The governing bodies of England football, rugby and cricket are uniting in a bid for tax credits for broadcasters to extend the coverage of women’s sport across the country.
The English Football Association (The FA), Rugby Football Union (RFU) and England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) wrote a letter to the UK government to extend the credit available for production companies to deliver women’s sport.
The letter was also signed by some of the UK’s largest sports broadcasters, including Sky Sports and ITV, but the BBC is absent. New digital-based challengers have also supported the proposal, such as YouTube and the Gary Neville-owned The Overlap.
Chief executives from Formula One, golf and British Cycling have also penned their signatures to the letter that was sent to John Healey today (4 September), the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Signees are arguing that of all televised live sports in the UK last year, only 13% involved women’s sport, citing this as a failure to deliver market access.
The letter sent to the Chancellor read: “On behalf of the UK’s sports, production and broadcasting industries, we are writing to urge you to extend the AV Expenditure Credits to include a targeted, demand-led expenditure credit for live production of women’s sport,” the letter says.
“Global audience demand for women’s sport is growing every year, driven by the remarkable achievements of British sportswomen. Supercharging the live production of women’s sport would not only capitalise on this demand, but would have huge economic benefits, increase visibility, boost participation and strengthen the UK’s leadership in global sport.
“Despite growth year on year, women’s sport still represents a relatively small share of total sports viewing (13% of all viewer hours in 2025) and growth remains largely driven by major tournaments, rather than the year-round coverage tuned into for male equivalents,” the letter says.
“We believe a targeted tax credit could help address this market failure by creating a more favourable production and broadcasting ecosystem for women’s sports across the UK.”
BBC committed to WSL amid dropping highlights show
A notable absentee signature from the letter was BBC or executives from the UK’s largest broadcaster and production company.
The BBC is set to broadcast up to 25 Women’s Super League (WSL) games for the upcoming 2026/27 season, with 14 being exclusive games on BBC.
The company shares broadcast rights for WSL games with Sky Sports and YouTube. The WSL’s agreement with its broadcasters means every game until 2030 will be available to watch, with non-linear-televised games on BBC and Sky Sports available to watch on YouTube.
The BBC was questioned this week when it made the decision to discontinue its Women’s Football Show, a highlights programme each matchweek from the WSL.
A BBC spokesperson told The Guardian this week, “BBC Sport remains fully committed to women’s football and the WSL”, and it was a decision to focus more on its digital-facing platforms such iPlayer, YouTube and the BBC Sport app.
This follows reports that the WSL was helping the BBC with production costs for some of its associated programming, which may have led to WSL CEO, Nikki Doucet, adding her signature to increase tax credits to production companies.
UK women’s sport viewerships
The 2025/26 WSL season produced record viewership figures on BBC and Sky Sports, as total viewing hours grew by 30% from the previous year to 5.71 million and audiences watching longer than three-plus minutes increased by 90% in the early stages of the season.
The season before, WSL averaged 682,000 viewers per match on BBC and 337,000 viewers on Sky Sports.
The recent 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup sparked as a catalyst for new viewers of the sport.
The competition had a total UK audience of 12 million viewers throughout the Women’s Rugby World Cup on BBC, with the most-watched women’s rugby union match in UK history bringing a viewership of 1.62 million for the final as England’s Red Roses beat Canada 33-13. The final set a peak audience record of 5.8 million viewers.
