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Despite progress in recent years, women’s sport remains much less broadcast on TV than men’s sport, and free channels highlight it more than paid ones, according to an Arcom study published Thursday.
Overall, women’s sports accounted for 2,350 hours of television broadcasting for the whole of 2021, against only 1,575 in 2018. It thus fell from 3.6% of total sports broadcasts to 4.8%, noted the audiovisual regulator on the occasion of the launch of the annual Sport Féminin Toujours operation (January 30 – February 5).
But at the same time, men’s sport has gone from 29,717 hours in 2018 (67.5% of the total) to 36,284 hours in 2021 (74.2% of the total).
“The share of +women’s sport+ broadcasts in sports broadcasts is still much lower than the share of +men’s sport+“, noted the Arcom, noting all the same”a positive trend break” in 2019.
That year was marked by the Women’s Football World Cup, broadcast on TF1 with “strong exposure” at stake.
In addition, according to the study, “women’s sport is proportionally more present on free general channels (9.1% of the volume between 2018 and 2021) than on pay channels (4.1%)”. And this even though “97% of the total hourly volume of sports broadcasts is carried by pay channels“.
Between 2018 and 2021, “the disciplines contributing the most to the broadcasting of exclusively female competitions on the generalist free channels are football (44% of female sport), tennis (13%), rugby (16%), cycling (11%), handball (6%) and skiing (6%)“.
More globally, “it is difficult to draw very general conclusions from the four years studied” (from 2018 to 2021), because they “all have particular and exceptional characteristics“, however, warns the Arcom.
Indeed, the Olympic Games took place in 2018, and the years 2020 and 2021 were affected by the restrictive measures due to Covid.
The objective of Operation Women’s Sport Always is to “encourage the media to broadcast more sports broadcasts on the airwaves, but also to address issues related to women’s practice of sport“(maternity, place of women in governing bodies…), recalled Arcom.