Cheers to Independent Sports Media!
This is a dispatch from Kasey Symons,Global Ambassador for Project: Wander Bra, based in Australia. Our ambassadors provide global perspectives on the impact of sports, in partnership with the Women’s Sports Foundation. Follow Kasey’s adventures @kasey_writes
I am so grateful for independent and alternative media covering women’s sports!
What would we do without these outlets? Because let’s face it, the global mainstream media landscape is not doing so well at covering women and gender-diverse people in sport.
As a lecturer at Deakin University, I research women’s sports coverage in Australia. For a long time, the average coverage of women’s sports in mainstream media has sat around 10% of total coverage. The government in my home state of Victoria conducted a study in the lead-up to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup that was on our shores in Australia and New Zealand last year to see if we were improving here in Australia. The good news is that, yes, Victorian sports media did improve. The average coverage of women’s sport increased to a whopping 15%. This means that 5.4 pieces of sports news were created on men’s sport for every one piece created on women’s sport. Wow.
This really comes down to the nature of newsrooms still prioritizing men’s sports, male journalists being gatekeepers, and outlets being reluctant to move away from the routinized approach to sports media that has not really changed alongside the growth of women’s sports.
I researched this during the pandemic and found strong evidence of it. I feared that progress would be set back by the global shutdown of sport. In Australia at the time, we’d just hosted the 2020 ICC T20 Women’s World Cup (that is short-form cricket for those unfamiliar!), where Australia defeated India. The crowd for that final was an amazing 86,174 people, breaking the Australian attendance record for women’s sport.
The MCG on March 8, 2020. It's a night many sports fans in Australia will remember forever!
Things were looking up for women’s sports media coverage, and then we went into lockdown. My research team tracked women’s sports media coverage when all sports stopped, as we feared a dramatic decline after achieving such momentum. But we found that the coverage didn’t change—it still remained around a 10% average. Even with no sport on, men’s or women’s, mainstream media still focussed its coverage on men.
So, while mainstream media continues to miss the mark, thank goodness for the independent creators doing the hard work to keep us informed, up to date, and entertained!
Coming into the Australian summer of sport (yes, our summer is your winter!) I would like to draw your attention to some Australian independent sports media that cover women and non-binary people in sport.
We have a strong independent media scene here that tirelessly covers and champions women’s sports and contributes to the wonderful culture and community of the sports themselves.
The (recent) beginning
Ok, I am going to take you all the way back to 2016 when a group of women became friends through footy and thought, “We should start a podcast.” They wanted to create a show that portrayed the kind of sports conversations they had about Australian rules football that were not reflected in mainstream sports media.
They called the podcast The Outer Sanctum.
Some of you might be familiar with the force that was The Burn it All Down podcast, which is currently on hiatus. (I hope it comes back, but I know how hard that group is working across the sporting landscape in many different capacities, so I totally understand the need to pause the pod!) I think The Outer Sanctum is Australia’s ‘Burn it All Down.
These women talked about the issues no one talked about. They also spoke truth to power—a terrifying thing to do in independent media! They covered women’s football when not many were, and were also their authentic, funny, smart and silly selves and made us all fall in love with them.
The best thing about the women involved in The Outer Sanctum is that they also championed other women and gender-diverse people in sports media. They created a community, went on to build pathway programs for people to work in media, and are just very cool people. They inspired so many to build their own platforms, tell stories, and give sports media a go—including me! In 2020, I, along with six other awesome women, co-founded Siren Sport. And The Outer Sanctum has supported us the whole time. Legends.
Like the Burn it All Down team, they have taken some breaks and don’t record regularly as this work is hard and often requires a lot of emotional labor. But this year, they returned with an 8-part mini-series to get us excited for the upcoming AFLW season and to discuss lots of topics related to women’s sports. Yay!
I thoroughly recommend checking it out (and shameless plug: I was featured on a couple of episodes talking about fandom and pop culture in sports! Such a personal highlight for me!).
Recording the latest season of The Outer Sanctum podcast with Sanctum stars Lucy Race, Julia Chiera and Emma Race.
I’ve also provided some links to a few other independent Australian women’s sports media outlets who are doing awesome things and all contribute to this amazing community of lifting each other up and championing women’s sport collectively.
All sports
The Female Athlete Project is a fantastic platform built by athlete Chloe Dalton. Chloe is one of Australia’s few triple sport elite athletes, playing basketball at the top level in the WNBL, winning a Gold medal in Rio while playing for the Australian Rugby 7s team, and also playing Aussie rules football in the national competition, the AFLW. And now, she’s a media mogul - what a star!
HerWay was created by a young go-getter, Abbie, who began her media journey when she was just 11! What were y’all doing at 11? I know I certainly wasn’t creating a media empire! Abbie does an incredible job covering a variety of Australian women’s sports and will be a force to be reckoned with in the future. Keep an eye on her!
Me with Abbie and ABC Deputy Sports Editor Amanda Shalala (an awesome supporter of independent media!) at the 2022 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Sydney.
Tracey Holmes has been one of Australia’s leading sports journalists for decades. She has led the way in reporting on women’s sports and the intersection of sport, politics, and social justice. She recently left the world of mainstream media and started her own platform, The Sports Ambassador. Her work is second to none; definitely check her out!
Football (Soccer)
Beyond90 has you covered. This team is amazing. The writers, photographers, podcasters and content creators are covering Aussie women’s football, Aussies abroad in leagues across the world and also cover international football. I seriously don’t know how they do it! But these experts often understand what’s happening before mainstream media as they have worked long and hard to build key relationships and win the trust of the athletes. Check out their podcast, too!
Another great pod is The Far Post, which features some of the smartest soccer minds in Australia. This clever quartet started out independently but is now part of the ESPN Australia stable, which shows how good this pod is.
Netball
Netball Scoop is an incredible website and resource for netball fans. The team does not miss a beat, covering netball from all over the world and securing excellent interviews and feature pieces.
For some netty pods, check out The Netty Life and No Dribble.
(And if you know nothing about netball, stay tuned for my next blog post!)
Cricket
Ok, so it's a bit unconventional as independent media (but that is the nature of independent media, right?!). Still, I thoroughly recommend this Twitter/X account, ‘australian womens cricket, with very little context’. Their coverage of Aussie women’s cricket is awesome, and honestly, their tweets just crack me up. The memes, the memes! If you want to get in on some women’s cricket in-jokes, give them a follow!
Aussie rules football
Besides The Outer Sanctum, here are some more cool pods to check out:
Credit to the Girls—This is another example of an independent pod that was so awesome that the league itself picked it up and brought it in-house, a testament to the expertise of the amazing hosts.
The True Bloods and The Footy pods do both men’s and women’s footy, but it is AFLW season right now, so tune in, and you’ll get the women’s footy goodness!
Rugby League
One of the OG independent creators is the amazing Mary Konstantopoulos, who founded the ‘Ladies Who League’ platform. Mary is an icon and is another super supportive person in the space who lifts everyone up. Follow her on Twitter/X and Instagram to get all your women’s rugby league news.
Also, check out Neha Kumar's Watch Her Footy Instagram page.
Mary and I are at CommBank Stadium, where her beloved Parramatta Eels play.
Basketball
The Shooting The Breeze podcast team does an amazing job covering women’s basketball at all levels in Australia and internationally.
Also, be sure to check out The Pick and Roll, a great independent that covers men’s and women’s Aussie hoops. Their women’s reporting is exceptional.
Golf
Karen Harding’s podcast Tee For Two covers women’s golf, from the athletes to administrators driving organizational change.