Women's world cup scores legacy of sporting excellence

Rather appropriately, soccer superstar Sam Kerr summed it up best.

"It's honestly been a dream come true in the way that the fans have got behind us, and the way the girls have carried themselves. I think we've proven to the world, and also within Australia, that we are a footballing nation. And that's all down to the fans," the Matildas captain told Optus Sport after the team's controversial loss to Sweden.

And outside the sense of national pride and smashing of stigma around women's sport, the Matildas have also delivered a more direct impact for the growing movement:

More funding.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced $200 million for women's sport in Australia and head of FIFA Gianni Infantino recently hailed the tournament as 'transformational'.

In addition, nearly every state and territory is committing millions of dollars in state budget funding to improve women's access to community sport clubs and even the Coalition has pledged $250 million for community sport infrastructure grants if it wins power.

But my question is why did it take so long?

It's not like women's sports are new, so why does it take a nationwide world cup fever for years of requests from constantly-underfunded female sporting clubs and organisations to finally be answered?

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One common argument is that women's sports just 'aren't as profitable' as men's.

This latest tournament filled stadiums and glued 11 million eyeballs to the TV. If the sports industry can't turn a profit with numbers like that then I think we should worry about its future entirely.

Another argument goes that male athletes are inherently stronger or faster than women, which makes men's sports more 'fun to watch'.

I disagree on two points. First, if people only paid attention to the top performers, sports like boxing wouldn't have different weight class categories.

If 'bigger, stronger, faster' was the only criteria to enjoy a sport, middleweights like Floyd Mayweather would never have become a household name in the US.

My other point is that particularly in soccer, women's matches are actually much more fun to watch, namely because it takes more than a gust of wind to knock the players over.

A study from the Technical University of Munich found women in soccer fake injury half as much as men do, and when they are on the ground, they're back up 30 seconds faster than men.

So where does that leave us? Why does it take a history-making world cup to get any attention on women's sports?

As someone who works in the media, it saddens me to have to say that we're a big part of the problem. We don't give women's sports a fair shake.

Take for example this historic world cup.

Despite the Matildas hype being present across Australia from the jump, less than a quarter of the matches were actually televised. I had to sign up for a trial of Optus Sport's obscure streaming service to watch the other 49 matches.

Sadly, when it comes to games with a lower profile than a world cup, the lack of coverage is even more glaring.

Despite 40 percent of sports participants being female, women's sports receive only four per cent of sport media coverage globally, according to a study from the University of Minnesota.

And the lack of accessibility drives down interest, meaning fewer people get into women's sports, whether as fans or as players.

By contrast, coverage of men's sports get higher production values, higher-quality coverage, and higher-quality commentary, so of course they get more attention, more revenue, and higher-paid players too.

The funding from the government is a decent first step, but we also need to reverse the common way of thinking.

Instead of accepting the free-market idea that women's sports would get more coverage if they were more entertaining, we need to make the argument that the games would be more entertaining if they got better quality coverage.

The Matildas proved that for us. I just hope media companies don't put that effort to waste.

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