Why was Skysporthalo such a failure?

Motorsport has always been a male dominant sport. But in recent years, females working in motorsport from drivers, to engineers, to marketing have increased and they have had to work hard to beat the basic male assumption of only being into the sport for the male gaze.

For years, the women were glamorized as WAGS and grid girls and that was their ‘place’ in the motorsport world. A showcase, an accessory, a side piece to the sport. It was in 2018 that the decision was made to discontinue the use of grid girls. Women in racing has been around since the 50s but the light on them has been dim.

Maria Teresa de Fillippis - first female F1 driver

This can be argued to go back to our childhood as the girls are typically shown into sports such as Ballet or gymnastics while the boys are encouraged into football, rugby or go-karting. Even if there was a girl who was good at football, rugby or go-karting how common was it to hear the phrase ‘omg, you got beaten by a girl?!’ when they did succeed.

While it has been recognised that the starting pool is more male dominant and there needed to be more encouragement for females to get into karting – there was still the problem of where would they go after that? In an already tough competitive field of men trying to get into formula one series, imagine how tough it is on a women. There needed to be a pool for women to also get promoted into an elite series as formula one is to the sport.  

Jamie Chadwick, Nerea Marti and Alice Powell - Miami 2022 (Getty Images)

In 2019 we saw the ‘W series’ which was an all-female racing series but after 3 seasons, administration unfortunately fell through. Determined not to let the women in racing loose their place in the sport, Susie Wolf took over and helped to develop F1 academy. In 2023, F1 academy had its first season with the backing of all 10 F1 teams and drivers. It now has an increased viewership both on screen and in the stands. The 2024 season also saw a more exclusive viewership with Netflix also following their season just like their successful ‘drive to survive’ show.

F1 Academy drivers - 2024 (formula1.com)

While there is still a long way to go, there is more effort being put into not just

including women in racing but also ensuring that they have a respectful place in the sport. Keep in mind that there are also more women engineers, journalists, strategists, organisers. Red Bull’s strategist Hannah Schmitz is incredible in her role and has been a role model for a lot of women who want to come into Formula one. The 2025 season also saw the promotion of Laura Mueller to Esteban Ocon’s race engineer. Women are finding their place in a male dominant sport and more mindsets are changing to recognise that they belong in the sport too. It is important that they are acknowledged, recognised and celebrated so that more girls and women also know that they can succeed in this world.

I have only written about single seater motorsport, but this same struggle applies across the fields of sports.

So then came the announcement of the new TikTok account ‘skysportshalo’. A social media account set up with the intention of creating a space for female sports fans saying ‘we’re about ALL sports and championing female athletes. We’re here for the culture, community and connection’. The problem is that they have failed to acknowledge the ‘culture, community and connection’. They failed to respect the very viewers they are aiming to connect with. The content released were the complete opposite of ‘championing female athletes’. It patronized them instead.

screenshot of one of the videos from the page before being deleted.

In the beginning, it was unclear if the videos were ‘raigebait’ to try to get more viewers quickly or if it really was a huge misjudgment in their audience. But with the announcement of its account closure I would argue the latter. After just 3 days, the broadcaster announced that they have “listened. We didn’t get it right. As a result, we’re stopping all activity on this account”.

The opening of the account was initially met by a rage of memes by both males and females mocking the content. It was clear that viewers were unhappy but what wasn’t clear was how a large broadcaster managed to get this so wrong. Why was the content so backwards and a contrast to the statement put out? Where was the research into the accomplishments of women in sports and their audience? Why was it described as the 'lil sis' of the main sky sport account?

Instead of an account which focuses on women in sport, we saw an account trying to teach women about sports. I use the word ‘teach’ lightly here as there were no facts or lessons given – more that a football goal felt the equivalent to drinking matcha.  However, it has been years of proving that women viewers do not need to be taught the sport, rather they just need to be included, and 'skysportshalo' largely failed to acknowledge that. Girls know the feeling of a goal by being on the field and scoring. Did we just forget the success of women’s football? Did we forget that women are capable of playing any sport?

It has been made clear that women do not need pink subtitles to understand what is going on, heart filters to be interested, or ‘matcha’ or ‘hot girl walk’ language to connect. The women know and understand the sport they are watching and just ask for the space to be acknowledged without being disrespected.

Having said this, I also do not understand why there wasn’t a redirection of the account. It would have been nice to have a female focused social media account, but we want to see the women being highlighted. If we do log onto the social media accounts of skysports you will see a sea of male in sports with visibly less content highlighting women’s achievement in sports. So, an account focusing on women in sports could have been welcomed – but the intention needs to be to highlight the women’s accomplishments in sports. The account ‘femalesinmsport’ is a great example of the type of content and focus we as women had hoped for by skysporthalo and it could have been a huge success with the larger platform that skysports have.