If you didn’t get a chance to attend the webinar I posted, you can catch up here!
To summarise:
Research produced by the Women’s Sport Trust shows women’s sport is reaching a community of fans in the UK, on TV and digital channels, who are more engaged than ever before. A record-breaking number of people also turned up to watch women’s sport live in the UK in 2023.
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The average viewing time spent watching any women’s sport across Free-To-Air and pay-TV increased by 16%, year-on-year, to 10 hours and 7 minutes per person in 2023 (from 8 hours and 44 minutes in 2022).
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The latest visibility research, with data and analysis from Futures Sport & Entertainment, also revealed a record-breaking broadcast reach in 2023 with 46.7m people tuning in to watch 1+ minute of women’s sport on linear TV – almost 1m more than the previous high in 2019.
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This growth was replicated across digital with 25.7m streams of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 on BBC iPlayer and 15.6m streams on ITVX. On BBC iPlayer, this is a 75% increase on the Women’s World Cup 2019.
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On social media, TikTok drove the biggest increase in video views with the Barclays Women’s Super League (BWSL) increasing 268% year-on-year to 150m views. This was higher than the NWSL and WNBA league accounts making the BWSL the leading domestic women’s league on TikTok.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the TikTok Women’s Six Nations (now Guinness Women’s Six Nations) saw an annual increase in views of 586% on the channel.
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In terms of who is watching women’s sport, it continues to attract a new audience. 15.6 million people watched the Women’s World Cup 2023 who didn’t watch women’s sport before the tournament. 43% of these new viewers went onto watch women’s sport after the tournament: 33% watched the Barclays Women’s Super League (BWSL), 12% watched the Solheim Cup and 9% watched The Hundred.
“Women’s sport is attracting more younger, female fans which is great news for the industry as it shows we are starting to attract a distinctive fanbase. The more we can understand the motivations driving their connection with live women’s sports, the more this will enable us to build richer experiences for them in and out of the stadium, and ultimately deepen their fandom,” concluded Parlour.