In the past week, Sky Sports made one of its biggest mistakes in recent history. They launched Sky Sports Halo, a social media account specifically “for girls”. The decision backfired quickly and in a spectacular manner, forcing the company to abandon the venture only a few days after its creation.
On November 13, Sky Sports announced that they were creating a special social media channel for women, with the intention of creating a community for female fans. Upon creation, the account was referred to as “Sky Sports lil sis”. Its aesthetic was stereotypically female, with sparkling filters and pink subtitles on every video.
Many people assumed that Sky Sports Halo would be a channel for discussing and promoting female athletes, but that quickly proved not to be the case. One of the very first posts on its TikTok account was one highlighting the birthdays of both Emma Raducanu and Lando Norris. The channel wasn’t intended for conversations about female sports, but rather for explaining sports to women.
Sky Sports Halo posted incredibly sexist videos in which it dumbed down sports content to make it “for the girls”. Instead of just presenting whatever was happening in football or tennis, it used internet slang and condescending metaphors to catch the viewers’ attention. One of the videos on the account was a clip of a goal from a Premier League game, with a caption: How the matcha + hot girl walk combo hits.
Needless to say, the incredibly infantilising tone didn’t go over well with female sports fans. Throughout the weekend, the newly created channel received a lot of criticism, with many women pointing out the incredible misogyny visible in its content. Realizing that they had missed the mark, Sky Sports soon abandoned the idea.
“Our intention for Halo was to create a space alongside our existing social channels for new, young, female fans. We’ve listened. We didn’t get it right. As a result, we’re stopping all activity on this account. We’re learning and remain as committed as ever to creating spaces where fans feel included and inspired.” – Sky Sport Halo’s last post on TikTok.
A few days ago, I posted an article speaking about a particular aspect of misogyny within sports, namely the belief that women aren’t smart enough to understand sports in the same way men do. The case of Sky Sports Halo provides all the evidence I could ever need for it. This is exactly what the channel did. It treated female fans as unserious, childish people who can only comprehend football or tennis through internet lingo and outdated memes. They could never understand why a goal was impressive until it was compared to ‘matcha and a hot girl walk’.
It’s disgraceful for a media company as large as Sky Sports to be so blatantly sexist. Women in sports are already fighting an uphill battle, and the last thing they need is to be talked down to by misogynistic executives. Yes, it is incredibly important to create spaces for women in male-dominated areas, but this is not the way to do so. The people behind the account should be ashamed of what they have created.
The idea was bad, and the execution was even worse. Sky Sports Halo was one of the most sexist official media accounts I have seen throughout my time on the Internet. It never should have been created. The only positive thing about the situation was how quickly the channel disappeared.
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