Generating more visibility for women in sport.
Change The Channel began where all good ideas do – the pub.
Kelsey Freeman my Co-Founder and I were chatting about women in sport and the lack of airtime they get – only 4 – 10% of all sport coverage in Britain is women’s sport (Women in Sport and Nielsen Sport, 2018). Disgraceful. So we decided to do something about it.
We knew people wanted to watch the Women’s World Cup (8.7 million people in the UK are keen to watch women’s sport), yet venues just didn’t seem to be showing it.
With women’s football having such a huge and growing fan base, we knew it was the right time to encourage more places to show the WWC.
To help generate more visibility for women in sport, we created the Change The Channel initiative, urging pubs to screen the Women’s World Cup. We did more than change a few channels - we changed opinions about women in sport. As featured online at ELLE and Vice, and the BBC 6pm news.
Not only did we drum up press support but industry support too. Associate Chief Executive of the British Beer & Pub Association got behind us, as well as football publications & communities.
We also partnered with nightlife app DUSK to curate a bespoke edit on their app, highlighting all of the pubs and bars for progress where you could also get a free drink.
We were blown away by the response with hundreds of people and venues getting behind us.
We know this is just the start of having more role models and portrayals of healthy body image on our screens, as well as helping prevent girls and women from becoming disengaged with sport as they get older.
We created this initiative with the hope that it’s not needed in the future.
Watch this space…
Source: Women In Sport and Nielsen Sport, ‘Where Are All The Women?’, 2018
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