Expert Comment - What should a female-focused sports platform look like?

Every Monday morning at 10am, I stand in front of 50 first-year Sports Journalism students, and ask them the same question: “What have you been paying attention to in sport this week?”

It’s a simple ritual. It wakes the room up. It also tells me what stories matter to them, the next generation of people shaping the sports media.

This week, the second hand in the air was about Sky Sports Halo, the TikTok channel launched (and swiftly pulled) after accusations of stereotyping female fans with pink filters, matcha references, and “hot girl walk” captions.

There are already plenty of opinions out there about what Sky got wrong. So for this comment piece, I did the more journalistic thing - I asked the students for their views.

Not to complain, but to fix it. If a female-focused sports platform is going to exist, what should it actually look like?

What follows is a collection of their ideas, critiques, and solutions - in their own words.

The first said: “It was definitely a good idea, but they went about it in the wrong way. If I ran it, I'd definitely focus more on the success that women have had in sport, rather than what they think women like.

“If you see a Sky Sports account, that's what you're following it for, that's your audience, sport enjoyers. So don't take it out of context into something else.”

Another pointed to the approach that the BBC, a rival broadcaster to Sky, has adopted for the very same audience.

“I think Sky could take inspiration from the BBC. They've recently started a women's sport TikTok page where it's highlighting the successes of women in sport, by posting highlights, interviews, showing people who are the inspiration.”

“If Halo was meant to be for young girls that aren’t sports fans, showing them the successes and what they can be in a few years’ time will inspire them.”

One of my male students pointed out that a channel for women’s sport should focus on just that and not solely target the men’s game for content.

“I feel like it [should have been] exclusively women's sports. There is an audience, there's a niche there that needs filling in.”

Another female student felt like the channel was talking down to its audience.

“I think just the language they used and the context they used it in… it felt very demoralizing towards women. It dumbed it down and it sort of made you feel like girls shouldn’t know about sports. They think that's how they get us interested in sport, hot girl walks and pink text. That's just not how you go about it.”

A male student then summed up the channel’s vapidness quite simply.

“You need to consider what their interests are within the sport rather than… Starbucks.”

Throughout the class discussion, the key themes coming back to me were consistent.

Women don’t want a sugar-coated version of sport, they don’t need to be marketed to as if they’re new, fragile or trend-driven. They want coverage that respects them as fans, because that is what they are and they want women’s sport to be covered with volume, depth and seriousness.

That’s it.

Not a culture-war argument. Not an outrage. Not hysterical.

It was 18-year-olds calmly articulating what sports media in the social media era can or should look like from their perspective, and how Halo drifted from it.

If Sky, or any broadcaster, wants to build a platform for young female sports fans, there’s a shortcut available.

Ask them.

Go into a University room early on a Monday morning and listen.

They’ll tell you everything you need to know.