With women’s pro sports on a steady uptick in sponsorship and popularity, it’s become increasingly difficult to explain the comparative lack of coverage female athletes receive through online and print sports publications. Fortunately, people are working both on and off the field to change this.
The Portugal-based sports advocacy group Raparigas da Bola is teaming up again with creative agency Havas Lisbon to continue the “#WomenAlsoPlay” campaign with a new chapter titled “#ChangeTheNews.” After this successful platform launched last year to draw attention to the dearth of media attention given to female athletes, the organization is again shining a spotlight on the easily preventable gender disparity in sports coverage.
Actively reimagining a world that features women athletes on the covers of magazines, this initiative leaned into the power of AR to create a guerilla activation that reshaped the cover of Portugal’s leading sports publication to spotlight female sports stars. Asking fans to point their phones at the magazine each weekday, the hack allowed viewers to see 13 sports, 35 teams and 244 athletes as headliners, disproving any notion that female players are less newsworthy.
Athletic activism
The recent 2-minute case study video for the campaign begins by asking audiences to “imagine the impact it could have if we had more female athletes on the front covers.” It cuts to an interview that activist and U.S. national football team lead Alex Morgan did through the Kelly Clarkson Show, addressing some of the issues with the absence of media attention around women players.
With the narration noting that even during International Women’s Day, sports magazines neglect both legendary and contemporary female athletes, Morgan continues that it’s essential for women in sports to create their own spaces. The ad asks, “Why not go one step further? Why not invade their space?”
This grassroots campaign garnered 500 million social media impressions and saw an immediate uptick in female athletes featured on the cover of this newspaper. The video concludes, “Our AR project remains open to all journalists who want to continue putting female athletes on the news until such time as sports newspapers stop their gender-bias coverage,” with the narrator noting, “Journalists and editors, the ball is in your court, and it’s an open goal.”
