Did Sky Sports axe 'Halo' TikTok too fast?

0:01Gabby:This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:30Chris Paouros:for more young women. The person who figures that out has hit a goldmine for growth. Welcome to The Sports Agents.

0:45Gabby:The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman.

0:51Chris Paouros:To talk about all of this, we have Chris Powers, Vice Chair of the Football Supporters Association and Salon Andy Hickman, Deputy CEO of Football Beyond Borders. Salon and Chris, thank you so much for coming on the Sports Agents to discuss something which I think we should all just at the very beginning say we're not here to bash Sky because I think the idea of Halo is probably quite good and reaching more female fans is a good idea. It was the execution which clearly wasn't right and was recognised very, very quickly, Chris.

1:24Gabby:Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, you've always got to congratulate innovation and trying to reach new audiences. And, you know, everyone's trying to reach younger audiences now. And I think particularly younger women, it's a great, it's a good demographic. And Sky Sports don't usually get it this wrong in terms of their audience work. I think the first thing is to say that conflating women's sport and women who are fans of sport was the first error because they're not the same. And they mushed it all together, which probably didn't help. I think what you've also got to sort of look at is that women and sport don't need a pink filter.

2:03Gabby:Women already watch, analyze and love sport. And then if you launch something for women fans, but frame it with stereotypes, you're not serving inclusion. You're reinforcing that inequality. So if you're like me, you live and breathe sport. A Haaland finish next to match a hot girl walk feels random and inauthentic. authentic and if you're trying to get somebody new you're not going to get them hooked because the goal is paired with a meme because it doesn't bring you any closer to understanding for example why football is exciting so there's a lot of stuff there that's probably worth unpacking

2:37Chris Paouros:yes at the very beginning there you said about participation and enjoying and trying so there's one one thing getting more girls into sport to play sport and then there's another thing having fans who already enjoy sport and enjoy watching sport being catered for. So I guess, Salon, the next question is, why was there a need for this? Are Sky, and I don't want to, as I say, I don't want to just focus on Sky, but are they as a broadcaster thinking, oh, well, we need more women watching our coverage because obviously we want more people buying our subscriptions. So we've got to go in for a younger demographic to get them hooked, to get them involved later down the line.

3:13Chris Paouros:Was it something that they felt was almost like a CSR exercise to try and kind of, you know, cater for women who they felt were being neglected in this market? What was their thinking behind Halo?

3:24Ceylon Andi Hickman:I think I can't speak for Sky, but I can have a guess at probably what they were doing. I don't think it was a CSR exercise. I think it was a genuine attempt to get younger female fans into football or into sport more generally, right? And I think I'm really torn on it. It went out, it struck a chord, a negative chord with a lot of loyalist women's sport fans. And I think about myself in that. I've played football since I was three years old at varying levels. I still play football now. And I saw it and thought, that's not for me. I don't like it. The next logical step to that is then to say, well, that is patronising to me.

4:02Ceylon Andi Hickman:Right. And I think it depends who Sky's core audience was for it, because I think what happened was the, this might be controversial to say, but the social media outrage was led by probably women like me in terms of people who were really into sport that this comes already invested already invested they're critiquing it because they're like this isn't for me and i i think if you spoke to a sky exec and i said yeah of course it wasn't for you it was for people who women who'd never even watched sport before teenage girls particularly and this is what i was left really torn with because in my work at football beyond borders we work with teenage girls and we talk to teenage girls about what it is they want from sport and We did a big report a few years ago where they said we really want cultural crossovers.

4:44Ceylon Andi Hickman:We want women's sport to show up. We're talking specifically about football at the time. Show up in the music and the art and the fashion and the culture that we also engage in. I'm not sure Sky Halo was that. I think it was too light touch to 15 seconds too sharp.

4:59Chris Paouros:Can I just interrupt? Is that specifically women's football, for example, crossing it over into those? And does that already happen then with men's football? Does that cross over into the arts and culture? and give me an example of how that I would notice that.

5:12Ceylon Andi Hickman:Okay. So if you're a teenager growing up in a city, we'll listen to Dave. Dave is rapping about Tiago Silva. He is a footballer that there is a crossover. Who are their favourite rappers? Who are they listening to? Who's thinking about women's football in the same way? And we're starting to see more of it. We're starting to see players kind of cross into different fields that teenage girls are into.

