Media company Her Sport was set up to encourage women to take up sport, stay in sport and follow sport. It was set up by Celbridge woman Niamh Tallon, an avid sportswoman herself, who grew up as a competitive swimmer.
The former UCD commerce student, who has a master’s in digital marketing, has always followed women’s sport.
There was just one problem: it was too hard to keep up with what was going on. “I remember watching the last Olympics and seeing some of the women getting really great times but not hearing anything about it in the media,” she says.
It bothered her enough to start researching the issue properly, talking to clubs about the disparity of media coverage between men’s and women’s sports.
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Even now just 6 per cent of sports media coverage in Ireland goes to women’s sport, she reckons, despite the fact that 41 per cent of participants in sport are women. She believes that under-crediting women’s achievements in this way is starving young people of female role models and having a lasting impact.
It’s part of the reason why, by the age of 14, girls drop out of sport at twice the rate of boys. Moreover, whereas boys who stop playing typically remain fans of their sport, that level of “fandom” wasn’t as pronounced among girls. “Boys become men and leave their sport but stay on as fans. With women you don’t see that so much,” she says.
Body issues were a factor. “I grew up at a time of TV show America’s Next Top Model, and felt that look was incompatible with sport,” says Tallon, who considered doing a PhD on the subject. “In the end I felt that if I did that I would only be researching it, rather than doing something actionable,” she says.
Just six per cent of sports media coverage in Ireland goes to women’s sport despite the fact that 41 per cent of participants in sport are women
Instead, she decided to put her digital skills to use and do something about it immediately. Working with UCD classmate and co-founder Mohammed Mahomed, she developed and launched the Her Sport website in 2018.
Today it has a growing online community of more than 75,000 users, drawn to its comprehensive and engaging features on women’s sports.
Tallon’s ambition for the business is for nothing less than a “cultural shift”.
She initially ran it on a part-time basis while working in the marketing industry in New York. By the end of 2019 both she and Mahomed decided to work on it full-time. That the pandemic started only months later should have proved disastrous, given that all competitive sports stopped. In fact it helped.
“During Covid a lot more people turned to their phone. Also, because there were no sports, all of a sudden there were all these athletes available and accessible for interviews, so we doubled down,” she says.
Her Sport’s audience is growing across all platforms and produces a quarterly newsletter in hard copy. “It has grown rapidly,” says Tallon.
Winning one of Three Ireland’s Grants for Small Businesses last year helped support that growth.
‘Boys become men and leave their sport but stay on as fans. With women you don’t see that so much’
“It was a percentage of a salary, which helped us bring on more people,” explains Tallon, who now heads up a team of four. “It also meant we were able to get reliable broadband, which is important for recording and streaming. We record all our videos so we needed good quality broadband,” she adds.
Padraig Sheerin, Three Ireland’s head of SME, led this year’s judging panel, which also included Sonya Lennon, entrepreneur and advocate for workplace equality; Siobhán Finn, national hub network manager for CEAI; Marine André, head of performance at Enterprise Nation; and Michael O’Dea, senior development adviser, high-potential start-ups, Enterprise Ireland.
The publicity that came with Three’s Grants for Small Businesses has also been invaluable. “We’ve been on TV and in print media, and Three is doing a podcast about us,” says Tallon.
“We’re really getting to share our story. The win helped us amplify the reach we had and get in front of as many people as possible.”
For your chance to win €10,000 in cash, products and solutions from Three for your business, apply now at three.ie/business.