It is clear that attention is growing, with two-thirds of the population now expressing an interest in at least one women’s sport, as revealed by Nielsen research. This is translating to significant growth in viewership, with average viewing time of women’s sport on TV in the UK more than doubling per person from 2021-22, according to the Women’s Sport Trust. Hot on the heels of this viewership growth, UEFA women’s euros sponsorship value increased from €3.5million in 2017 to €16.5million in 2022. The organisation is setting their sights on €30million worth of sponsorship in 2025.

Despite this momentum, the women’s sports market still has a long way to go from a commercial perspective. Even given the impressive growth in fan interest, when considering media rights, sponsorship and ticket sales, the UK women’s sports market is valued at an estimated £350 million, which only represents 5% of the overall national sports market. Even if the value of women’s sport trebles as anticipated, it will still only account for a maximum of 15% of the total market, as found by analysis from SportsBusiness, ESA and Statista.

This means there is still space for growth, and significant opportunity for the businesses and organisations who can take advantage of this untapped potential. Broadcasters and streaming platforms are an essential component of this ecosystem, as giving fans access to top-tier content is at the heart of growing interest and therefore the commercial value of the sports.

However, recent rights negotiations highlight the massive disparity in value between men’s and women’s sports. In 2021, the FA struck an £8million deal with the BBC and Sky to broadcast the Women’s Super League. In contrast, the men’s Premier League rights were valued at £4.8billion in the same year. This debate came to the fore in recent months, with FIFA threatening a Women’s World Cup “broadcast blackout” in Europe as they felt they were being provided with insufficient rights offers. A deal was struck between FIFA, the BBC and ITV to air the rights in June, just five weeks prior to the tournament.

This represents something of a ‘chicken and egg’ situation for broadcasters when it comes to women’s sport. Some broadcasters may not wish to invest much in women’s sports rights, or show women’s sports at all, as they expect these would attract lower viewership, generate low returns on their investment, or adversely affect their ratings. But, broadcast deals are a critical catalyst to enable women’s sport to gain a following, drive up viewership, and ultimately create value.

Broadcasters and streaming platforms need to break this cycle and recognise the trajectory of rapidly growing interest and engagement. This needs to translate into a willingness to invest in rights, marketing and production over a sustained period to grow the audience and fan base.

Once the rights are secured, broadcasters can deploy a number of strategies to help grow the fan base, increase engagement, and ultimately grow the value of women’s sports:

• Programme the sports prominently: Give them prime time slots, ideally not behind a paywall, and make sure they’re featured in news, publications and ad breaks.
• Accompany them with shoulder content: News, documentaries and behind the scenes content build interest.
• Create a buzz through marketing: Accompany the content with ancillary marketing campaigns to build momentum.
• Support athletes’ promotional activity: Fans, particularly younger ones, increasingly look to engage with individual athletes as ‘brands’. Working with the sportswomen’s talent agents to get them in front of the fans – whether in programming or on social channels –– is key.
• Commit long-term: It takes years to build a franchise. Long-term commitment enables broadcasters to lock in sponsors to unlock investment in the sport.

Tennis is a good example of where women’s sport can go with concerted effort behind it. Take the US Open – last year, the women’s final attracted 2.4 million viewers, compared with 2.1 million for the men’s final. This is the fifth time in the last seven years the women’s final outperformed their male counterparts. Where engagement is at parity,  commercial value can reach parity, too – the WTA and ATP generate equal sponsorship revenue, at approximately $30 million, according to Nielsen research.

Getting these strategies right is a win-win for broadcasters. It will enable them to close the value gap between men and women’s sports, and position them as the beneficiaries of the commercial potential that will be unleashed. Those that invest early will reap the rewards.

The club has said the service will include hundreds of hours of archive footage, in addition to documentary content such as Antonio Conte: 202 Days  — a documentary about the team’s Italian coach’s first few months in the job. Tottenham F.C. tapped Endeavor Streaming – a digital video technology company – to power the service.

Spursplay will be available for an annual subscription of £45, reduced to £35 for season ticket holders and club members.

Pete Bellamy, SVP of Global Sports and International M&E, Endeavor Streaming, said: “We are incredibly proud to be partnering with Tottenham Hotspur in delivering a brand new OTT experience. Spursplay is the first of many team-based direct-to-consumer services we will launch in sport across the US, EMEA and APAC. The direct-to-consumer ambitions of top-tier clubs and teams go well beyond the technical delivery of video.

