The NFL sacrificed millions to talk up women’s sport during the Super Bowl. Here’s why

At the end of last month, a Six Nations game at Twickenham set an attendance world record of almost 58,500 for a women’s rugby match.

The England v France fixture eclipsed the previous record of 42,579, set just five months earlier at the Rugby World Cup final at Eden Park in Auckland, and raises the possibility that organisers of the 2025 tournament will sell out the 82,000-capacity Twickenham for the final.

Contrast that with two of the lowlights of this year’s Super W competition.

GIO Stadium’s facilities for the Super Rugby men’s and women’s double-header in Canberra last month couldn’t take the four teams. The Waratahs women had to change 10 minutes down the road at the Australian Institute of Sport and walk to the ground before their clash with the Brumbies. They suffered the indignity of being locked out of the AIS when they returned after their win.

Then there was the case of back-to-back Super W champions the Fijiana Drua, who were fed by Brisbane’s rugby community in the lead-up to a crunch match against Queensland, because of the Fiji Rugby Union’s financial struggles. For a team jointly funded by the Fiji Rugby Union and the Australian government, under the PacificAus Sports soft diplomacy program, it is difficult to accept this happened. That the Drua went on to knock out the unbeaten Waratahs and trounce Queensland a second time to win the title is a credit to their toughness.

Last year’s Henson Park debacle was another example, with Hawthorn’s AFLW team complaining about substandard facilities at the inner-west ground. Their claims included cockroaches in toilets, one basin in the away change room, no basin in the toilets at all and a shower some players refused to use.

GIO Stadium hosted 11,000 for the standalone women’s State of Origin decider last year.Credit: Getty

In its seventh year, the AFLW will expand to 18 teams and offer $1 million to the club with the most wins across the men’s and women’s competitions, but any team that plays the Giants in Marrickville might need to pack their own disinfectant wipes while waiting for the trumpeted upgrade of Henson Park.

It is the classic story of women’s sport in Australia in 2023. Ravenous consumer appetite for the premium product – Sydney’s Accor Stadium is on track to host more than 75,000 for the Matildas’ World Cup opener against Ireland in July – ballooning grassroots participation numbers, widespread community expectation that the women’s sport be treated, covered and funded equally and a middle order full of holes. Facilities, sports science and that perennial challenge: pay.

NRLW players will earn $30,000 a year, on average, for a nine-week competition that will include four new teams this season. Television ratings were strong last year and the increased remuneration drew players from rugby, leading Waratahs coach Campbell Aitken to plead for talent-sharing between the codes. While rugby’s national teams give athletes the opportunity to earn a living wage or better, the five-week Super W competition lags well behind its rivals in AFL and rugby league.

The science of women’s sport is decades behind the research on male athletes. Mainstream recognition that female athletes need separate data is itself an alarmingly recent development.

There are many projects under way in Australia. The NRLW and AIS are working together on a study into the impact of menstruation and hormonal contraceptives on women athletes; the rate of ACL (knee) injuries in AFLW and women’s football is a major topic of research, and the AIS is preparing to announce a major concussion study on female athletes, in partnership with a global body.

The central challenge, however, remains the commercialisation of women’s football codes. There is blanket recognition that it is the best way to attract new fans. Take the NFL, which devoted prestigious and lucrative seconds in the Super Bowl half-time break this year to promote its investment in the women’s game. But spending is still written off as “loss leading” or “deliberate investment”.

FIFA, that behemoth of world sport sitting on almost $6 billion in cash reserves, can’t get what it wants for the Women’s World Cup broadcast rights this year, moving president Gianni Infantino to threaten a television blackout if European broadcasters did not up their offers. Notwithstanding valid questions about FIFA’s historic bundling together of the women’s and men’s media rights, Infantino termed the disparity “a slap in the face” for players and all women. It’s hard to disagree.

In New Zealand, the same tournament that set a world attendance record for women’s rugby last year was also a major contributor to the governing body’s $NZ47 million loss. Deliberate or not, it shows the stark gap between the funding required and the short-term return on investment.

Despite those facts, there is no sign the pace of change will slow, as long as the commercial chiefs at the FIFAs, World Rugbys, AFLs and NRLs of the world view women and girls – the last untapped market – as their final frontiers.

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