Equal Play Day: from February 20 onward, women’s sports will be invisible

A recent study shows that only around 14 percent of all sports coverage in Austria is dedicated to women’s sports, and disabled sports only receive around 1 percent.

• With the Equal Play initiative, win2day – the gaming site of Austrian Lotteries – is drawing attention to the imbalance in the visibility of women’s and men’s sports and focuses on measures to reduce this discrepancy.
• More visibility for women's sports means more sponsorship, more professionalisation, more young talent.

Equal Play Day marks the day of the year when, statistically speaking, the coverage of women’s sports in domestic media – as compared to men’s sports – has simply been depleted: in 2025, this day happens to be February 20.

This particular date is calculated on the basis of a current study by MediaAffairs. Here’s an overview of the most important findings:

-    Aside from the Olympic Games, only a few sports dominate media coverage in any given year. First and foremost, there’s (men’s) football, which takes up a disproportionate amount of sports coverage, followed by alpine skiing, tennis, ski jumping and formula racing. In all of these top disciplines, the media primarily focuses on male athletes, the only exception being alpine skiing.

-    The Olympic Games feature something happens that is rarely seen anywhere else: Space for the variety of sports and breadth in reporting. This is why female athletes are able to attain a share of 43 (!) percent in Olympic sports coverage.

-    There are few sports in which women achieve a high level of media visibility through TV broadcasts. Alpine skiing is the most popular, but biathlon and ski jumping have also gained a lot of media visibility in recent years, thanks to ORF broadcasts.

-    For the first time, this study also examined the visibility of professional athletes with disabilities. It looked a lot worse for them... they only received 1 percent of overall coverage! This means that their Equal Play Day would actually land on January 4, and without the Paralympic Games, it would be January 2!

Austria-wide campaign for more visibility of women’s sports

win2day, initiator of the Equal Play Initiative, will never tire of drawing attention to this imbalance in the reach via media. From February 10 to 23, posters throughout Austria will draw attention to the topic of “More Visibility of Women’s Sports”. To this end, win2day has created a strong image of Austrian national team players, featuring Dorina and Ronja Klinger (beach volleyball), Antonia Matzka (ice hockey), Simone Sill, Rebekka Kalaydjiev (both basketball) and Cornelia Pripfl (American football) – combined with quotes intended to shake things up.

How does it feel to be invisible? “We only really became aware of this invisibility when we achieved very strong results in Beach Pro Tour Elite 16 tournaments abroad for the first time. The world’s absolute elite plays in these tournaments, and only the best 16 teams take part. Even after coming in 9th and 5th place at these tournaments, we hardly received any requests from the media or anything like that,” said the local beach volleyball players Dorina and Ronja Klinger.

Equal opportunities in sports as our guiding principle

Win2day Managing Director Georg Wawer is quite clear on what he can see: “Media visibility is extremely important for athletes. You can’t be a role model for our youth without visibility, and only those who are visible have a chance of obtaining lucrative sponsorship contracts. And more money in turn increases opportunities for professionalisation in sports and, in the long term, for more medals at major events, which we can all be happy about. At win2day, we believe in fair play and equal opportunities in all the sports we support. Our goal is equal opportunities for all athletes – with and without disabilities.”

The value of equality is certainly part of the DNA of Austrian Lotteries. They have been the most important financier of popular and elite sports in Austria for decades. Director General Erwin van Lambaart: “With our commitment to sports in Austria, we want to ensure that Austria's athletes find optimal conditions to perform at the highest level in international competitions. The visibility of women's sports is also important so that we have female role models who can inspire young people. This is essential – because only then can young people discover competitive sports for themselves.”

More information about the Equal Play initiative as well as the results of the study can be found here: www.equal-play-day.at

About win2day

With win2day, Austrian Lotteries offers an online gaming service and the first and only place to be for licensed online gaming in Austria, combining casino classics, slots, lottery games such as Lotto 6 out of 45 and sports betting all on a single gaming site. It stands for security in game processing, payout of winnings and data protection. The core of all of win2day’s actions revolves around protecting players, including minors, and ensuring that the required framework conditions are in place.

win2day is the main sponsor of Austrian ice hockey, basketball, beach volleyball, tennis and American football. Fair play as an attitude continues to be a top priority: win2day supports women and men – with and without disabilities – with the same level of appreciation and respect. In this context, win2day specifically promotes the professionalisation of women’s sports and disabled sports, the development of national teams, the provision of high-quality equipment for teams and, in particular, access to sporting events for the general public.

Details on the win2day Equal Play Day study