The BBC's coverage of the women's world cup proves why the license fee is necessary
World Cup fever is spreading through England as the women’s football team progress to the quarter final stage of the competition. Safe passage to the next round was secured in a tempestuous match against Cameroon on Sunday afternoon.
Crucial to the growth in interest in the sport has been the BBC’s coverage of the competition. The easy access to the tournament has undoubtedly given women’s football a boost. On Friday, the BBC revealed that 17.2 million had watched the group stages of the World Cup, a record for a women’s football competition. This included 6.1 million tuning into the England team’s clash with Scotland. Online, there was a total of 6.2 million live and on-demand programme requests for the group stage matches. Barbara Slater, Director of BBC Sport said then that “the interest in the Women’s World Cup so far has been incredible.”
England vs Scotland was the most view women’s football match on television until yesterday, when viewership for England’s 3-0 win peaked at 6.9 million people, 40.5% of the available audience at the time, according to the BBC. What’s more, there were 640,000 live programme requests to watch the game on the iPlayer and online, meaning over 7.5 million people watched the game. It is only a shame that the terrible conduct of the Cameroonian side and the shocking standard of refereeing will have left some with a poor impression of the women’s game.
Every single game of the tournament is being shown by the BBC either on TV or via the iPlayer and online. ITV, which broadcast some of the men’s World Cup and has previously had the rights to other England men’s games, could not do this. It simply would not be commercially viable (plus ITV Player remains absolutely horrible to use). Sky and BT Sport could never aim to achieve such numbers.
However, the BBC, powered by the controversial license fee, can show it all to a mass audience. And promoting women’s sport is exactly the type of thing that the license fee should be used for.
While it is great when the BBC produce commercial hits and top drama, that is not all the license fee should go towards. Having the license fee is a privilege, and with the privilege comes responsibility. That responsibility must include supporting and covering things that commercial broadcasters cannot or will not. Some people will inevitably complain at their license fee going towards “niche” programming, but, in the case of women’s football at least, the numbers from the last couple of weeks show that the investment has paid off. The public are engaged with the tournament and the sport as a whole.
By having the World Cup on the BBC more girls will be able to watch it and see that the game is for them. They can grow up wanting to emulate the likes of Nikita Parris, Lucy Bronze, Steph Houghton and Ellen White. With the English club competition, the Women’s Super League, going from strength to strength, having a high-profile World Cup helps the sport overall get the parity of esteem it deserves.
The women’s football World Cup, like the Paralympics, is shamefully, not one of the ‘Crown Jewels’ – the list of sports that must be shown only on free-to-air television. (The men’s World Cup and Olympics are both on the list.) Labour’s Shadow Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Secretary Tom Watson recently branded the list as “out of date”. “It’s the government’s job to make sure that the list of key events showcases all the best of British talent, right across our society,” he told the British Screen Advisory Council. It is hard to disagree with Watson on this. The women’s World Cup, and, indeed, the Paralympics (covered fantastically by Channel 4 in recent times,) must be added to that protected list.
With much discussion about the future of the BBC at the moment, and a row over funding TV licenses for the over-75s still rumbling on, it is worth reflecting when the corporation does things right. Over the last couple of weeks, it has helped the Lionesses roar.
