlos etc. This doesn't happen with a commoner (I know, I hate the word as well!) so Charles Bronson remains the same, for example. Does the same thing happen in, say, Italy?

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                                                  #25
                                                  Quite a few of the Spanish players will just have their first names on the backs of their shirts - Celia, Ivana, Leila, Patri. So presumably it is how they like to be referred to.

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