October 2022, Articles

‘It’s Time’ for greater engagement in elite women’s sport

With athletes competing in an unprecedented line up of elite women’s sporting events in New Zealand and offshore over the next 12 months, Sport New Zealand has launched ‘It’s Time’ – a campaign aimed at promoting greater engagement in women’s high performance sport.

The campaign responds to research commissioned by Sport NZ that shows awareness of female athletes is significantly lower than comparable male athletes, particularly in team sports.

The research commissioned by Sport NZ also shows that:

  • only one in three New Zealanders regularly watch women’s sport
  • at a total population level, close to half haven’t changed their behaviours towards women’s sport in the last five years – i.e. attending live sport, watching live sport, following on media or social media or talking about it with family and friends
  • more than half (53%) of New Zealanders believe they won’t change their behaviour in regards to how the engage with women’s sport over the next 12 months
  • the biggest barrier to watching women’s sport is not knowing enough about events, teams or athletes
  • the No 1 driver is access to women’s sport on TVG or the ability to get to games. The more that is available, the more people want to consume.

 

You can check out the It’s Time infographic for further insights.

‘It’s Time’ aims to increase the profile of and support for New Zealand’s female athletes tby challenging New Zealanders to get behind the campaign and watch, follow and support female sport. That includes going to matches, engaging on social media and reading or watching media coverage.

Find out more about ‘It’s Time’.