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The Wave of Women's Sport · What the Flux

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  Speaker 1: This is what the flux. I'm Larissa and it's Wednesday,
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  Speaker 1: the twenty ninth of July. Here are the three biggest
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  Speaker 1: news stories today. For our first story, Origin Energy, Australia's
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  Speaker 1: largest electricity and gas retailer, says around nine hundred thousand
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  Speaker 1: of its current and former customers had their information exposed
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  Speaker 1: during a recent data security breach. The information potentially includes names, addresses,
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  Speaker 1: phone numbers and even bank detailers of some affective customers.
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  Speaker 1: For our next story, SpaceX has lost more than one
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  Speaker 1: point two trillion USD off its market cap since June.
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  Speaker 1: That's about the same as the value of Elon Musk's
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  Speaker 1: other company, Tesla, wiped in a month. And for our
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  Speaker 1: final story, American company Wicket, which owns facial recognition technology
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  Speaker 1: used in Australia, is in talks with around four AFL
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  Speaker 1: clubs about using its facial recognition tech in place of
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  Speaker 1: digital or paper tickets for games. Here in this series
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  Speaker 1: Going Deep, we're looking at the rise of the Ozzie
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  Speaker 1: female athlete economy. We've seen the Matilda's become Australia's most
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  Speaker 1: valuable sporting brand, women's cricket break viewership records and the
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  Speaker 1: NRL salary cap nearly triple in three years, and this
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  Speaker 1: episode we'll explore how one World Cup semi final changed
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  Speaker 1: the commercial conversation forever, and whither the money is actually
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  Speaker 1: reaching the athletes who created the moment. Over to you,
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  Speaker 1: Britt and.
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  Speaker 2: Justin Thanks Lisa be Man. I take you back to
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  Speaker 2: August twenty twenty three, eleven million Australians, nearly half the
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  Speaker 2: country stayed up to watch the Matilda's play England in
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  Speaker 2: a World Cup semi final.
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  Speaker 3: The pubs were packed, workplaces cleared out, grown adults were
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  Speaker 3: crying into their meat pie.
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  Speaker 2: But the man Australian women's sport didn't always look like this. Well.
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  Speaker 3: For most of the last century it was underfunded, it
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  Speaker 3: was under broadcast and kind of treated like an afterthought.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: The AFLW launched in twenty seventeen with eighteens, and whilst
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  Speaker 2: first season gained solid momentum, it slowed down after that.
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  Speaker 3: The nrl W wasn't properly contracted until twenty twenty two, and.
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  Speaker 2: The women's cricket didn't really take off either.
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  Speaker 3: But then the shift started happening slowly and then all
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  Speaker 3: at once.
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  Speaker 2: It started in twenty nineteen, when pay parity for the
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  Speaker 2: Matilda's and Soccer Roos was achieved for players who represented Australia.
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  Speaker 3: In the same year, the Women's Big Bash League or
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  Speaker 3: WBBL got its own standalone broadcast slot. That was a
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  Speaker 3: slow progression, and in twenty twenty three, the Women's World
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  Speaker 3: Cup in Australia created a whole new commercial proof of
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  Speaker 3: concept for women's sport.
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  Speaker 2: In fact, Football Australia's sponsorship revenue grew one hundred and
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  Speaker 2: fifty percent between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three.
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  Speaker 3: And it was almost entirely on the back of the
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  Speaker 3: Matilda's brand.
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  Speaker 2: By twenty twenty two, only three of Football Australia's fifteen
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  Speaker 2: commercial partners didn't have any of their rights relating to
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  Speaker 2: women's football.
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  Speaker 3: But the truth is that brands had been watching the
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  Speaker 3: slow build for years, but the World Cup gave them
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  Speaker 3: permission to really commit.
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  Speaker 2: And next minute corporate sponsors started throwing around sponsorship budgets.
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  Speaker 3: I like confetti, so JUSEI boy, where are we at today?
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  Speaker 2: Well, the Matilda's brand was worth forty million bucks before
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  Speaker 2: the twenty twenty three Bold Cup, according to Brand Finance,
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  Speaker 2: but after it it was valued it after two hundred
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  Speaker 2: and ten million dollars.
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  Speaker 3: And at the time it made them the nation's most
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  Speaker 3: valuable sporting brand.
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  Speaker 2: And the Matilda's jersey has been out selling Soccer u's
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  Speaker 2: jerseys two to one.
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  Speaker 3: Boy, it's not just the women's soccer team that's seeing
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  Speaker 3: growth in women's sport here in Australia.
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  Speaker 2: Now, the Women's Big Bash League's twenty twenty four seasons
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  Speaker 2: or a forty six percent jump in average TV audiences.
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  Speaker 3: And twenty three percent growth in average attendance.
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  Speaker 2: The other big movers, Netball, is seen at thirty three
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  Speaker 2: percent attendance jump, WBBL up twenty three percent, and the
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  Speaker 2: Victorian government commissioned report found the every dollar that a
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  Speaker 2: corporate sponsor invests in women's elite sport, it generates seven
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  Speaker 2: dollars and twenty nine cents in customer value. If reliable,
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  Speaker 2: that is a pretty strong return on investment. Yeah, but
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  Speaker 2: be man. Underneath all these glossy growth numbers, there's still
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  Speaker 2: one very awkward reality. Oh on Juzi boy, Well, most
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  Speaker 2: female athletes in Australia are still part time professionals.
