Women Love Sport. Sky Sports Just Doesn’t Get Them.

BBC

Sky Sports Halo collapsed in just two days because brands still fail to understand female sports fans and do not try hard enough to engage with them. Given that women now make up a huge proportion of fans in recent years it is truly shocking they still aren’t getting it.

Sky Sports Halo has been widely received as sexist and degrading towards female sports fans. Sky Sports aimed to create a page where female fans would feel included, but instead got it completely wrong, leaving female fans outraged. Halo was referred to as Sky Sports “lil-sis” in their TikTok bio causing immediate widespread backlash.

I asked Formula One Journalist, Fleur Rogerson, what her initial response to Sky Sports Halo was. She said: “I honestly thought it was a joke at first. Like, I thought it was just going to be a joke. And then they were going to do actual branding, and that was just to gain attention to it, but obviously it wasn't. Then it was just, like, in disbelief of how that was allowed to become a thing more than anything.”.

Sky Sports Halo

The account posted a clip of Erling Haaland charging towards the goal with the words “How the hot girl matcha + hot girl walk hits” in a pink font. The only Formula One video on the account wasn’t focused on the actual sport but instead on Charles Leclerc and Alexandra Saint Mleux’s engagement also accompanied by a pink subtitle. Halo relied on clear stereotypes to aim their content towards female fans and even implied women don’t understand sports to a technical level. All Sky Sports has done is ‘dumb things down’ for women setting a clear idea of what they think female fans are interested in. Women do not need things simplified or made aesthetic to understand a sport they enjoy.

It feels as though Halo has set female sports fans back many years. Women have long struggled to be taken seriously within sport and now have even more work to be done to repair the damage Halo has done. Although, Halo removed the account just 48 hours after it had been posted the damage to the community had already been done, something no apology can undo.  

I also asked Fleur Rogerson if she felt the channel's branding or content unintentionally reinforced stereotypes about female sports fans.

She told me: “I think it absolutely did, because I think already in pretty much every male sport, female fans are a minority. And I think they played on that a lot. Why are we belittling the women when this is what we have to deal with all the time? And actually, we enjoy sports in the exact same way men do.”.

There must have been a much better way to include female fans in sports without diminishing them and treating them differently. Olivia Gale, a Formula One and football Fan from Bahrain has grown up watching these sports and consistently sees issues with female representation. I asked her opinion on how Halo fell short of creating respectful and inclusive media content for women.

Olivia said: “There are so many women content creators who cover sports.  I thought it was going to be content by them that was more targeted to women, just in the sense that it was done by women. Obviously that's not what they decided to do, but I think that's a much better way at including women or making women feel like they have a safe space.

Sky Sports or any sports coverage need to realise women watch sport the same way men do, and they should be more inclusive within their media coverage as opposed to separating women completely.