How UK Media Covered the Historic Women’s World Cup 2023

The Women’s World Cup 2023 was the largest attended women’s sporting event ever underscoring the growing interest in women’s football. But how was this popularity reflected in media coverage? As the media greatly influences public perception and discourse, we analysed how well the Women’s World Cup was covered in national media outlets in the United Kingdom.

During the Women’s World Cup 2023, from the 24th of July to the 18th of August, we scraped every headline and article that was published across seven major UK media outlets: The Guardian, BBC, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Mirror, Independent and a sports publication, Goal.com. Each of the media outlets published focused Women’s World Cup pages, from which we collected headlines and text to analyse the number of articles published, the sentiment, and theme of the content.

In addition, The Guardian, Goal.com, Daily Mirror and The Sun had articles for previous tournaments published online, that we analysed for the growth of coverage over time and during the prior two Women’s World Cups.

The importance of exposure for women’s sport, in particular the Women’s World Cup, reaches beyond the playing field. Not only to break stereotypes and receive the recognition that it deserves – but also to drive economic opportunities, for players and the sport.

In this article:

• The Number of Articles Published During This Year’s World Cup
• 85% increase in media coverage compared to previous Women’s World Cup
• Zooming In On The Headlines: Sentiment Analysis
• Most Popular Women’s World Cup Teams and Players 2023
• Ladies vs Lionesses

The Number of Articles Published During This Year’s World Cup

When taking a look at how many articles were published throughout this year’s tournament across all publications considered in this analysis, we counted 2795 articles in total. That is 107.5 articles per day.

Topping the list is the Daily Mail, with 759 articles, which is on average 29 articles per day published, followed by Guardian, with 634 articles in total. At the other end of the table we find the BBC, which published just 141 articles on their Women’s World Cup page, 5 per day*. However, the BBC articles were among those with the highest average word length, with 737.5. Followed very closely by The Guardian, with a length of 734 words per article.

85% increase in media coverage compared to previous Women’s World Cup

For The Guardian, Goal.com, Daily Mirror and The Sun, we were able to retrieve articles from the two previous Women’s World Cups, which allowed us to see how much their tournament coverage has increased over the years.

When looking at just two tournaments previous, we can see an increase in coverage across all four news outlets. Since that time, coverage has seen significant growth: A 481% increase from the 2015 World Cup to this year’s, as well as a 85% increase in total coverage compared to the 2019 tournament. To see this increase, across distinct types of media, is an excellent development and shows that the sport and the tournament are continuously receiving more exposure.

As a sports publication Goal.com might have been expected to have the most coverage of the tournament available, but this was not the case: The Guardian leads the table and were one of the two publications covering the 2015 Women’s World Cup.

This also lists them in third place of all Women’s World Cup coverage we analysed, with 1,627 articles in total.

While in 2015, only The Guardian and Daily Mirror were supplying their dedicated Women’s World Cup section, in 2019, Goal.com and The Sun started publishing to theirs. Across the board, there has since been an increase in the number of articles published.

Zooming In On The Headlines: Sentiment Analysis

We conducted a sentiment analysis of each headline with help of natural language processing. In this process, articles were categorised based on their polarity score. Our classification approach differentiated between positive, negative and neutral sentiments. More details about the methodology can be found at the bottom of the article.

The media we looked at have distinct tones and editorial approaches that was reflected in the sentiments of the headlines that they used:

As expected, tabloid publications have the most emotionally loaded headlines. The Daily Mail published articles with least neutral headlines, only 29%, Compared to the average neutral sentiment of all other publications analysed, which is 55%, this is a very low number. We could see above that Daily Mail headlines are much longer than other outlets, which leads to their strong emotional content, with 22% of headlines being negatively, and 50% being positively loaded.

Their headlines are also much more negative than others. On average, the Daily Mail Women’s World Cup 2023 headline has 22% negative sentiment, whereas all other headlines have an average of 11% negative sentiment.

The BBC and The Independent published the most neutral headlines, both close to 65% neutrality score, followed by The Guardian, with 54.39%.

Most Popular Women’s World Cup Teams and Players 2023

We’ve also been able to track which teams and players have been written about the most. For that, we took both headlines and article bodies into account. England, of course, is the nation that was most discussed, with a total of 4905 mentions, almost double the amount of the host nation, Australia, with 2639 mentions.

What is surprising is that Spain, even though they won the tournament, were only in 5th place of mentions in articles and headlines. That probably has changed after the controversy with the Spanish FA chief which was not included in our analysis.