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  Speaker 3: The NRLW minimum salary in twenty twenty four was thirty
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  Speaker 3: four grand.
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  Speaker 2: The A League women minimum salary twenty six five hundred.
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  Speaker 3: So the sport that inspired the Matilda's effects can't actually
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  Speaker 3: afford to retain players who built it and now need
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  Speaker 3: to sustain it.
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  Speaker 2: And that means the best Aussie soccer players are leaving
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  Speaker 2: the better paying leagues in the US and England and.
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  Speaker 3: Judge bit that's the main challenge here. The national team
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  Speaker 3: creates the commercial moment.
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  Speaker 2: The domestic league is supposed to be the pipeline, but
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  Speaker 2: clearly the pipeline is leaking. So in short, women's sport
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  Speaker 2: is generating real fan engagement, real brand returns, but the
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  Speaker 2: money just isn't always making it back to the athletes
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  Speaker 2: that are generating it.
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  Speaker 3: But the signs are improving.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. AFL's four and a half billion dollar broadcast deal,
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  Speaker 2: which runs till twenty thirty one, includes all AFLW games
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  Speaker 2: on Fox and KO.
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  Speaker 3: Netball Australia struck a twenty twenty five revenue shared deal
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  Speaker 3: with a forty percent pay rise for three years.
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  Speaker 2: And top Australian women cricketers can earn up to a
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  Speaker 2: million dollars a year.
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  Speaker 3: When the national contracts are combined with their earnings For example,
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  Speaker 3: Australian women's cricketer Ashley Gardner earned five hundred fifty eight
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  Speaker 3: thousand bucks from her Indian WPL contract but just over
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  Speaker 3: one month of work. Then you got Sam Kerr and
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  Speaker 3: Matilda Champion earned over six hundred thousand dollars per year
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  Speaker 3: with a contract with Chelsea and millions more endorsements. So
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  Speaker 3: the model is slowly changing and commercial success is starting
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  Speaker 3: to flow through to players.
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  Speaker 2: That most of the commercial upside is happening offshore in
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  Speaker 2: cricket and soccer and jaseboit.
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  Speaker 3: There are some big global competitors coming that will hopefully
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  Speaker 3: put even more Australian sportswomen on the map.
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  Speaker 2: You've got the twenty twenty seven AFC Women's Asian Cup.
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  Speaker 2: There's the twenty twenty seven Netball World Cup in Sydney too,
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  Speaker 2: and that means more balls and hopefully more opportunities for sponsorship.
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  Speaker 2: So Jersey Boy, we know that advertising dollary dues have
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  Speaker 2: always followed eyeballs. Yeap brands want to sponsor sports that
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  Speaker 2: have attention. For years, women's sport was stuck in a
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  Speaker 2: brutal cycle. Less coverage meant smaller audiences. Smaller audiences meant
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  Speaker 2: less sponsorship, and less sponsorship meant less investment and visibility.
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  Speaker 3: But the Matilda's in twenty twenty three basically smashed that cycle.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right now, Australian sporting leagues have built the front
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  Speaker 2: end of the commercial women's sport.
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  Speaker 3: Economy, the brand, the jerseys, the viewing numbers, but it
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  Speaker 3: hasn't quite built out the back end yet. That'd be
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  Speaker 3: the wages and the domestic competitions.
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  Speaker 2: So, ma man, what is the optimistic version of women's
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  Speaker 2: sport in Australia in the future.
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  Speaker 3: Well, the commercial proof of concept is done. The hope
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  Speaker 3: is that capital follows the audience and the wages will
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  Speaker 3: catch up soon.
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  Speaker 2: And they're not so optimistic version.
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  Speaker 3: Well, the sponsorship dollars keep going to peak bodies and
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  Speaker 3: superstar players, but.
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  Speaker 2: The other professional players keep needing a second job the
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  Speaker 2: fund that their sporting careers.
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  Speaker 3: The most interesting thing about this story is that both
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  Speaker 3: versions are kind of true right now.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, The question isn't whether Australian women's sport has commercial value.
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  Speaker 2: That was settled in twenty twenty three. The question is
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  Speaker 2: who actually captures it. Pox Sam, We hope you enjoyed
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: our deep dive into the growth of Ossie women's sport
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  Speaker 2: and the commercial upside for all the leagues and players
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  Speaker 2: in the future. On Friday, we're going to be doing
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: a deep dive into the prediction markets. This isn't a
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  Speaker 2: bed on an AFL game. This is placing real money
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: to bet on world events like RBA carts war, or
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  Speaker 2: even the length of a national anthem. We're going to
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  Speaker 2: break down some of the fastest growing brands and whether
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  Speaker 2: this is the future of finance or just the world's
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  Speaker 2: most sophisticated casino. Thanks for listening and we'll see you
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  Speaker 2: on Friday.