by Thinus Ferreira
The W-Sport channel focusing on female-led sports has now been added by Telkom's TelkomONE video streaming service for South Africa with W-Sport that will cover women's sport with 3 000 hours of content per year that will include 1 000 hours of live events and 300 hours of football matches from various leagues in the world.
The W-Sport channel that started in July 2021 and launched across sub-Saharan Africa in 16 countries, offers a mix of premium live football, basketball, motorsports, volleyball, cycling and triathlon content.
W-Sport plans to show a portfolio of live football content with up to 7 live football matches per week with England's Barclays Women's Super League, Germany's Frauen Bundesliga, Italy's Serie A, the Netherlands Vrouwen Eredivisie, Australia's W-League and the recent ICC tournament that will be shown on W-Sport in sub-Saharan Africa.
W-Sport will also carry the FIBA 3×3 Women's Series and the best 3×3 national team competitions, the W Series all female single seater motorsport championship, the Super League Triathlon, Extreme E, Athletes Unlimited Volleyball, Softball and Lacrosse from the United States, the UCI World Tour event Paris/Roubaix and Lioness Boxing that will all feature live on W-Sport.
Kelly Butler, W-Sport CEO, says "W-Sport's vision is to be the global leader in women's sports broadcasting and to passionately champion equality and diversity. W-Sport's content will entertain, engage and inspire audiences and the next generation of young female athletes and players".
"The significant development of and engagement with women's sport in recent times makes this such an exciting, relevant and timely launch. This momentum offers an opportunity to develop a new broadcast proposition – W-Sport captures that opportunity. We look forward to adding further carriage, content and commercial partners in the coming months."
"Our content will entertain, engage and inspire audiences and we are very proud of this launch association and partnership with TelkomONE".
According to W-Sport's market research, women's sport is deemed more inspiring, progressive, family orientated
and less money orientated than men's sport.
Besides TelkomONE now adding W-Sport for South Africa, the channel was added by Azam TV, a pay-TV operator based in Tanzania, as a linear TV channel that is already available in Botswana, Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
TelkomONE says that 84% of sports fans are interested in female-led sports.
"The pace of change in women's sports
necessitated that we launch W-Sport sooner than later," says Wanda Mkhize, executive smart home & content at Telkom.
"With female sporting role models like
gymnast Simone Biles achieving much greater mainstream exposure for both their
sporting prowess and courageous social stances, it was time for W-Sport to help
inject equality and diversity into local sports."
"We knew something had to be done when
a FIFA Women's World Cup football match drew a paltry 1.2 million viewership audience
on satellite."
"With the 2021 Confederation of African Football’s Women’s
Championship League on the way, the recent launch of W-Sport on TelkomONE with
its fresh perspective on women's sport is just perfect timing," Wanda Mkhize says.
"TelkomONE is very pleased to be the first to offer South African
viewers the first multi-platform service devoted to women's sport. Just 5% of
traditional media coverage is devoted to women's sport."
