After over a decade of advocates of women’s football fighting for more support from broadcasters and the Football Association there has been a huge breakthrough. Last week, an announcement of a £24 million investment in women’s football over three years by the BBC and Sky Sports was released, which is a huge win for women’s football.
The 2019 World Cup was celebrated as a great turning point for the sport due to the big television audiences and unprecedented levels of interest, particularly in the winning US team.
However, the clear difficulty of current circumstances, including the awful lack of equality of pandemic rules that have seen girls’ football stopped whilst boys’ has continued, means that this investment has come as a huge shock.
The money is expected to bring changes such as: increased prominence on television, 44 live games shown on Sky channels and 18 on BBC 1 and 2, improved status and visibility of role models for young girls, narrowing the gap dividing opportunities on offer to male and female players.
Although it remains important to separate the male and female games as the men’s has had decades to develop whilst women were banned from playing professionally between 1921 and 1969, there have been huge developments and improvements, especially now.
Written by Pippa Seager
Artwork by Delicia
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