With the number of women rugby players increasing by 28% since 2017 “making up a quarter of the sport’s playing population”, you would think someone would want to sponsor us?
Sitting on the University's Women’s Rugby team committee for sponsorship and fundraising, I spent a fair portion of my summer holidays writing nagging emails and explaining the ways York's businesses could support our team. And more importantly, why they too would benefit from the agreement. I genuinely don't believe there was an independent pub or estate agents in York, and its surrounding area, not hounded.
When I told people of our lack of fortune I was met with persistent faces of bewilderment, disbelief and shock. Surely for any growing company wanting to be seen supporting a sports team that ticks diversity boxes, there isn't another choice so progressive. In today's age where businesses are so concerned in showing their ‘wokeness”, sponsoring a women’s rugby team is like a huge neon sign screaming, “look how progressive we are!” It demonstrates caring not only about women's sport, but women’s sport in a male dominated field. It clearly states your commitment to gender equality and female empowerment in a sport that has traditionally received less attention and funding compared to men. Your company could not appear more socially conscious or inclusive.
Fortunately a few companies did see sense, as we really needed a new kit this year. A few of the team members had dads who ran companies willing to support or knew friends interested. However without personal interest, most companies seemed less than thrilled to help. Running a women’s rugby club is a fairly costly affair, being a rather developmental team a coach is needed to train contact as well as having the necessary first aid skills to deal with injury
So, in pursuit of an answer to our fruitless sponsorship quandary, I spoke to the men’s team about how their sponsorship was, testing my theory as to whether most people truly did not care about women’s rugby or they just did not care about sponsoring university rugby. Am I playing the victim who’s just incompetent at her job and blaming the patriarchy?
“In terms of easiness, it's quite easy," the men’s sponsorship committee member told me (salt to wound!), he explained how they approached companies, not dissimilar from ours; stating how they can support us, our values as a team and why it is mutually beneficial. They certainly put in a lot of effort into their search for sponsors, needing as much financial support as we do, but they seemed to get a lot more positive responses, even being approached by a company they never even contacted!
I looked at premiership rugby to see if women’s rugby was neglected in terms of sponsorship in comparison to men's. However they seemed to share theirs as a whole club: Saracens, Bristol Bears and Harlequins alike. Perhaps if we had a closer relationship between York’s Men and Women’s Rugby we would be better off…
But I doubt we’d ever be mature enough to share.
