Sky Sports’ new TikTok channel for female fans was meant to celebrate inclusion. Instead, its tone and framing risk turning women’s sport into a sideshow.
The last three years have been a golden run for women’s sport in the UK.
The Lionesses have redrawn the footballing map, retained their European crown in 2025, and now even have a London Overground line named after them. The Red Roses have turned Twickenham into a fortress and ended 2025 as world champions. They have built a dynasty on sell-out crowds and record-breaking viewership.
No one can argue women’s sport is not a side story anymore – it is mainstream sport with mainstream moments and mainstream audiences.
Against this backdrop, I was excited to see Sky Sports’ launch Sky Sports Halo – a TikTok channel “created specifically to engage and entertain female sports fans”.
But the initiative feels misplaced. Don’t get me wrong, the idea is positive but he execution is not and for a broadcaster of Sky’s scale and experience, it should have known better.
The problem starts with symbolism. Calling Halo a “little sister” account is not a throwaway phrase. It turns women’s sport into something secondary and you cannot promise to amplify female voices while branding the platform as junior to the main act. Women’s teams are breaking attendance records and winning global titles, so this framing feels dated and out of step with modern sport.
Parity begins with language, and the language here puts Halo on the back foot from the start.
There is also the question of where this content lives. A women-focused channel on TikTok is not a bad idea in itself. TikTok is where younger fans discover and follow sport. Yet ring-fencing women’s sport sends the wrong signal, implying women’s sport belongs in a side room rather than in the main feed.
True progress would have put the Red Roses, the Lionesses and England Netball alongside the Premier League and F1 on the biggest stages, not tucked away in a separate corner. If Halo becomes the only place where women’s sport lives, I worry it will preserve the old hierarchy rather than challenge it.
The content brief does not help either. Halo promises “fun, trend-led and relatable content” with “fashion and lifestyle” angles. None of that is inherently wrong, but it tips toward the stereotypes that have long undermined coverage. Sport is not a social accessory anymore and it is high time we saw women’s sport as competition, and tactics, and expertise. The fans filling Twickenham and tuning in for the WSL do not want the game softened. Sky knows how to deliver sharp, insightful coverage. Halo should meet that standard rather than retreat to softer edges.
Safety is the other test. Creating a “safe, positive space” for women is a commendable goal but safety should not depend on moving to a different channel. If the main Sky Sports accounts remain hostile, Halo becomes a shelter rather than a solution. A brand the size of Sky should be able to set the tone across every platform it runs – the same zero-tolerance approach to abuse should apply everywhere, not only in a women-labelled zone.
Sky’s instinct to invest in women’s sports is right and TikTok is a sensible place to experiment and to grow new audiences. But this moment required more than a branded annex. The Lionesses have their own train line. The Red Roses have their world title. Today, women’s sport sits at the heart of British culture.
So the challenge for Sky is not to carve out another room but to treat the main stage as a level field and to programme accordingly.
