With only six percent of sports media coverage in the UK dedicated to female athletes and teams and women currently accounting for just three percent of the 14,916 rugby-related Wikipedia biographies, we decided it was time to change things.
So, we firstly partnered with Wikimedia UK to ensure that every member of the competing home nation squads was properly recorded on the site – adding over 135,000 words to their profiles.
Then, we worked with Twitter to update the players Twitter profiles, ensuring they are in line with the new verification standards.
To follow that, we gave the women’s championship the same treatment as we would the men’s, by hosting pre- and post-match shows on Guinness’s GB Facebook channel, working with a number of established male and female rugby professionals such as Nolli Waterman, Brian O’Driscoll, Sarah Bonar and Gareth Thomas, to provide authentic and engaging content, before and after every Super Saturday game.
To date we’ve secured 193 pieces of coverage around the campaign, engaged 300,000 people through our FB Live activity and have written over 120 new Wikipedia pages.
And this is just the start …
