Introduced as ‘the lil sis of Sky Sports’ (a red flag from the start), Sky Sports’ Halo brand promised to be a TikTok home for female sports fans and a place to amplify women athletes.

But after just 72 hours and a wave of backlash deeming it ‘patronising’ and ‘sexist’, it’s been scrapped.

Followers of women’s sport in the UK have risen sharply in recent years - and with the success of the Lionesses and the Roses this summer, it’s easy to see why. With that momentum, the demand for authentic sports content that connects with this fan base has never been higher.

Last month, a report from the Women’s Sports Trust found females in the UK made up 44% of the Euro 2025 audience and 43% of the Rugby World Cup audience - records for each tournament, climbing to 48% and 47% for each final.

As an outlet Sky Sports isn’t struggling for content to share and a clear strategy could have turned Halo into a must-follow hub.

Instead, it lacked direction, thought or consideration and came across as patronising.

It served up surface-level posts that completely missed the passion of its audience and leaned into a ‘pinkified’ approach - love hearts, pink text and a general tone of dumbing down in the tone of voice, with text across one video saying ‘How the matcha + hot girl walk combo hits’, playing into stereotypes of what a female sports fan must be like.

So what should have been done prior to one post being scheduled?

Audience analysis

Surely with 42.5 million followers across their main social platforms combined (and millions more when you include the branch off accounts), there’s a sizeable cross section of female sports fans who could have been asked to participate in market research. A short online survey or a focus group could have given an early indication if this channel was needed… or wanted.

Strategy & planning

Starting the first strategy session with two simple questions.

Who is Sky Sports Halo really for? What do we want them to do? From there, they should’ve looked at similar platforms targeting a similar audience demographic to see what is working well and used those insights to create a clear content plan that included unique and authentic posts aimed at engaging female fans, rather than copying trends.

Internal review & testing

When setting up a new social profile, there will always be an element of test and learn, but before flooding a channel with 10+ videos that set the tone of the platform, each post should be reviewed. Does the content plan support the communications objective and the reasons to believe in the channel? Does it genuinely champion female sport, athletes, and the community you’re trying to build?

Halo’s failure highlights how even the biggest of brands can get it catastrophically wrong. Sky Sports had the opportunity to set a new standard for women’s sport on social, yet mistakes throughout the strategy led to an extremely underwhelming and insensitive execution.

If anyone wanted content focusing on matcha + hot girl walks, we’d follow the plethora of influencers already producing it… and sorry hun, not all of us like matcha.

xoxo

Contact Jen@democracypr.com or give us a call on 0161 881 5941

Check out our other insights