Sky Sports’ latest attempt at following social trends ended up falling flat, as “Halo” was rightly shamed by the masses for being a pitiful attempt to seem hip and trendy. On Saturday, the broadcaster’s “lil sis” ended up deleting almost every single one of their posts and apologised publicly, stating that “they got it wrong”.
Good one Sherlock. Watson would be proud. It is almost like posting such artistic and insightful content such as “thinking about Zohran Mamdani rizzing us and Arsenal up”, captioning a video of Erling Haaland scoring against Bournemouth with “how the matcha+hot girl walk combo feels” and replying to valid criticism with such demeaning commentary as “can’t believe you brought that kind of energy” is not a good idea!
In a world that is continuously polarising for not only women but a lot of communities, broadcasters such as Sky Sport have a continued right as the biggest sporting broadcaster in the United Kingdom, to champion equality in all of their programming. Alas, their recent new style of “content comes first”, and their ever-increasing bias towards providing influencers with a voice on their programming instead of journalists is proving to alienate the long term viewer. The tone deafness of Halo proves to be yet another step in the wrong direction, and is a damning reminder of how women can be negatively represented in the world of sport.
Bewildering Content Strategy
Oh to be a fly on the wall in the Sky Campus boardroom when somebody came up with this idea. “Don’t back down, double down”, must have been ringing in their ears. “Everybody thinks we are becoming Talksport, so let’s give the public what they want. A bewildering social media strategy that is clearly designed to get people talking about us due to noticeable stupidity, like we are on the Apprentice or something”.
On paper, launching a multi-media channel focused on women is not a bad idea. Women’s sport in the UK achieved its most-watched year ever in 2024, with 44.7 million viewers tuning in, surpassing the previous record of 37.6 million in 2022. Capitalising on the increased interest would be a good idea, and would showcase a willingness to prove to the public that you are willing to provide an equal platform for both men and women on your programming. So, focusing the majority of your social posting on thirsting over men with pink sparkly writing and silly social media buzz words that invalidate an entire sector of the population is monumentally prehistoric, and dare I say… Mental?!
Of the first 11 of their posts, 5 were about men. One even proposed a “ship name” for tennis megastars Carlos Alcaraz and Jannick Sinner. “Sincaraz”- nice. It is hard to believe that this is the same broadcaster that has been the heartbeat of nearly every major British sporting event in the late 20th and 21st centuries.
It also directly invalidated their own announcement.
“Introducing Sky Sports Halo – the lil sis of Sky Sports. A new TikTok channel created specifically for female sports fans. We’re about ALL sports and championing female athletes. We’re here for the culture, community and connection. We don’t just watch sports – we live it.”
Sky Sports Halo
They did not provide any sort of news or analysis of anything important, and provided essentially primary school effort PowerPoints on famous women that included only basic information easily found on the first page of their results screen on Google. It is downright odd that a social media page with a clear lack of content foundation was greenlit, and that a product of a major company was allowed to go ahead with posting online without any market research being done in any manner. The posts provided zero substance and offered little meaning.
You can argue that women do not need this channel in the first place, that separating women from men indirectly perpetuates the idea that women’s sport is inferior to the male equivalent. Increased media coverage on the main channels is working thus far, so why fix what isn’t broken? Even the wording of “lil” sis of Sky Sports gives off an impression of invalidation and snobbish superiority, the pink heart filters and weird usage of TikTok references make it feel like this was aimed at kids- do Sky Sports think women are childish or something? Do they feel that the only way you can get a woman to interact with them is through hot pink text and mentions of labubus and matcha?
A Lesson To Be Learned
If you wish to champion women in sport (which Sky should do anyway), providing female journalists a platform would be a good way to start this off. This is usually the norm when it comes to coverage of women’s sport, female journalists are 42% more likely than male journalists to report on these events. One thing that I couldn’t shake out of my mind when watching Halo’s “content” is that it clearly was not created by women; it felt like a parody of a fan of women’s sport. Providing personalised content that highlights women in sport, allows a focus on women’s sports leagues, and is made similarly to a post on the main social media pages would have made Halo more of a success.
It is basic marketing and even common sense in the media world. Provide insight, not a 15-second clip of Charles Leclerc with text saying that the Monoquasque is “a good man savannah” (I wish I made some of these up! Every clip referenced was vetted, edited, pitched, and they still thought they were a good idea). The clip in question was an excerpt of an interview providing further context of his engagement to his fiancée Alexandra Saint Mleux, and provided zero content about the upcoming Brazilian GP.
Everything they posted felt like it was made by some sort of unfunny millennial, thinking they were absolutely hilarious, or said-millennial was given a bunch of instructions by an out-of-touch social media manager and was only doing their job. Or even both. It was probably both.
Make digestible content that provides the public with a clear and coherent understanding of a developing story, not a video of Carlos Alcaraz screaming with an orange-tinted caption of “how it feels to be World No. 1 after three years”, with no substance behind it. At least the writing wasn’t pink and sparkly this time “gals”!
Create content that showcases lesser-known stories in the world of amateur girls sport, in a similar ilk to the brilliant content “A View from the Terrace” can provide when shooting their mini documentaries. It is just that simple; treat your audience in the exact same way as everybody else, don’t dumb things down, don’t try to be funny, and do not cater content in a way that would not look out of place in a pre-teen magazine. Halo was nothing short of a mistake, and set back their reputation quite rightly amongst British women for their demeaning videos.
What the broadcaster does next will be interesting, after their useless content was relentlessly made fun of on the internet, and geolocking people from seeing their TikToks, the apology was inevitable. Will it likely be a lesson on how to approach this sort of venture sensitively? Probably. But will they see this as an opportunity to go back to their roots of Journalism first?
No. Baller League must be on your screen at all times. You need to see Jay Emmanuel Thomas interact with Idris Elba. You have no choice.