When it comes to players, 70% of the ten most mentioned players are from England. The USA follows, with stars like Megan Rapinoe being a major topic of conversation. This was Rapinoe’s last World Cup and her final act was missing a decisive penalty in the shootout against Sweden.

Sam Kerr, who is currently regarded as the best player in the world, was the second-most mentioned player. The Matildas’ semi-final run gripped the nation and the world and their taliswoman, Kerr, was a focal point of attention. First for an injury that kept her out of the group stage games, and then for scoring a fantastic goal in their loss to England in the semi-finals.

Ladies vs Lionesses

Female athletes are often referred to as “girls” or “ladies”, while male athletes rarely get referred to as “boys” or “gentlemen” (source). These infantilizing terms reinforce gender-stereotypes and potentially downplays their athletic abilities, which led us to investigate how often the term “lady” or “ladies” was used in comparison to “lioness” and “lionesses” - which are less belittling, but rather emphasise the strength and bravery of players.

We investigated how the two terms were used in the different publications:

Surprisingly, The Guardian was most generous in using the term ‘lady’ or ‘ladies’ when writing about the Women’s World Cup. They did have the most content published as well, however, it is strange to see the number of mentions of ‘lionesses’ in comparison, only 443 times they have mentioned this name of the English national team. Meanwhile, The Sun used the term 3788 times across their articles and headlines.

Overall, those numbers show a positive balance in the language used by journalists to cover the tournament. This image of the women’s team suggests a growing recognition of achievements and capabilities and implies a diminishing reliance on demeaning terminology when talking about women’s football.

Lianne Sanderson, former Lionesses striker and bettingexpert ambassador, says, “It’s amazing to see that the Women’s World Cup was so well received and had so much attention. The increase in media coverage, about 85%, when compared to the previous World Cup is a testament to the growing interest in the sport. This increased visibility not only celebrates the the incredible talent of the players but also helps in inspiring the next generation.”

“Media coverage plays a crucial role in shaping public perception and the positive trend signifies a shift in the right direction. It also opens up new opportunities for players and other people associated with the sport.”

Women’s football and women’s tournaments deserve consistent and comprehensive media coverage. There is still work to be done, and progress to be made, but to see the increase across distinct types of media, provides a great outlook for the sport in the future. The media industry and outlets need to continue covering women’s sports and tournaments beyond the life-cycle of big events, such as the World Cup, or the European Cup.

Notes

Step 1: Data Collection

• Gathered data from prominent media outlets (BBC, The Sun, Goal.com, The Independent, Mirror.co.uk, The Guardian) using custom-coded scripts.
• Collected data spanning from July 24 to August 18, 2023.
• Extracted key information: publication date, author details (name/URL), headline, and article text.

Step 2: Data Transformation

• Employed Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and frameworks to standardise and clean the data.
• Normalised text data by removing stopwords, special characters, and duplicates.
• Ensured consistent formatting for analysis.

Step 3: Data Exploration and Analysis

• Addressed critical analysis points to comprehensively understand media representation.
  • Number of Articles Published: Determined the volume of articles during the 2023 Women's World Cup.
  • Word Length Analysis: Calculated average word lengths of articles and headlines.
  • Growth Comparison: Compared the count of articles between 2015, 2019, and 2023 Women's World Cups, for both the specific year and overall span. Conducted this analysis for each publication.
  • Sentiment Analysis: Utilised TextBlob's pre-trained model for sentiment analysis, quantifying polarity (positive/negative/neutral) of headlines and articles. This revealed the emotional tone and portrayal of women's football.
  • Most Popular Teams and Players: Identified the most mentioned teams and players across headlines and articles.

Tools and Technologies Used

• Python Programming Language: Employed for data transformation, analysis, and modelling.
• Custom-coded scripts: Gathered data from selected media outlets.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques: Facilitated data cleaning, transformation, and sentiment analysis.
• TextBlob: Utilised its pre-trained model for sentiment analysis.
• Statistical methods: Applied to calculate averages, growth comparisons, and sentiment scores.

Conclusion

• The methodology involved collecting, transforming, and analysing data from diverse media sources to assess the
• representation of women's football during the 2023 Women's World Cup.
• Through sentiment analysis, growth comparison, and other metrics, the campaign aimed to shed light on the media's portrayal of women's football and its evolving significance.

Link to the subfolders in the media sites:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/fifa-womens-world-cup
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/womens-world-cup
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/womens-world-cup/index.html
https://www.goal.com/en/fifa-womens-world-cup/1/8x62utr2uti3i7kk14isbnip6
https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/womens-world-cup
https://www.theguardian.com/football/womens-world-cup
https://www.thesun.co.uk/topic/womens-world-cup/