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Women’s World Cup promo hardly features women (video)

By Stanford Crissey

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You will have to wait more than 30 seconds until you see an actual woman in Fox’s new ad for the Women’s World Cup

When you’re making a commercial, there are several steps to remember to follow. One that’s usually not mentioned because it’s so obvious: you have to actually show the thing you’re advertising. You don’t have to be Don Draper to get that one right.

But Fox Sports seems to have had some trouble with that concept. They recently released an ad for the Women’s World Cup, which takes place this summer. Strangely, it takes a long while in the ad before you actually see a woman playing soccer.

See for yourself:

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34 seconds.

That’s how long it takes for a woman to be shown playing soccer, in a soccer uniform, on a soccer field, or doing anything even vaguely soccer-related. It’s not that hard, guys; I’m sure there’s footage somewhere of a woman playing soccer for the national team. It doesn’t even have to be a U.S. player; hell, we’d settle for the actress from Bend It Like Beckham at this rate.

So the commercial starts. It’s trying to get you, the viewer, excited about the upcoming Women’s World Cup. It elects to do that by… showing the men’s World Cup? Huh?

Here’s a tip, Fox: the U.S. has a women’s team. They play soccer. They play soccer really well; they’re currently ranked number 2 in the world by FIFA, and they were the runners-up in the last World Cup (they lost a thrilling final against Japan). In short, they’re a lot better than the men’s team. So why not promote them by, you know, promoting them? Get us excited about their very real chances to win it all! If you’re going to show another team, show the 1999 team that did win it all, not the men’s team.

It speaks to a problem that women’s sports have: a lot of people don’t take them seriously, and unfortunately that includes the people in charge of sports TV programming. Do they really think no one will watch the women’s World Cup unless they compare it to the men’s cup? Sure, the men’s cup is more popular, but the women’s cup certainly won’t be able to escape its shadow if it’s constantly being compared (often unfavorably) to its older brother.

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