The conversation of sport — Isentia delivers Victoria’s annual study on women’s representation in sports news

Summary: Commissioned by Sport and Recreation Victoria’s Change Our Game initiative, Isentia’s analysis of nearly 40k pieces of media shows that women’s sport coverage in Victoria rose by a third — from 15% to 20% while female bylines in sports journalism climbed from 27% to 34%.

Released in February 2025, this study was delivered by Isentia as the global media monitoring partner for Victoria’s Change Our Game Research and Insights Initiative. Covering the period from July 2023 to June 2024, the research involved human analysis of more than 39.9k individual pieces of sports news aired or published in Victoria, spanning print, online, TV news, and radio, excluding live broadcasts, social media, and subscription TV.

The headline finding is that women’s sport coverage rose from 15% in 2022–23 to 20% in 2023–24, an overall increase of one third, with the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 contributing 3 percentage points. Beyond the World Cup, 14 of the top 20 sports recorded improved representation of women.

The study also tracked portrayal shifts where women athletes were increasingly described as talented, match-fit, and having high integrity, moving away from older tropes. On the journalism side, female bylines grew from 27% to 34%, and male journalists contributed 62% more stories on women’s sport than the previous year, signalling a broader cultural shift. The Matildas remained the only women’s team in the top 10 for share of coverage, with men’s AFL teams still dominating.