A role model for Germany
In the Women’s Super League, England’s top division for women, viewership has doubled since 2017. Sky Sport and the public broadcaster BBC will broadcast the games. Barbara Slater, director of BBC Sport, said of the TV deal last year: “We are delighted to offer the Super League an open access platform to ensure the sport and players are exposed to the widest possible audience .” A look at Germany shows that this is not normal.
In this country, the women’s Bundesliga has only been broadcast on pay TV on “Magenta Sport” since 2021. Previously, only two games per matchday were broadcast live there. The change was an important step, but the rights holders of the men’s Bundesliga, Sky and DAZN, have not yet shown the games of the women’s Bundesliga. After all: DAZN has been broadcasting the women’s Champions League games since last season.
The German captain Alexandra Popp recently told “Sport Bild” that the lack of inflow is also due to marketing. The fact that a “big partner like ‘Sky'” shows all the games in England, for example, “should also be a role model for us”.
More fans watch English women’s league
England are ahead of Germany when it comes to women’s football. That’s why national player Sara Däbritz said about the current major event on t-online: “It’s a great stage to present ourselves to. We hope that we can take the fans from our country with us.”
Chantal Hagel, who is under contract with TSG Hoffenheim, also said to t-online: “The fans come to the stadium and want to support the game. Not because you say: ‘Now look at the women’, but because they want that. Just great.” In England, around 20,000 spectators come to a league game. In Germany, far fewer people make the journey to see the players in the stadium.
“Equal pay” in the national team
There are developments in English football not only at club level. Innovations have also been established with the “Three Lionesses”. A big step: The female players get the same bonus payments as the men.
“We’re not that far in Germany yet,” Gwinn complained in an interview with t-online (read more about it here). In other countries it is: 16 participants in the Women’s European Championship have announced that they will implement “equal pay” or have already done so: the host nation, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In England, the step was already implemented in 2020, Norway, for example, was even closer to it.