5:31Chris Paouros:So has Ray got to sing about Chloe Kelly?

5:33Ceylon Andi Hickman:I don't know if Ray... Ray might get us as me and my friends, but...

5:37Chris Paouros:Okay, who's 16-year-olds listening to?

5:40Ceylon Andi Hickman:A rapper called Christelle, right?

5:42Chris Paouros:Right, has Christelle got to sing about Chloe Kelly?

5:43Ceylon Andi Hickman:She did, she did. So she did a daily listening with GRM, which was she wore a Lioness's shirt and she rapped about the lionesses and Lauren James particularly. So that is happening, right? And it's growing in a different way. I don't think what Halo was was that. My other point on this, I remember being 18 years old and the FA released, there was a headline that was pink whistles and pink bibs to get more girls. about 12 years ago and i wrote an article i was furious about it i found it really patronizing i found it i like this is taking the mick out of women's sport this is saying i need pink to evolve i think about that now having worked for 10 years in youth work with teenage girls who have never played football in their life i think having a pink bib could help some of them pick up the bib for the first time i think i think it could now so i so the pink bibs were never for me right but they could be for someone else who's never even seen themselves in football and I liken that to halo isn't could there be a voice that found this really exciting and engaging and were those voices included in the national conversation probably not and is that for girls

6:51Chris Paouros:to get into women's sport though or would they get into all sport that way do you think do you see

6:57Ceylon Andi Hickman:what I mean there's a difference there isn't there yeah I think so and obviously the the thing that's done the rounds is the Harland goal which is interesting right they picked a male sport moment to then match it with the kind of matcha hot girl walk thing which I don't even get right like I don't understand that that probably spoke to someone somewhere but I'm I'm not sure what

7:18Chris Paouros:they were trying to do if we could find her we'd all understand her and what she wants a bit better

7:22Gabby:the issue right is that lack of authenticity yeah in terms of just saying well what's the thing that works with young women and let's just like put it onto a goal a man with no context and i think part of the issue here is probably and and i hear what you're saying salon but i also think that i don't necessarily want to accept that premise i'd like to work with teenage girls a lot more on what what sport means and maybe the the pink bib is the first thing but then you can kind of break some of that yeah i think there's something about the assumption that women need sport softened or simplified or made approachable and and if you start with that are you even sort

8:05Chris Paouros:of listening to the audience you see i'm i'm obviously many decades away from being that girl they're trying to attract but what i love about women's teen sport in particular now is there's some someone there for everyone right so the last major tournament i worked on was actually the women's rugby world cup and in those 15 who start that game there's the one who likes a bit her makeup and does her hair. There's the one who loves her tattoos and doesn't give a damn about, you know, whether she's, you know, she's done her hair or not. There's the one that after the game is going to get herself dressed up and put a pair of heels on.

8:36Chris Paouros:There's one that's never going to come out of trainers in her life, right? So there is, and the music tastes and everything else. So it feels like there isn't, you know, a one size fits all in any kind of, you know, young girl's idea of what it is to be a woman in sport. And if you try and kind of pigeonhole anybody, they're going to rebel against that anyway.

8:55Ceylon Andi Hickman:And I think you're right, exactly right. It reminds me of an FBB classroom, right? I think it's the biggest privilege when a kid walks through, teenage girl, and you can affirm her interest for what she is interested in, whether that is Raheem Sterling, whether that is Warhammer, like the spectrum or its makeup tutorials, right? You can be the person that says you're interesting and you care about something. The issue that Sky Sports made is the language, right, in terms of how they branded it, of the little sister. Sky Sports' little sister. I don't know how that got signed off as in there are not many connotations of calling something a little sister.

9:30Chris Paouros:Yeah. Yeah.

9:31Ceylon Andi Hickman:It was authentic or genuine or affirming or empowering for anyone, I think, because of the connotations of that term. And that is linked to years and years of misogyny and years and years of patriarchy. Right. To be a little sister isn't cool. So let's unpack that. But don't feed into that narrative and then try and make us subscribe to it.

