{"id":1648,"date":"2017-09-20T10:15:04","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T10:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/?p=1648"},"modified":"2017-09-20T10:19:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T10:19:03","slug":"womens-sport-2017-is-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/?p=1648","title":{"rendered":"Women\u2019s Sport 2017 is On Fire!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Helen Owton<\/strong><\/p>\n

The summer of 2017 has been an outstanding season for women\u2019s team sports.<\/p>\n

Team success!<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Netball Quad series earlier this year, the England Roses missed out on the title by just one point to the Australia Diamonds at Wembley<\/a>. England beat India by just nine runs in a dramatic world cup final at Lords thanks to Anya Shrubsole\u2019s remarkable bowling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ki4li8pSKlA<\/a><\/p>\n

The England football team reached the semi-finals losing to the home nation, Netherlands at EURO 2017 but becoming national heroes<\/a>. The Red Roses steamed<\/a> into the Rugby World Cup final with an intense game against the very strong side of New Zealand, the Black Ferns. It wasn\u2019t the happy ending they were looking for but the nation got behind the event to watch two of the best women\u2019s rugby teams in the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Record High Viewings!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not only has the Nation been so successfully in so many different sports, but the public have demonstrated a huge hunger for more! The women\u2019s EURO 2017 viewing statistics hit record highs of 4 million, beating Celebrity Big Brother and the British Bake Off marking the highest audience figures for Channel 4 this year (Kennel, 2017<\/a>).<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=L09K1qg1i9c<\/a><\/p>\n

Earlier in the year, the England v Australia Netball game drew in half a million viewers on BBC2. Women\u2019s cricket is also in high demand selling out Lords with 26,500 people and 1.1 million tuning in to watch the World Cup on Sky (Whaling, 2017<\/a>). Recently, the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup, held in Ireland reported a record total attendance of 45,412, a peak of 2.65 million tuning in to ITV in the UK to watch the final between England and New Zealand and a vast increase in social media engagement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tegaH2Gf3bw<\/a><\/p>\n

Looking ahead, this trend is likely to build rather than fizzle with 80,000 tickets having already been sold for the Women\u2019s Hockey World Cup 2018<\/a>. Household names are cashing in on women\u2019s sport with Vitality, Investec, and SSE sponsoring various sports and television companies are battling to secure broadcasting rights for women\u2019s sport. Now, Kia have continued their investment with the Ladies\u2019 PGA deal<\/a>. It seems that the opportunity to watch women\u2019s sport has never been better and it is an ideal time for other brands to invest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Indeed, as Sally Munday highlights: \u201cEven more encouragingly, terrestrial TV broadcasters have played a big part in this incredible summer of women\u2019s sport. The UEFA Women\u2019s EURO\u2019s were shown live on Channel 4, the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup Final was broadcast live in a primetime slot on ITV, and Channel 5 has just announced that it will show women\u2019s cricket domestic highlights in 2018.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, when I read about sport or listen to the news, I\u2019m wondering why there isn\u2019t more of a distinction so I know whether they are talking about men\u2019s sport or not. We can\u2019t just say \u2018Football\u2019 and assume that it is men\u2019s football.<\/p>\n

*Gender and Sport is a topic covered in the E314 module on Contemporary Issues in Sport<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Helen Owton The summer of 2017 has been an outstanding season for women\u2019s team sports. Team success! In the Netball Quad series earlier this year, the England Roses missed out on the title by just one point to the Australia Diamonds at Wembley. England beat India by just nine runs in a dramatic world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,32,94,31,29,6,8],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-1648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e314","category-equality","category-football","category-gender","category-helen-owton","category-sociology","category-sport-psychology","tag-womens-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1648"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1655,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1648\/revisions\/1655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/OU-Sport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}