Sport for Women

Sportswomen Care

'Sportswomen Care' is our plan for enhanced media coverage of women’s sport.

The proposal is centred on four key strategic objectives which taken together deliver a total care plan for enhancing the profile of women’s sport in the media.

First, Some Questions

  • What is the definition of women’s sport with respect to the media?
  • What determines the current level of reporting?
  • What do we view as an equitable coverage of women’s sport in the media?
  • How long should it take us to achieve this?
  • What form should it take?

Key Observations

  • The media influences people’s behaviour.
  • If we don’t get the message exactly right and press the right buttons we will send the wrong message.
  • Women’s sport’s job is to get the media to embrace our message.
  • But, the media listen to their viewers not the sports so exactly what are their objectives?
  • Direct women’s sport messages to peer group leaders who deliver insights to their group.

Our Plan

Our plan for enhanced media coverage of women’s sport:

  • Invest heavily in elite women’s sport – make a number of women’s sports professional and competitive with other products in the market whatever they are.
  • Two’s a conflict – three or more is a specialism – package Professional Women’s Sport as a separate and distinct package from men’s sport.
  • Create separation from the back page and link women’s sport to what women want not what men think they want. A separate page in the paper, a dedicated slot on the sports news and the launch of a women’s lifestyle channel where 50% of the content is women’s sport.
  • Create a centralised women’s sport news aggregator to provide consistently packaged women’s sports news pulled from all sports and pushed out regularly to the media as well as being able to be fetched independently.
  • Sportswomen Care: create a women’s sport media briefings road show aimed at persuading media organisations to report and support more women’s sport. ‘Meet the media’ events to inform, impress and influence media people across the board from mogul to journalist.

Insight

  • We need to counter the instinct to dismiss women’s sport without giving it due consideration.
  • We need to change the reasoning behind the women’s sport offer, the messages we deliver to the consumer.

Invest

  • Invest heavily in the best you have – Professional Sport
  • Invest heavily in Professional players – they are your unique content, not the team nor even the sport.
  • Invest heavily in professional administrators who deliver first class solutions at every touch point.
  • Train the players, the administrators and all the employees in the organisation off the field as well as on it.

Inform

  • Women in sport = women viewers, readers and listeners plus business men and women responsible for women’s products and services and women in politics, together with sports players and administrators.
  • Inform with consistent messages.
  • Inform with small interactions.
  • Invest time in delivering messages to leaders and influencers in the media. Inform frequently and with relevance.

Influence

  • Change the message.
  • Change the behaviour of the recipient.
  • Repetition.
  • Consistency.
  • At every level on every occasion.

Expected Outcomes

  • 5 professional women’s sports in 10 years.
  • A dedicated women’s lifestyle channel with 50% sport content.
  • TV and Radio Sports news to contain separate women’s sport sections within 2 years.
  • A separate page or pages dedicated to women’s sport in every major newspaper within 2 years.
  • Create a women’s sports news agency online to centralise women’s sports news and consistent provision of professional news information delivered into the media.
  • People do business with people –Women sport on the road – brief the media in a multi-channeled information briefing around the country once every six months.
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