Women's sport brings an audience - we proved that with cycling magazine takeover

Women’s sport doesn’t sell, isn’t that what we’re always told?

When I was asked to guest-edit the first ever women’s issue of one of the biggest cycle sport magazines in the world, Rouleur, I had no doubt we would find the stories, writers, illustrators and photographers to make an issue that was both beautiful and interesting, a collector’s item. The real challenge, we thought, was to create something that would sell in enough numbers to justify the investment, something that could change the industry perception that women’s sport is not commercially viable.

So often we are presented with the statistics that there is little or no appetite for women’s sport. What the presentation of the standard data showing online traffic wilfully ignores, is that we are not usually comparing like for like. Page layout and broadcast running orders are framed around men’s sport, the disproportionate prominence leading readers, listeners and viewers to the position that it is more important, and more worthy of their time.

With just four to 10 per cent of sports coverage given over to women’s sport we cannot pretend that market forces stand alone, without admitting the confirmation bias of our news and broadcast agendas. What we did at Rouleur was test whether women’s cycling could hold its own when readers were not guided towards an alternative. The answer is in the sales figures.

When the dedicated women’s cycling Rouleur issue went on pre-sale on Feb 4 it became the fastest selling issue of the magazine’s 15-year history. It sold out, not once, but twice and has been reprinted for a third run to try to meet demand.

More copies were sold online in one week than the previous best seller in six, and the return on investment is not only in the short term. The number of subscribers to Rouleur has tripled in the past year, but this issue has accelerated that growth – by halfway through February, there had already been 50 per cent more sign-ups than the average month last year.

As with most sports media, Rouleur’s readership is heavily gender-skewed; around 85-90 per cent are men. With this issue, not only has the proportion of female subscribers more than tripled, but the quantity of male subscribers has also increased.

Whichever way you slice the data, the commercial value of a women’s-only cycling issue has been overwhelming.

Cycling is a very traditional sport, still run for the most part by men, for men. Yet even from this corner of our industry, there are other examples which demonstrate the appetite for women’s sport when the options are presented more equally.

Cyclo-cross is a shorter discipline than road racing, lasting around an hour, making it easier to give almost equal TV coverage. The viewing figures reflect the gender split. At the recent world championships, where Dutch riders won both elite races, 91 per cent of the home audience watched the women’s race as well as the men’s. Two weekends later, Eurosport Netherlands recorded higher viewing figures for a weekend of women’s cyclo-cross racing than for the men’s.

In road racing, a much more internationally watched discipline, one of the largest one-day races of the calendar recorded a remarkable turnaround in viewing figures last year, thought by organisers to be at least partly because of a change of focus in race scheduling.

Rather than coming first as a sort of warm-up, and moved to another channel once the men’s race got under way, the women’s Tour of Flanders followed immediately after, and saw a 12-times increase in viewing figures. With more women’s races being broadcast than ever before, largely through new and ongoing partnerships with Eurosport and GCN (Global Cycling Network), we can expect viewing figures to continue to rise.

What this trend in broadcast, and the success of the women’s issue of Rouleur show, is that women’s sport does indeed sell. This may be an uncomfortable fact for those who prefer the comfort of the status quo, rather than the disruption and required energy of change.

Delivering women’s sport necessitates a new understanding of the disciplines, the personalities and the narratives that will sell. At Rouleur, market forces have dictated. The next issue of the magazine is a 50-50 gender split. Change must be wider than one magazine, broader than one sport. Will this record-breaking issue mark a turning point in the delivery and coverage of women’s sport, or will it be a flash in the pan, a sign of what could have been? If it is the latter, you cannot tell me we have not shown what is possible.

• Orla Chennaoui is a Eurosport presenter and Rouleur columnist