“The leading sports organisations require a partner who can advise and execute the most direct path to growth in both consumer engagement and revenue. At Endeavor Streaming, it’s our job to ensure that Spursplay delivers for the Club and its fans to the highest level”.

Pierre-Olivier Bouche, Media, Programming and Operations Director at Tottenham Hotspur F.C., said: “We believe Spursplay will revolutionise the way fans access Club content. We know that fans are itching for the return of live Spurs action and Spursplay will be the only place for that this summer.”

In other football streaming news, FIFA has launched its first CTV app for its streaming service – FIFA+ – on Hisense VIDAA-powered devices. The service offers the equivalent of 40,000 live games per year from 100 member associations, as well as 11,000 women’s matches per year. The offering includes highlights, goals, interactive games (such as votes, quizzes and fantasy games) as well as news and tournament information.

Guy Edri, President of Hisense’s VIDAA platform, said: “Since launch, FIFA+ has been giving a new voice to so many fantastic stories from across the world of football, and Hisense is proud to amplify them even further by adding the platform to our VIDAA-powered devices. We’re also incredibly excited to announce the daily show, a new format for tournament coverage that will put fan culture at its core.”

Charlotte Burr, FIFA’s Director of Strategy, Corporate Development and FIFA+, added: “This is an important step for FIFA+, and we’re excited to work with Hisense as we grow the platform. Innovation is a key focus for FIFA and so Hisense’s VIDAA-powered TVs is a natural home for the FIFA+ app. Football fans with connected devices will soon be able to experience our extensive content collection directly on to their Hisense TVs.”

In 2018, Real Madrid launched its own 360º channel and Virtual Reality channel, through its collaboration with virtual reality company, The Dream VR. The sports team then partnered with Cinedigm in August of last year to expand the reach of Real Madrid TV to linear and AVOD platforms across North America.

At the time, Erick Opeka, President of Cinedigm said: “Soccer is the most popular sport in the world with an extreme level of fandom. Partnering with Real Madrid, and giving this global club an exclusive home to many of the biggest OTT distribution partners in North America, will allow viewers to experience never before released content in the United States.”

During the LaLiga season, Real Madrid TV streams two to three matches from the Spanish football league per week, in addition to UEFA Champions League matches. The channel also provides coverage of Real Madrid training sessions, club news conferences and classic match replays.

“The French parliament has recently adopted a new law that will allow us to fight more efficiently against live event piracy and request the blocking of illegal services by technical intermediaries such as ISPs,” said Mathieu Ficot, Deputy General Manager at the Ligue de Football Professionnel. “In light of this exciting perspective, we are collaborating with Viaccess-Orca, the expert in anti-piracy services, to protect our premium content and revenues. With VO’s Anti-Piracy Center, we shall be able to monitor the illegal redistribution of LFP content by IPTV networks in real time and request immediate action against piracy.”

In a bid to clamp down on sports content pirating activity, the French parliament adopted a bill earlier this year which has widely been seen as favourable to rights-holders and broadcasters. The bill – “Démocratiser le sport” – contains a legal provision which allows French courts to issue “dynamic injunctions” to immediately block, de-reference or remove pirate website or servers in violation of distribution rights. The injunctions will hold for 12 months and also applies to any “mirror” websites created after it has been issued. In one of the largest financial rulings by a French court, five defendants were ordered to pay to pay €7 million in damages to beIN Sports France, Canal+ and RMC Sport after being convicted of piracy related charges, shortly before the bill passed.

Research conducted by MUSO –  a company providing data on unlicensed media consumption – shows that piracy is a major issue for France. In 2020, 4.3B visits to websites with pirated content came from France, placing the republic at 6^th place on the global piracy visits ranking, below the U.S. (12.5B), Russia (8.3B), China (6.9B), India, Brazil and Ukraine.

An Ampere Analysis survey of over 6000 sports fans aged between 18-64, revealed that 51% of sports fans consume sports content from pirate services at least once a month. Conducted in March 2020 across ten markets – including Brazil, Egypt, Germany, India, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, UK – the survey also showed that 29% of respondents using illegal sites and services had paid these services for access.