Coverage of women’s sport is pathetic at the best of times – the lockdown has made it even worse
Cast your mind back to the summer of 2019. By the second week of July, the FIFA Women’s World Cup had just come to a thrilling climax in Lyon, France. The USA collected their fourth trophy and the tournament attracted more than one billion viewers across the globe. In the UK, the city of Liverpool was about to host the netball World Cup and the annual Wimbledon tennis championship was underway.
There was a buzz about women’s sport in the British media like perhaps never before. The BBC referred to it as the “summer of women’s sport”, launching the female-led #changethegame media campaign. In research commissioned by the Women’s Sport Trust, a six-week period between June 7 and July 14 found near parity in the coverage of women’s sport compared to men’s sport. On the BBC Sport website, nearly half of the homepage stories featured women’s sport, and it also