As women’s sport surges into the mainstream, its greatest obstacle is no longer the need for greater visibility but the inability of its gatekeepers to know how to engage its new audience.
Take the draw for the latest Women’s League Cup. It was broadcast live on TikTok, hosted by content creator GK Barry and her partner, Women’s Super League 2 player Ella Rutherford. The event quickly descended into chaos: a ball was pulled out, accidentally dropped back in, only to be drawn again; Barry cracked jokes, made crude sexual innuendos, openly admitted she didn’t know the clubs or their colours, and even joked she would have “rigged” the draw if she had known what she was doing.
The point at which WSL officials probably folded in on themselves was when Barry asked, “What do we think of Tottenham?” The reply, as the Arsenal chant goes, might just have served as the most honest review of the whole draw.
That botched performance was the latest example of a wider failure among publishers and broadcasters to understand what “fandom” in women’s sport now looks like. Consider the farcical demise of Sky Sports Halo, launched in mid-November as a TikTok channel “for female sports fans”. Within three days of its debut, the platform was pulled after an avalanche of criticism: its pastel graphics, “hot girl walk” captions and matcha latte jokes aimed at women were widely condemned as patronising and tone-deaf. It felt as if we were merely a few days away from an explainer of the offside rule using handbags and shoe shops. Despite promises to “champion female athletes”, the first 11 videos included almost as many male stars as female ones. “We didn’t get it right,” Sky later admitted. Well, quite. It is a blunt reminder that you can’t build a genuine women’s sport audience by infantilising the product.
Meanwhile, on the field and in the stands, a different kind of story is being told. The 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup, won by the Red Roses, proved beyond doubt that women’s sport can break into the mainstream, be powerful, and is capable of filling arenas. The final, at the 82,000-capacity Allianz Stadium in Twickenham, drew in 81,885 fans – the largest crowd ever recorded for a women’s rugby match. Roughly 444,500 tickets were sold to the tournament overall, more than triple the turnout for the previous women’s Rugby World Cup.
On that day in late September, the Red Roses gave fans something to believe in. Here were real women, including two mothers, happy to speak out about identity, race, body positivity or online hate. Ellie Kildunne, above, became the de facto poster girl of the tournament, but what made the moment unforgettable was its authenticity. Women with busy lives, women with diverse backgrounds, vulnerable yet fearless, became national icons. It felt like a reckoning: women’s sport could draw crowds and adoration.
Yet as quickly as the cheers died down, many moved on. An impromptu balcony celebration for the Red Roses the next day at Battersea Power Station drew only a fraction of the thousands at the Allianz. The domestic league hasn’t had the boom that it might have hoped for. Whereas the WSL attendances rose by 181% after the Lionesses won the Euros in 2022, the PWR’s attendance for the first four rounds of the season has risen by 81.2% when compared with the opening four rounds of last season. The PWR will not disclose its exact crowd figures, but they are a slice of the crowds attending the WSL (see page 13 for WSL attendances).
The problem is that the domestic league hasn’t been supercharged by the momentum of the Red Roses, who don’t play again until the Women’s Six Nations in April. Lionesses fans had to wait 90 days to see their team play again after winning the Euros. Red Roses fans have to wait 196. The Lionesses’s match against China on Saturday was their third since winning the Euros again on 27 July. Of course, the main reason for the Red Roses not playing again in the autumn was so that the PWR could get started, but the appetite to prioritise the domestic game has not been matched by fans.
At the Sports Personality of the Year Awards next month, England’s Ellie Kildunne is 66-1 to win. That should worry England Rugby. This is their star, the playmaker of their World Cup-winning campaign, and she is barely in the conversation to win. The award for Team of the Year will be decided by a live public vote on the night, which gives the Red Roses a chance of some success, but oddmakers have it at 2-1.
This is not because fans don’t care. On the contrary, the appetite for women’s sport seems voracious, but what matters now is retention. Broadcasters and publishers don’t need gimmicks, female-oriented cutesy branding, or social-media spectacles: they need consistency, respect, and narrative. The attempt to shrink female fandom into pink stickers and memes is rooted in prejudice: in the belief that women cannot appreciate nuance, tactics, or raw athleticism. Halo and that League Cup draw proved this assumption wrong.
If the 2025 World Cup did anything, it showed that women’s sport can deliver what men’s sport has offered for decades: great drama, star power, collective identity, and big, passionate crowds. But we won’t get a sustained shift simply by releasing one blockbuster tournament every four years. The next two editions of the Women’s Rugby World Cup will take place in 2029 and 2033, in Australia and the United States respectively, and the inaugural women’s Lions tour happens in New Zealand in 2027. The time to build on the momentum the Red Roses have created this summer is now. Miss this bus now and it’s a long walk back.
Photograph by Ryan Pierse – RFU/The RFU Collection via Getty Images