The successes and hugely increased coverage of women’s sports teams this year seems sure to encourage corporations to provide greater financial support and has given local federations a selling point. However, there is still work to do for female sports teams to secure sponsorship deals anywhere near the scale of those enjoyed by their male counterparts.
Women’s team sports — and especially traditionally male-dominated football and cricket — have attracted headlines for all the right reasons for the past year.
Banyana Banyana won their first Women’s African Cup of Nations (Wafcon) title in Morocco in July last year. They made history, becoming the first senior national team to reach a Fifa World Cup knockout stage in Australia and New Zealand this month.
The Proteas reached the final of the ICC Women’s T20 Cricket World Cup hosted in South Africa in February. The netball Proteas may have failed to shine in the first Netball World Cup hosted in Africa, in Cape Town in July, but locals followed the tournament with keen interest. The host nations’ team thrilled crowds, and a sport that has always enjoyed huge participation in the country boosted its profile as a spectator sport.
Success breeds attention. The media, aware of the exponential growth of events such as the Fifa Women’s World Cup and its ICC equivalents in the past two decades, and the strides made in competitiveness of South African women’s teams, provided the three teams greater media coverage than they have ever seen. On the back of that, there has been talk from federations and the government about the need to get the wheels turning on the path to professionalising women’s sport and achieving pay parity.
Cricket SA heeded the call with the launch of the professional Domestic Women's League last week. A stumbling block for other federations has been a lack of sponsors willing to put their money into women’s sport, with the lack of sustained media coverage a major reason. But increasingly more companies are seeing a gap in the market to come into the relatively inexpensive women’s arena - which, unlike men’s sports, which has reached its ceiling for decades - has huge growth potential.
Nqobile Ndlovu, director and founder of the website Cash N Sport, which reports on and conducts research into business in sport in Africa, said companies want to put their money where there is visibility and a consequent return for their investment.
“The problem is that, while women’s sports are popular and 40% of participating athletes are women, women’s sport gets less than 4% of global media coverage,” Ndlovu told TimesLIVE Premium during a Momentum Women in Sport summit this month.
“Women’s sports are carried in print media less than 4% of the time, they’re on television less than 4% of the time.
“In research carried out between ourselves and Nielsen Sports [a global network of sports analysts], women’s sports was on television on free-to-air less than 800 hours whereas men’s sports was on TV 10 times that. There’s a need for brands to see that the sport is getting visibility, something they advertise on and try to attract [especially] women’s viewers and get a return on their investment.
“That’s a primary reason sponsors are not participating in women’s sports; they don’t feel they can get a return on investments.
“In 2020 or 2021, Nielsen did a survey and found there was an increase in companies wanting to do sports sponsorship because of the amount of exposure they are getting. With women’s sport growing — and it’s an inexpensive sponsorship with great exposure — my colleagues [in corporations] will get involved.”
Companies such as Momentum (women’s cricket), Spar (netball and the Spar Women's Grand Prix 10km Series), Hollywoodbets (the South African Football Association’s national women's soccer league), Sasol (Banyana) and FNB (Springbok Women) have been notable backers of women's sports and athletes despite decades of meagre coverage.
I think it’s a learning curve for everyone because women’s sport has just boomed. I’m sure when men's sports started to just be taking the industry by storm, there must have been hiccups along the way.
— Charlene Subbarayan, Spar sponsorship and events manager
Group chief marketing officer at Momentum Metropolitan Holdings Nontokozo Madonsela said while backing the Proteas Women and gsport Awards might not initially have had the returns in media coverage — though that aspect is growing — it felt like the right thing to do.
“We can’t be a brand that talks about success and not talk about the business of sport, because sport is one avenue where people are brought together. There’s a lot of celebrations, there’s a lot of culture, and I think as a continent and the world, sport is everything,” she said.
“At a general sponsorship level, for teams we can only do so much, but at an individual level women can learn tips and tricks that will advance their ability to make money.”
With the successes of national women’s teams, Madonsela expects more companies to get on board.
Charlene Subbarayan, sponsorship and events manager at Spar Group, shared those sentiments and encouraged sports associations and clubs to capitalise on recent milestones and aggressively approach companies. Apart from major women’s sponsorships Spar is known for backing female sports at grassroots level for many years.
“The journey has been wonderful. It’s so nice to not only see a sport grow but the women grow in that sport. We have been with [South Africa netball captain] Bongi Msomi from the time she started her journey with the Spar Proteas,” Subbarayan said.
She said sports associations need to improve their administration standards to attract sponsors. “Other than that, I think it’s a learning curve for everyone because women’s sport has just boomed.
“I’m sure when men’s sports started to take the industry by storm, there must have been hiccups along the way. I wouldn’t want to say maybe they need to do something to make life easier for us — I think for sport and athletes in general maybe improving the administration behind it would serve everybody.
“I do see more companies coming on board and I’ve seen it now with the Netball World Cup, because when you sponsor an event or a sporting event there is a sponsor committee forum that is formed, and it was very nice to see more companies coming on board."
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