Team GB female athletes dominate on social media in Paris as Games are dubbed the first ‘Tik Tok Olympics’

Latest research on the visibility of women’s sport by the Women’s Sport Trust has highlighted the golden social media skills of Team GB’s female athletes as they dominated ‘views’ in Paris this summer.  Overall, the Paris Games marked a significant shift in athlete storytelling as social media guidelines were relaxed.

The report showed that 67% of total TikTok views of Team GB athletes competing at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games came from content by female athletes, and their videos accounted for 69% of total output.

• Lina Nielsen, Bronze medallist in the women’s 4 x 400m relay, attracted the highest number of TikTok views of any British athlete, with over 28 million views, ahead of Tom Daley who attracted over 21 million views.
• Four of the six most viewed TikTok videos uploaded by British athletes during the Olympic Games came from female athletes, with rugby sevens athlete Ellie Boatman achieving the highest number of views for one video with her Team GB kit run through video.
• 57% of all Team GB athletes now have a TikTok account and of this group, 58% are female.
• 66% of British athletes that were active on TikTok during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games were female.

The trend continued in the Paralympics – 60% of total views of ParalympicsGB athletes competing at Paris came from content by female competitors.

• Female powerlifter Lottie McGuinness received the most video views of the ParalympicsGB team on TikTok with 2.3m views, closely followed by T63 100m sprinter Didi Okoh who received a total of 2.2m views.

Women’s Sport Trust CEO, Tammy Parlour, said: “Increasing visibility for women’s sport is about providing opportunity.  Female athletes had the freedom to document the Games from their own perspective and this allowed the stories to flow, from haul videos to behind the scenes of the Olympic village and capitalising on the ‘Muffin Man’ craze. It was fun and engaging and provided space for lesser-known athletes to make a name for themselves.”

Parlour continued: “In Paris the creativity of our female athletes on social has allowed more stories to be told and a wider, more diverse range of voices to be heard, which is always positive for women’s sport.” 

The importance of social media platforms in the growth of women’s sport continues to be a dominate theme.  In the previous Women’s Sport Trust Visibility Report it stated that views of the Barclays Women’s Super League had increased on TikTok from 92.9 million in the 2022-23 season to 147 million in the following season 2023-24.  The latest report showed that major rights owners are using their social media platforms to showcase women’s sport and most provide equitable coverage on their platforms. 

• In cricket, The Hundred’s TikTok account featured 47% of videos focused on the men’s game, 46% on the women’s tournament and 7% were mixed.
• Team GB at the Olympics dedicated 36% of TikTok videos to female athletes, 35% were mixed and 29% featured male athletes.
• On the ParalympicsGB account 52% of TikTok videos were mixed, 22% dedicated to female athletes and 26% to male athletes.
• Wimbledon didn’t follow this balanced approach with 50% of TikTok videos dedicated to male athletes in comparison to 29% of posts dedicated to female athletes, with 21% of videos being mixed, although content for men’s tennis did generate higher views.

This contrasts to the coverage that media outlets currently provide on traditional platforms. Earlier this year, the Women’s Sport Trust reported that just 8% of TV sport coverage hours on key channels in 2023 was dedicated to women’s sport, down on the 13% seen in 2022, while only 3% of all sport print mentions were dedicated to women’s sport in 2023.

The visibility report also looked at broader women’s sport viewing figures, using broadcast data and analysis from Futures Sport and Entertainment.  This showed the impact of the England Women’s Football team, the Lionesses, not competing in a major international tournament for the first time since 2021.

Between 1^st January-15^th September 2024, there were 26.2 million viewers for women’s only sport events*, which was down on the 34.6 million achieved for the equivalent period in 2023. However, this is the highest reach for a year without England featuring in a major women’s football tournament.

Some major sporting events had a higher proportion of female fans watching this summer. 52% of the BBC’s audience for the Olympic Games was female, 55% of the Paralympic Games audience was female and 58% of the Wimbledon audience was female.

Parlour concluded: “2024 was always going to be an interesting year without the Lionesses playing in a major international tournament. But what’s exciting is that the hard work by domestic leagues across women’s sport can be seen in isolation and the numbers are growing. This report clearly demonstrates there are a lot of opportunities to work on when it comes to increasing the visibility of women’s sport, from embracing the storytelling of female athletes to championing equality within social publishing strategies.”

-ENDS-

*Women’s sport covers female specific properties, such as the FA WSL, The Women’s Hundred and the Netball Superleague. Men’s sport covers male specific properties, such as EPL, The Men’s Hundred and Formula 1. All other events, where both male and female athletes/teams are involved, are categorised as mixed, e.g., the Olympics and Wimbledon.