One in five Australians believes the media adequately covers women’s sports, according to a finding by MKTG Sports and Entertainment‘s research report, FanSpeed, which delves into the state of gender equity in Australian sports.
While respondents were concerned by the lack of equity in media coverage, almost half (41%) perceived men’s and women’s sports as equal, this latest finding marked an 8% increase from the last study in March.
The study, which is powered by dentsu Sports Analytics, measured various equity metrics across performance, media coverage and accessibility, revealing the ease of finding women’s sports games on TV was the most significant driver of gender equity perception – up 14% on the March study.
Australian’s perceptions of equity in quality of play and competitiveness both rose by 10% respectively between the March and October study.
Meanwhile, younger Australians and female Australians exhibited higher perceptions of gender equity and experienced the highest increases in 2023.
Matt Connell, MKTG MD APAC, said 2023 was a “pivotal year for women’s sports” with Australia and New Zealand hosting the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
“While we celebrate the substantial increase in gender equity perceptions, with 41% of Australians now recognising men’s and women’s sports on equal footing, our ultimate goal is to achieve 100% acceptance. To accomplish this, we must continue to work on increasing media coverage and financial support of women’s sport, as they remain the most significant barriers to reaching that milestone.”
Craig Roberts, global head of strategy and product for Dentsu Sports Analytics, said the research “sets a baseline for how far from parity we are on access and visibility of women’s sport compared to men’s. Now we have the data, the challenge to our industry is how quickly can we improve these metrics by expanding access, improving quality of coverage, and shifting perceptions of performance and competitiveness for women’s sport?”