Women’s sport has never been so popular, so commercially successful, or played to such a high standard as it is now.
Strong recent support from governing bodies and investments in training and performance programs have been backed by growing interest from brands and broadcasters, providing record-breaking sponsorship and media deals that will accelerate the upward trajectory of women’s competitions.
Deloitte forecasts suggest that the women’s sports industry will generate more than US$1 billion in revenue in the coming years, while other studies claim that women’s sports are a better long-term bet than their male counterparts. The sector is believed to offer greater scope for innovation, a less crowded calendar and investment environment, and significant room for growth.
Technology will play a critical role in this next stage of development, driving performance levels, opening new revenue streams, attracting and engaging audiences, and increasing participation. However, there is no escaping that sport and technology are traditionally male-dominated environments where the unique demands of women’s sport have been ignored in favor of male-centric visions.
There has been significant progress in tackling these inequalities and more women than ever are working at the intersection of these two industries to create products and services that benefit not only female athletes and fans of women’s competitions, but the entire sporting landscape.
Still, there is much more to be done and the digital transformation of women’s sport will only realize its full potential with greater representation.
‘The only woman in the room’
A systemic and often unconscious bias has discouraged women from pursuing careers in either field, even if they are keen on sports or have a relevant qualification, and some recruitment processes have reinforced the prejudices this. As a result, many tech companies are unaware of how and where to find female talent.
Marilou McFarlane has worked in sports technology for more than 12 years, founding the Vivo Girls Sports education platform in 2009. To see also : The world’s most valuable sports team hasn’t won anything in decades. How?. Since then she has held positions at a variety of companies in the industry and for many years she would be the only woman in some events.
“I would go to conferences to learn about other areas of sports technology, and often I would be the only woman,” she told SportsPro. “It was an industry where only men were in leadership roles. I didn’t think this was by design, it’s just that people tend to hire who they know [and these would be men].
“I was used to [the situation] but then I would meet women who were intrigued by the [sports tech] industry and so I realized we needed somewhere to connect everyone.”
Her answer was to create Women in Sports Tech (WiST) back in 2017. The non-profit organization is now a thriving community that provides networking opportunities, workshops, job listings, and educational content to encourage more women to enter into the field and allow technology companies to take advantage of the talent that so clearly exists.
Sports is a very diverse business so it makes sense that the people building technology behind the scenes should be diverse as well.
The flagship initiative is the fellowship program that offers internships and mentorships to college, graduate and PhD students. Partners include major technology companies such as IBM and Oracle, sports-specific vendors such as Catapult, and members of the startup ecosystem.
“Our community is mainly half women, half men and everyone is committed to seeing more diversity and more inclusivity in the industry,” she continues. “Sports is a very diverse business so it makes sense that the people building technology behind the scenes should also be diverse.
“[Our partners] would love to have people from more diverse backgrounds, more women, and more people of color but the [potential candidates] were not in their networks. Often women would not be aware of these companies or these opportunities so they would not apply for them.
“We have developed relationships with these businesses to diversify workforces and with conferences and events to diversify speakers and panelists. By making women in the industry more visible, then other women will see a path to [get involved] and into leadership positions and they can see a commitment to confronting systemic sexism.
“The business results are clear – the more gender diverse a team is, the more likely it is to generate above average revenue and profit. They are more likely to be more innovative and solve problems faster than [less diverse teams].”
Wearables and apps allow women to track their health and performance data (Credit: Whoop)
Mind the data gap
This lack of diversity has huge consequences for women’s sport as it can perpetuate historical inequalities. Read also : CBS Sports appoints Jenny Dell as lead college football reporter, appoints Sherree Burruss on CBS Sports Network. The vast majority of medical and sports science research relates to the male experience, which invariably means that data analytics, wearables, and other elements of performance technology are aimed at male athletes.
Part of the reason for this is that researchers have often been tempted to exclude women from trials because they are seen as more complex subjects than men. Advice for female athletes is therefore based on the assumption that they are smaller, lighter versions of men and findings are adjusted accordingly.
Female soccer players are more likely to suffer from anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries than men, but the body of research is scarce. Similarly, technologies such as smart mouthguards that detect concussions are based on male-centric data, limiting their effectiveness.
