An estimated 17 million people tuned into the final of the Women’s European Football Championship earlier this year, with the viewers joining the 87,000 who were watching live at Wembley. Many hope that the event will prove to be a watershed moment for the sport and project it in front of a completely new audience.

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth and Oxford Brookes University argue, however, that social media platforms could be playing a bigger role than they currently are. The researchers found that the final of the competition generated around 371,000 tweets before, during, and after the game. While this is a significant number, it is much lower than the 2.2 million that the corresponding match in the men’s tournament last year generated.

Social activity

It’s perhaps worth noting that much of the engagement around the final of the men’s tournament was driven by the online racist abuse experienced by Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, and Jadon Sancho.

“The comparison of the 2021 and 2022 Euros illustrate the impact of social media on our public discourse,” the researchers say. “Even though this year’s outcome was a historic victory, the actions of a few in the aftermath of a 2021 loss was able to dominate the headlines to the point where the Prime Minister had to comment on it.”

They suggest that more work is needed to better understand how social media can be used to ensure athletes get the right kind of attention and not the abuse that was targeted at the England men’s team.

The researchers recommend a two-pronged strategy that begins by crafting stories that aim to impact users on a more primal level and trigger reactions and retweets. These can then be followed up by deliberately targeting the social accounts of the mainstream media, who often play a crucial role in shaping and amplifying the debate.

“Mainstream media involvement is often what causes an online media event to become viral and cross over to become mainstream news,” they explain. “When this happens the number of social media users tweeting about women’s sporting events will dramatically increase which in turn will translate into the volume of social media traffic generated getting to a level which is comparable to what is generated during men’s events.”