The Women’s Rugby World Cup, which kicks off in England on August 22 and runs until September 27 2025, offers a live case study in how quickly women’s sport can move when the ecosystem lines up.
World Rugby had sold 300,000 tickets to the Women’s World Cup by mid-May, calling this a “generational moment” for the sport given that this figure was already twice the total attendance of the last tournament. The dates and the momentum matter because they show demand is tangible, visible and monetisable.
The UK is a valuable benchmark for another reason: women’s sport in 2024 was the most watched on record, with 44.7-million viewers across domestic events, according to Women’s Sport Trust and Futures Sport & Entertainment. This isn’t a polite niche; it’s a mainstream audience forming in front of our eyes.
What the UK growth map tells us (and how to apply it here)
Segment the audience properly. The UK Women’s Sport Growth Map splits the market into Players, Viewers and Superfans — three groups that behave differently and need different products, content and conversion paths. Crucially, Players (women and girls who play) aren’t guaranteed viewers; they often follow men’s sport more closely and need visibility nudges to become fans of the women’s game. Social media is the bridge: letting athletes publish match clips and behind-the-scenes content converts Players into highly engaged fans by collapsing the distance between field and feed.
Put more of the women’s game on free platforms. The data point that should change executive behaviour tomorrow is the fact that in the UK, 71% of women’s sports viewers reached via free-to-air watched at least 15 consecutive minutes vs 53% on pay-TV — so free access doesn’t just widen reach, it deepens engagement. In plain terms, a lot of viewers you want simply don’t exist behind a paywall.
Participation and fandom reinforce each other. The growth map shows a simple loop: invest in either playing or viewing and both grow over time. It’s why legacy programmes tied to the World Cup — like Impact ’25 in England, aiming for 100,000 girls playing by 2027 through facility upgrades and coach training — are smart business, not just “good deeds”. Ticket buyers for this World Cup include a high share of first-time attendees — future repeat customers if we onboard them well.
Design the live product for families. Women’s events skew younger and gender-balanced, with a more family-friendly feel and lower “feeling unsafe” barriers than men’s events. That expands the total addressable market and the sponsor set (retail, fast-moving consumer goods, finance targeting households).
Where South Africa still lags
Visibility is our first drag factor. Most women’s sport in South Africa still lives behind premium pay-TV or in scarce highlight windows. When the SABC and Mastercard teamed up in 2021 to put a weekly women’s rugby grassroots show on free TV, the objective was explicit: “ignite interest”. That’s exactly the behaviour change the UK data tells us to scale. The isolated initiative proved the model; now it needs to be policy, not a one-off.
Second, commercial commitment has been thin, though there are green shoots. FNB became principal partner of the Springbok Women in 2022 — front-of-jersey and a statement of intent. That’s the right shape of deal: visible, long-term and tied to performance pathways.
Third, participation access remains uneven. The UK is using a mega-event to modernise facilities and unlock coaching capacity via Impact ’25. We should take the hint and do the same around our own calendar moments (Sevens, WXV, continental championships), linking girls’ school programmes to national team storylines so the pipeline and the product grow in tandem.
What sponsors are doing — and why it matters
Global brands are not waiting. O2 is an official partner of the tournament and — importantly — was the first to commit to parity in investment and marketing across England Rugby’s men’s and women’s teams back in 2020/2021. Its activation uses Priority to reward fans with tickets and experiences, and content like Wear the Rose to grow awareness.
Kettle Chips signed on as an official partner this April, leaning into family-friendly matchday moments that broaden the audience beyond the hardcore. Emirates joined as an official partner in July, validating the property at a global airline scale. These moves are signals to the market: the property is maturing; the “early-mover advantage” window is closing.
For South African brands, the question is whether we’ll shape the category or buy it later at a premium. A bank, telco, grocer or insurer could own the women’s rugby narrative here by doing three things now: multiyear rights that include domestic league plus national team plus community; a free-to-air distribution commitment with a broadcaster partner; and athlete-led content pipelines (short-form clips, docuseries, shoulder programming). The UK isn’t winning by accident; it’s winning by design.
A practical playbook for SA Rugby — and women’s sport more broadly — is to:
1. Flip the access switch. Make national team Tests and domestic finals free-to-air or free-to-stream as a rule. The retention maths is too strong to ignore. Use sponsor budget to underwrite production and carriage where needed.
2. Treat social as a rights channel, not a press office. Allow (and train) players to publish clips within defined guidelines. It grows athlete brands and tune-in intent, especially for the Players segment who live in feeds before they live on broadcast.
3. Engineer first-timers. Build ticket bundles for schoolgirls, community clubs and mothers and daughters. The UK evidence shows these audiences convert and keep returning; design for that repeatability.
4. Connect participation to the product. Tie World Cup storytelling to local action: every broadcast should point to where girls can play next weekend. Use the event to certify more women coaches and officials and to improve basic facilities.
5. Lock in long-term partners. Follow the O2 blueprint: commit to parity goals, integrate women’s properties into core brand campaigns, and use loyalty platforms to create member-only experiences that feel premium, not peripheral.
6. Retire the “cup in hand” mindset. Fund women’s sport as a growth property, not charity. Too often our men-led sports fraternity is patronising by habit, treating women’s properties as add-ons or corporate social responsibility (CSR). Wake up and flip that script. Set parity KPIs and hold budgets, creative standards and production values to the same bar as men’s. Put women’s sport in core brand plans, not pink-washed side projects.
Mandate mixed-gender decision rooms for rights and creative sign-off. Tie executive bonuses to minimum women’s sport investment thresholds and outcomes. Use the same post-campaign measurement frameworks (not “awareness only”) and kill the “photo opportunity” PR brief. Value, not virtue, is the lens.
SuperSport released a “Here for Her” piece just this week that I liked as a parity eye-opener.
The provocation
Are we trying to “prove” women’s sport is worth it, or to build it? The UK has quietly answered that question with audience records, smarter distribution and sponsor behaviour that treats women’s sport as a growth engine, not a CSR line. The World Cup’s eight host cities, a trophy roadshow and a legacy plan baked into delivery signal a market that expects to win on and off the field.
South Africa can catch the wave fast if we stop waiting for perfect conditions. We need a rights-holder to be brave when it comes to distribution media that elevates stories weekly (not just at tournaments) and sponsors who put meaningful capital and creativity behind the women’s game. Do that, and the scoreboard will follow: bigger audiences, better pathways and more commercial certainty.
If we don’t, we’ll be admiring the UK’s numbers again next year — while our own athletes and fans stand on the touchline, waiting to be let into the game. That would be a waste of talent and a very expensive missed opportunity.
Struan Campbell is the MD of Futures Sport & Entertainment Africa.
The big take-out: For South African brands, the question is whether we’ll shape the category or buy it later at a premium.
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