Rachel Froggatt, the CEO of Women in Sport Aotearoa, talks to Suzanne McFadden in part four of LockerRoom’s video series, The Big Four, with the women leading the four global sporting events here over the next two years – three World Cups and the IWG Women and Sport conference.
Running the world’s largest conference on gender equality in sport in Auckland a year from now, it’s one of Rachel Froggatt’s missions to bust myths.
Among the ideas challenged by Froggatt, secretary general of the 2022 IWG Women and Sport Conference, is that good things can’t happen for women’s sport until there’s a big audience for it.
“You know, the idea that the audience is going to arrive just under its own steam with no support is a myth in itself,” she says in episode four of The Big Four series. “Then when you start to actually bring audiences in, you start to see this explosion of popularity.
“If you look at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, over a billion people watched that, because FIFA invested in a broadcast strategy all around the world to bring it into people’s living rooms. And I think that we are starting to mature globally around this idea that actually things will not happen for women’s sport unless we make them happen.”
Next Friday, Froggatt will host the Captain’s Lunch at Eden Park, celebrating women with the focus on bringing sport and business communities together.
You can watch part three of The Big Four with Jane Patterson, COO of the 2023 FIFA World Cup here, part two with Michelle Hooper, 2022 Rugby World Cup tournament director here, and the first video with Andrea Nelson, CEO of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2022, here.
Next week: The four women behind the Big Four discuss how they’re working together to run the best sports events for New Zealand.
