The landscape of professional women’s sport has changed significantly in recent years, with record viewing figures and match-fee parity for England’s women cricketers. National sporting bodies, including the England and Wales Cricket Board, have taken steps to level up pay for male and female players. Meanwhile, the Women’s Sport Trust reports that the average viewer watched eight hours and 44 minutes of women’s sport in 2022 compared to just three hours and 47 minutes in 2021.
The rise of women’s sport has also benefitted grassroots sports for girls. These changes signal a shift in attitudes towards women’s sport and female athletes. Lisa West, head of policy, partnerships and public affairs at Women in Sport, said, “it only needed the little bit of investment that it’s had in the last few years to demonstrate how capable women are…Showing a glimmer of what women’s professional sport could be has opened people’s eyes. We’re having conversations that we wouldn’t have dreamed of 10 years ago.”
While big money and star billing have made their way to the upper echelons of women’s sport, it’s hoped that these initiatives will inspire change in attitudes towards amateur clubs and school sports halls as well. National sporting bodies have leveraged pay parity to effect change, but pro sports offers its own set of challenges as clubs and athletes often chase sponsorship and broadcast deals. To find funding streams, women’s sport has turned to investment funds, with private equity firm CVC purchasing a stake in the US Women’s Tennis Association for $150m (£120m) in March.
The rise of women’s sport has been dramatic, with the Women’s World Cup watched by a global audience of just 63 million in 2019 but a 30-fold increase to around 2 billion people in 2023. Nevertheless, it’s not just on the pitch, court, or athletics track that positive developments are happening. Mary Peters, who took home an Olympic gold medal in the pentathlon during the 1972 games, remarked on the transformation of women’s sport in recent years, “it used to be two lines on the back page if you were lucky.”
Ultimately, the shift in women’s sport has been significant, drawing attention to how much further it could progress. The hope is that a new era of women’s sport represents a high point from which things will only continue to improve
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