95bFM Why has there been a lack of coverage at the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup?
23 September, 2025
Interview by Jasmine Gray, adapted by Zanoor Penny
The University of Auckland’s Toni Bruce discusses the factors contributing to the lack of coverage of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup and the issues with the lack of women's representation in the media.
The Women’s Rugby World Cup (WRWC) is currently taking place in England, with Canada and England set to fight for first place, as the Black Ferns go against France for 3rd place.
However, many people online, such as popular New Zealand content creator How To Dad, have expressed their disappointment in the absence of mainstream media coverage of the competition in general.
His initial video, which received over 505.5k views on TikTok and 1.8m views on Instagram, criticised 1News’s lack of coverage regarding the Black Ferns making the quarter finals.
He then proceeded to create his own news report skit to promote the upcoming match in place of traditional news platforms.
Toni Bruce, a Professor of Sociology of Sport and Sports Media at the University of Auckland, told 95bFM’s The Wire that there are multiple reasons why this year’s WRWC has received less visibility in Aotearoa compared to the last competition in 2022.
As well as being held in Aotearoa, Bruce cites cheap ticket prices as a reason for the success of the 2022 tournament.
“What [cheaper tickets] did was open up rugby and particularly women's rugby to pretty much anyone, and of course, it did not hurt that the Black Ferns did really well.”
She says that time zones are a large reason why this year’s World Cup has become less accessible to New Zealanders.
“[Games are] in the middle of the night most of the time or really early in the morning.
“If anybody wants to watch, you really have to make an effort, and if you don't get to see the live game, then you can only watch the highlights, and for people who are real fans, that's not enough.”
Bruce adds that coverage of women’s sports overall has increased consistently over recent years, maintaining 26 to 27 per cent annually of New Zealand’s sports media coverage.
She says policies by the former Labour-led government have helped bolster the visibility of women’s sports.
“[The former Labour-led government] did a number of things, setting aside a lot of money so that we could actually successfully bid for and host three women's [rugby] world cups.”
Besides allocating more money to women’s sports, she says the creation of an annual report on women’s sports coverage has helped incentivise improved coverage.
“We started to see, as soon as this media analysis started, each year that the percentage was creeping up or sometimes going up quite a lot because of this competition between media.”
Bruce also commends women sports reporters, such as Suzanne McFadden, Zoe George, and Rikki Swinell, as well as social media influencers, such as professional US women’s rugby player, Ilona Maher, for boosting women’s sports, specifically women’s rugby.
She says recent cuts to the media sector in New Zealand could seriously affect women's sports reporting heading forward.
“The other thing we know is that when sports media are under pressure, they tend to take less risks, they tend to go back to the tried and true, which unfortunately tends to privilege established male sports rather than these emerging women's sports.”
Bruce says it is important to highlight women’s sports in mainstream media.
“There are slogans like ‘if you can't see it, you can't be it’. There's a lot of strong evidence behind the fact that media coverage makes a huge difference.
“We've got to make a shift from this sort of ‘wow look what's happening in women's sport’ kind of narrative to actually covering women's sport in the same kind of way that men's sport gets covered.”