9:50Gabby:you know we're not a niche segment either you know to your point gabby it's like there's this mythical woman fan that seems to be who not just sky sports that's being designed to and i don't know who that is and you would never cast men as a homogenous whole you're talking about audience segments there are segments so why would this just be one even if it is age is one of the

10:12Chris Paouros:demographics you're looking at yeah and also the way people consume their football and their sport whether it's watching entire 90-minute matches, whether they only do clips, they will go to those platforms and those places that they feel talk to them, won't they? And of course, what all mainstream broadcasters want is to try and talk to as many people as possible while recognising that ordinarily those people, you're not going to necessarily attract those people outside of that sport with those presenters or those commentators. And, you know, so it's it's such a culturally diverse kind of area that it feels like, is there ever going to be a possible, you know, a TikTok channel that works for everyone?

10:53Chris Paouros:It doesn't feel like there would be. So did they jump too soon, Sky? Should they have, you know, should they have hung on there and actually seen who came to Halo?

11:00Ceylon Andi Hickman:I don't know, because I'm not sure how deeply they understood the audience that they were going for at the beginning. And I think that's what we're wrestling with here in the debate is like we're kind of making assumptions on our half of who this was for. or because it wasn't clear at the start. So to Chris's point, if they'd have really articulated clearly, this is for you and not for you. We obviously don't say that as a brand, but you make it very clear in the content that you are creating, who this is for and who this is not for, and the way that you package it and the way that you frame it.

11:29Ceylon Andi Hickman:I do have a question about if you'd have included more teenage girls' voices in that stage. At the beginning when you were ideating, I don't know if they did, and also in the reaction point of view, would it still exist? if girls had co-created it, been there since the start and then been in the right platforms to then champion it when it came out, was that the counterweight to the audience that it wasn't for? But because I don't think they knew exactly who it was that they're trying to target, it's very hard to then do that kind of co-production process.

11:57Gabby:It's exactly that. It's like you can't, if you don't really know who you're talking to, it's going to end up in a hot mess.

12:03Chris Paouros:What would you both like to see then? You've got a blank canvas, you've got a blank piece of paper and you can design something that you think is the answer to this, the panacea to go and get all those young girls interested in sport.

12:15Ceylon Andi Hickman:I actually am not going to take credit for this idea because we did an event in the summer around the Women's Euros and it's called This Is My Pitch. And it was teenage girls saying what their vision was for the future of women's football in this country and how to consume it. And Mariam, who is a 16-year-old, grows up in Brixton, known her since she was 12, she stood up and she had the best idea I've ever heard and I feel bad giving it away on this podcast because if someone takes this idea come and pay Mariam for it Mariam said there's a crisis in like youth provision in this country we've all been like you know youth clubs are closed why doesn't women's sport brand it as the place for young people to hang out and to have a space where they can be with their friends and I was like oh my goodness that is such a genius idea if you made the local WSL fixture on a Saturday the place where young people could go for free and could hang out and watch a game and get food that they liked and watch sport you'll create an audience because there's nowhere else for them to go so Mariam's voice speak to teenage girls they will give you the answers of what they want

13:19Chris Paouros:that is a genius idea

13:22Gabby:Chris? definitely that and I think talking to the people that you're targeting is really important and I also think the other thing is is that you don't necessarily need a separate channel. You might, but you don't necessarily need a separate channel because I spoke to one 15-year-old girl who said, does this mean that Sky Sports main channel isn't for me now? And that's someone who's already engaged with men's football. So I think that's the other thing is that there's a lot of subsections of all of this and actually just hearing who it is that you're trying to reach is the most important thing.

13:53Chris Paouros:Yeah, that was kind of my immediate thought, you know, the kind of very bold blue and red graphics of Sky, you know, Sky Sports, when I'm watching their men's football, does that mean that that's for the blokes and then the halo kind of pink is for the girls, which just seems unbelievably derivative and not particularly helpful, doesn't it? So yeah, it feels like there's a way to go on this one. Just when you feel you've made lots of strides forwards, something comes along, a little curveball that makes you realise there's more work to be done in those landscapes.

14:26Ceylon Andi Hickman:And it gives us a chance to talk about those things and think deeply about what the underpiped assumptions are and bring a bit of the nuance to it and think what still annoys us and what are the things that we can take from this and learn from it. So thanks to Sky for creating the conversation.