“There’s a huge gap in research,” Esther Goldsmith, sports scientist with sports technology company Orreco, told SportsPro. “For so long, [the conventional wisdom] has just been, ‘oh, if it works for men, it’s probably going to work for women’. It’s only in the last 20 years that we really understand that we can’t do that.”
Goldsmith says the “paucity” of research is slowly being remedied by the academic community, but the difference is something athletes, who are increasingly aware of the benefits of sports technology, are also recognising.
“We have to collect a lot more data about concussion,” Harlequins and England player Rachael Burford said at an event hosted by IT firm Capgemini. “Women react differently [to concussion] and returning to practice or returning to play is different. The symptoms are different, and the recovery is different so there is a long way to go.
“We are going in the right direction and there is so much available, but we still need to understand how all this technology can affect a woman. Most of the research available is based on men – even for things like nutritional supplements. Maybe the standard instruction is to have two scoops but that’s based on a male body.”
Crowdsourcing
The widespread adoption of mobile phones and wearables is helping to address this data gap by accessing vast amounts of information. To see also : The Birth, Death and Rebirth of Ballsack Games. Fitness trackers only require a basic level of technical literacy, while intuitive applications help users understand their personal health data.
Whoop is one such platform, which combines hardware and software elements to help members track metrics such as heart rate, movement and sleep, and to understand what it means through feedback and recommendations on health and physical education.
The company’s senior vice president of data science Emily Capodilupo and her team have access to vast amounts of anonymized, aggregated data that would otherwise have cost millions of dollars to collect through conventional trials. This informs Whoop’s products and services but is also a rich source of knowledge for its academic partners whose research in turn benefits the wider community.
“Wearables put this data directly in the hands of users and make sense of [the data] without the need for extensive information about sleep, exercise or training,” Capodilupo told SportsPro.
“When we started doing this, everything we did was gender neutral, but we realized over time that the models for the average person were modeled more on male behavior than female behavior. This is a problem that is quite pervasive across all human physiology and medical research.
“We have long used a male prototype and assumed that women are basically little men. But this is not true.”
The models for the average person were modeled more on male behavior than female behavior. This is a problem that is quite pervasive across all human physiology and medical research.
Menstrual health
A better understanding of the physiological differences between men and women will improve everything from injury prevention and treatment to training schedules and nutrition plans, while also preventing potential bias in data models and intelligent algorithms used in analytics technologies. Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to menstrual health.
The lack of relevant research and general attention, together with the fact that menstrual cycles are seen as an uncomfortable subject for some, means that female athletes are expected to suffer symptoms even though they can have a huge impact on grassroots participation and elite performance.
“Women have different hormones like estrogen that not only affect fertility but also things like how we access fuel at different stages of our menstrual cycle,” explains Capodilupo. “So, you need to be eating differently, you sleep differently, and the way you respond to training is very different.
“These hormones also change throughout our lives. There is an interesting phenomenon that 51 per cent of girls give up sport [as teenagers] and that is not really a coincidence. As girls go through puberty it feels like training stops being a good fit for our bodies and sports become uncomfortable and less fun. The dropout rate for boys [of the same age] is completely different.
“These hormones also drop significantly when you go through menopause and there is almost no academic literature on when we should be adjusting our training.
“With wearables, there is a unique opportunity to get [a huge amount of] data. By adapting all the recommendations to what we know about these reproductive periods, we can create hormone-aware training schedules that match what’s going on in your body rather than something generic .”
England are using FitrWoman in their bid to win the Uefa Women’s European Championship
A competitive advantage
Orreco’s FitrWoman application helps elite athletes and coaches manage their menstrual cycle to optimize performance.
The app is available for anyone to use, but Orreco works with elite female athletes and sports teams, including Chelsea Women and the England women’s national team during their bid to win the Uefa Women’s European Championship. Indeed, the latter’s medical staff have admitted that they could have done more in the past to help players in the past if they had known more about the research and solutions available.
“Tech has this incredible ability to be able to take science and all the research that’s being done and make it accessible and relevant,” Goldsmith said. “It’s about helping all women who exercise to realize that there are considerations around their menstrual cycle and encouraging them to track it as an individual.”
Initial skepticism at Chelsea has been dispelled to the point that the team even has a custom nutrition graphic created by Orreco on display in its training ground.
