Our Women’s Sport documentary productions have been some of our most successful being acquired by Netflix, Amazon Prime and ITVX.
In June 2024 we were kindly invited to the “Her Game Her Story” event at Bath Spa University to discuss the future of women’s sport content and to encourage production companies worldwide to shift their focus towards women’s sport.
There’s long been many misconceptions about women’s sport and the event was centred around increasing awareness and understanding of the huge opportunity women’s sport offers for content production. Ever since the FA’s ban on Women’s Football in 1921, passionate advocates have worked tirelessly to create gender equality in football and the wider world of sport. After decades of hard work, the Lionesses Euro’s victory at Wembley in 2022 was a real pinnacle moment, as their success became the centre of national conversation with the team garnering levels of support and media attention never seen before.
This victory formed the climatic moment of our documentary “Game On: The Unstoppable Rise of Women’s Sport”, produced in collaboration with the incomparable Sue Anstiss, MBE, a lifelong advocate of Women’s Sport and as Stacey Copeland so perfectly sums it up in the documentary, the Lionesses victory at the tournament was the moment that many male fans would “now say we rather than they” when they talk about their national women’s football team.
Our “Game On” documentary was acquired by Netflix and became our first production to be acquired by the streaming platform. We were thrilled to see a women’s sport documentary added to their slate as athletes have long had to deal with the misogynistic attitude that ‘no one cares’ about women’s sport.
We love creating sports documentaries that focus around important social issues and in recent years there has been vast momentum and change in the world of gender equality, particularly in sport and there is a real wealth of untold human interest stories in women’s sport that have yet to be covered. Working with rugby player Victoria Rush in 2021, we explored the stories of several leading players in the women’s game talking about the obstacles they face on a daily basis just to play and train. Whether these be outdated societal attitudes that rugby is a ‘man’s game’, having to balance full time jobs alongside their playing careers and even having to deal with the lack of women specific research and equipment, which is not only detrimental to their performance but also leads to heightened risk of injury.
From a filmmaker’s perspective these challenges all form great story points as we see our characters battle against these obstacles working to create positive change that will benefit the next generation. Furthermore they are all issues that you are very unlikely to experience in men’s sport, which only add jeopardy and stakes, leading to more compelling documentaries.
We were thrilled when No Woman No Try became an Amazon Prime Exclusive in 2022 and it was the incredible stories of player’s such as Shaunagh Brown and Stef Evans, that made the piece what it was.
Fast forward to today and although huge progress has been made in the world of women’s sport, there are still many issues and challenges the athletes face. For example, balancing Motherhood alongside a sporting career is a very current issue as organisations are working on adapting their maternity policies to best support their players to be able to have children midway through their playing careers and return, so that starting a family doesn’t have to signal their retirement.
Working with England Red Rose Abbie Ward, we documented her journey through pregnancy and her ambition to return to play only 3 months after giving birth to her daughter. Abbie was motivated not only by her own playing ambitions, but to show her team-mates and peers that it was possible. It was an incredible journey to document and you can watch ‘Abbie Ward. A Bump in the Road’ on ITVX in the UK, or on Rugby Pass TV worldwide to follow Abbie’s remarkable comeback.
We feel incredibly privileged to be working in the world of women’s sport and as the audience and interest continues to grow, we’re very excited to keep telling the stories of this athletes making change in the world of sport and gender equality.
You can see some behind the scenes of ‘Her Game Her Story’ on our latest YouTube video below…
Комментарии