{"id":86921,"date":"2023-07-20T13:47:28","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T17:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=86921"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:54:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:54:32","slug":"opinion-laura-harris-and-dawn-trussell-discuss-women-athletes-fight-for-equitable-sponsorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2023\/07\/opinion-laura-harris-and-dawn-trussell-discuss-women-athletes-fight-for-equitable-sponsorship\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Laura Harris and Dawn Trussell discuss women athletes\u2019 fight for equitable sponsorship"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article written by Laura Harris, Research Assistant in the Sport, Allyship and Inclusion Lab at Brock University; and Dawn Trussell, Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The 2023 Women\u2019s World Cup is\u00a0projected to be the most-watched\u00a0in tournament history and has seen a massive\u00a0surge in sponsor interest.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0growth in commercial investment\u00a0of women\u2019s soccer is deserved and overdue. Yet, sponsorship and marketing deals with many women athletes are performative at best as women\u2019s national soccer teams\u00a0continue to fight for equitable investment from their federations.<\/p>\n

Sponsorship is a\u00a0mutually beneficial exchange of value\u00a0between multiple parties involving commercial potential. Because\u00a0many professional women athletes already work multiple jobs to earn a living wage, some are forced to accept unfair deals.<\/p>\n

In addition, many corporations are able to\u00a0cultivate a positive public image\u00a0while exploiting women\u2019s labour.<\/p>\n

Losing sponsorship and labour exploitation<\/strong><\/p>\n

As part of our recent sport management research into this issue, we worked with current professional women soccer players from the United Kingdom (Women\u2019s Championship and Women\u2019s Super League) and the United States (National Women\u2019s Soccer League) who had a sponsorship deal at one time in their careers.<\/p>\n

Because our study was centred on\u00a0storytelling as a form of research<\/u>, we will share some excerpts from the soccer players we spoke to that highlight the inequities women continue to face in sport.<\/p>\n

We also worked with average professional athletes, rather than the upmost elite who have multiple lucrative partnership deals. These average athletes still played in the world\u2019s top leagues, but were not as widely recognized as the top players of their sports.<\/p>\n

Olivia\u2019s story of losing sponsorship<\/strong><\/p>\n

Olivia is a professional footballer in her mid-twenties who competes in England\u2019s tier one Women\u2019s Super League. While she does not currently have a personal sponsor, she formerly had a partnership with a large shoe and athletic apparel brand that ended abruptly after she changed teams.<\/p>\n

Right now, I currently don\u2019t have a sponsor. In men\u2019s soccer, players in the top three leagues will have [brand deals] whereas in women\u2019s soccer it might only be the top players.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been fortunate because when I signed my first professional contract, I did gain a two-year deal with [a brand]. That being said, I remember trying to get shin pads for the season, and it took about three months just to get a pair.<\/em><\/p>\n

On Instagram they were like \u201cOlivia this, Olivia that,\u201d but I\u2019d wait a long time for the essentials. The next season I moved teams, and they pulled the sponsorship.<\/em><\/p>\n

They said the team I was playing for wasn\u2019t what they would class as \u201ctier one\u201d football, even though it was. They were a second-tier club in the men\u2019s game, but the top in the women\u2019s league. I wasn\u2019t expecting it to end and it was brutal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Olivia\u2019s story reveals how the majority of professional women\u2019s soccer players rarely receive sponsorship deals. Despite moving to a higher ranked women\u2019s club, Olivia\u2019s sponsorship criteria was based on the equivalent men\u2019s team, which was a tier lower.<\/p>\n

Sponsors continue to\u00a0gain positive brand recognition\u00a0from fans looking to support corporations that endorse women\u2019s sport. Yet, despite this public persona, corporations do not always\u00a0meaningfully invest in women athletes.<\/p>\n

While the\u00a0significant lack of media coverage\u00a0afforded to women\u2019s sports may not allow a breadth of professional athletes to be widely known, the women we interviewed believed men players at all levels received unquestioned sponsorship while they had to fight to be seen as valuable despite the\u00a0surging profitability of women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n

Morgan\u2019s story of labour exploitation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Morgan is a professional footballer in her early twenties who competes in England\u2019s tier one Women\u2019s Super League alongside her country\u2019s national team. While she does not currently have a sponsor, she recently completed her first career sponsorship with a meal prep company.<\/p>\n

Recently, I did have a food sponsorship deal, that meal prep stuff. It isn\u2019t paid, but I just need to post twice a month when I receive the food and I get to keep all of my meals for free. I actually thought they would make me still pay, but instead they gave me a discount code to give out to other people.<\/em><\/p>\n

Before I had a sponsorship deal, I thought you had to have a certain look. Like the perfect body. But that\u2019s changed; it\u2019s more how good you are at your actual sport and how active you are on social media.<\/em><\/p>\n

So far, they\u2019ve been happy with what I\u2019m doing and repost what I do since it\u2019s easier for them to not have to make their own content. At the moment, we have to really prove ourselves to get recognized. So, when we do get media opportunities, it\u2019s something everyone jumps at, even if it\u2019s a two-hour drive away.<\/em><\/p>\n

Morgan\u2019s story reflects a positive shift away from the\u00a0over-sexualization of women athletes. Rather than being primarily valued for her physical appearance, Morgan\u2019s athletic ability was recognized as being valuable on its own.<\/p>\n

But it also reveals that women athletes are expected to perform the\u00a0unpaid labour of creating digital partnership content.<\/p>\n

Corporate sponsors of women\u2019s sports\u00a0experience an increase in consumer intent to purchase their products or services\u00a0around their supposedly equitable brands. But these sponsorship deals are not as equitable as they seem because the women athletes receive little to no financial compensation for their work.<\/p>\n

Current state of women\u2019s sports marketing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite women\u2019s sport traditionally receiving only one to two per cent of global sport sponsorship dollars,\u00a0investment is exponentially increasing\u00a0as media coverage begins to meet consumer demand.<\/p>\n

However, while previous sport sponsorship literature has\u00a0focused on men athletes\u00a0and mutually beneficial partnerships, it is clear that the power imbalances in women\u2019s sport sponsorship reflect a different exploitative reality.<\/p>\n

The state of marketing and sponsorship in women\u2019s sport is\u00a0far from equitable\u00a0\u2014 even though it may be portrayed as otherwise in media coverage. The women in our study discussed how male athletes receive substantial financial and brand-specific compensation for their sponsorship deals. In contrast, the women felt like they just had to be grateful for whatever they had been given.<\/p>\n

While positive change has been seen, especially surrounding this year\u2019s Women\u2019s World Cup, there is still much work to be done by women\u2019s soccer organizations and corporate sponsors to create a more equitable sporting future.
\n\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Harris, Research Assistant in the Sport, Allyship and Inclusion Lab at Brock University, and Dawn Trussell, Professor of Sport Management at Brock University, wrote about the ongoing efforts of women professional athletes to receive equitable sponsorship deals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":86922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,7,6,1],"tags":[4252,7488,12801,57,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86921"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87019,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86921\/revisions\/87019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}