FanSpeed Report Sets New Benchmark With 41% of Australians Viewing Men's and Women's Sports as Equal in 2023

MKTG Sports and Entertainment today unveiled groundbreaking findings from its latest research report, FanSpeed, which delves into the state of gender equity in Australian sports. Powered by dentsu Sports Analytics, this comprehensive study measured various equity metrics across performance, media coverage and accessibility, shedding light on the key drivers behind this significant growth in gender equity perception.

 The key findings included:

• In October 2023, 41% of Australian sports fans perceived men's and women's sports as equal, marking an 8% increase from March.

• The most significant driver of gender equity perception was the ease of finding women's sports games on TV, with a remarkable 14% increase.

• Perceptions of equity in quality of play and competitiveness both rose by 10% respectively.

• Younger Australians and female Australians exhibited higher perceptions of gender equity and experienced the highest increases in 2023. Their enthusiasm and support are crucial to driving further progress in this area.

However, FanSpeed also uncovered a concerning disparity in media coverage, with only one in five Australian sports fans believing that the media adequately covers women's sports. 

Despite progress, this remains a critical obstacle to achieving gender equity in the sporting world, highlighting the need for continued efforts to improve media coverage and ensure equal representation for men's and women's sports. 

Matt Connell, MKTG MD APAC, expressed his enthusiasm about the findings and the agency's commitment to gender equity in Australian sports, stating: At MKTG, our passion for equity in sports led to partnering with dentsu Sports Analytics to establish the FanSpeed Gender Equity Tracker. This initiative monitors fan views on gender equity and kicked off in 2023 during a pivotal year for women's sports, with Australia and New Zealand hosting the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup. While we celebrate the substantial increase in gender equity perceptions, with 41% of Australians now recognising men's and women's sports on equal footing, our ultimate goal is to achieve 100% acceptance. To accomplish this, we must continue to work on increasing media coverage and financial support of women's sport, as they remain the most significant barriers to reaching that milestone.

Craig Roberts, Global Head of Strategy & Product for Dentsu Sports Analytics, said: Two truisms that get repeated at every sports marketing conference these days are 'You can't be what you can't see', and 'What gets measured gets managed'. This FanSpeed research sets a baseline for how far from parity we are on access and visibility of women's sport compared to men's. Now we have the data, the challenge to our industry is how quickly can we improve these metrics by expanding access, improving quality of coverage, and shifting perceptions of performance and competitiveness for women's sport?