“We’ve worked very closely with Chelsea Women for three years now and it’s surprising to hear the players so comfortable talking about it,” said Goldsmith. “[The players] use our language and expressions. We’ve seen a huge change in the conversation but we’re also hoping to help a lot of the players and alleviate the symptoms.”
The absurdity is that the effect of menstruation has often been overlooked in sport despite a deepening obsession with identifying marginal gains that provide only a fraction of the benefit. Goldsmith added that once the discussion turns to performance, any lingering doubts are removed.
“One of our biggest messages is that we don’t even talk about marginal gains, it’s a huge benefit,” he said.
Chelsea star Sam Kerr is the first woman to appear on the global cover of a FIFA video game (Credit: EA Sports)
The whole industry benefits
These applications and services are breaking down barriers, raising standards and driving participation – all of which will ultimately benefit the entertainment side of women’s sport. Here, technology will play a role in building audiences and engaging existing fans, while also creating new revenue in areas such as streaming and the emerging world of Web 3.0.
A recent Sports Innovation Lab report found that women’s sports fans are among the most technologically savvy in sports. They are more active on digital channels, can amplify content on social media, and spend more money on streaming subscriptions. This is a huge opportunity if women’s sport gets the same attention as its male equivalent.
Again, steps are being taken in the right direction in terms of media coverage and digital. For this summer’s inaugural Tour de France Femmes, technical partner NTT will build a ‘digital twin’ of the route to provide the same statistical analysis and real-time tracking capabilities as it does for the men’s race to aid reporting the story of the race. on social media and on broadcast.
An official fantasy football game has been created for Women’s Euro 2022. Meanwhile, EA Sports has added women’s teams to its FIFA and NHL video games and 2K Sports has included the National Women’s Basketball Association (NBA ) in NBA2K. In addition, Sports Interactive is embarking on a multi-year project to bring women’s football into its hugely successful Football Manager series, a move that will not only boost awareness but also give a huge boost to collections data.
Female founders and the startup ecosystem also have a vital role to play. On the media side, Just Women’s Sports and Togethxr are examples of media platforms that offer an alternative to male-focused incumbents. However, there is also a growing number of women behind visions and innovations that will benefit the entire industry.
Sportsdigita was founded by the former head of corporate communications for the Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League (NHL), and some of the world’s biggest sports teams use its cloud-based sales tools.
Hewlett Packard veteran Kelly Pracht founded predictive analytics company nVenue, whose technology provides insights for Apple TV broadcasts of Major League Baseball (MLB) and sees huge potential in the sports betting industry. Meanwhile, Ainsley McCallister has created Uru Sports, a professional network for sports athletes.
Even the issue of ACL injuries is partially covered. Ida Sports, co-founded by physics graduate Laura Youngson, has created a football boot specifically designed for women’s feet and bodies, reducing risk.
‘There’s no excuse’
It is clear that the talent and ideas are there, but perhaps not the necessary funding and support. Male-based startups still receive the vast majority of venture capital, and many women say they feel they have to work much harder to secure investment.
According to Crunchbase, women-led startups across all industries received just 2.3 percent of VC investment in 2020 despite some evidence suggesting that early-stage companies with at least one female founder can deliver higher valuations. Part of the problem, of course, is that women make up only 12 percent of decision-makers at many VC firms and only 2.4 percent of all partners are founding partners.
However, progress is being made. Many VC firms now recognize that women-led startups and sports tech companies could be better investments and are creating dedicated funds. For example, tennis legend Serena Williams’ company Serena Ventures recently invested a seven-figure sum in OpenSponsorship, a new venture in sports marketing technology founded by British entrepreneur Ishveen Jolly.
McFarlane points to the fact that there are more sports tech startups founded by women and more VC funding targeting startups than before. She says WiST meets with female founders every week to help them find investors looking to diversify their portfolio.
“The talent is there – girls are studying kinesiology, data science, engineering, machine learning,” she said. “Innovation comes when you have a greater variety of people at the table.
“There is no excuse for not having a way to identify and find talented women who want to work in this business.”
This feature is part of SportsPro Women’s Sports Week, a week of coverage dedicated to the industry’s next big growth opportunity and co-hosted by Two Circles. Click here for more exclusive content and sign up for the SportsPro Daily newsletter here to receive daily insights direct to your inbox.
To find out more about future SportsPro themed weeks, click here.
