Supercars hosted an all-male virtual event – and its communications strategy was a disaster
Supercars had a great concept by launching an All Stars virtual event to keep fans and sponsors engaged during the COVID-19 pandemic. But as Meggie Palmer explains, its strategy fell apart when it failed to include women, and then tried to explain away the problem.
When COVID19 rudely interrupted our Q1, we all had a choice. A choice of how to respond to a crisis. A choice of how to lead our teams and a choice of how to best pivot.
Sporting codes though have been a little slow off the mark with their innovation.
Enter Supercars with a great concept, an e-series as well as a celebrity Bathurst virtual ‘race’.
I have never left a comment on an article before but i cant take a backseat on this one…
Supercars should be applauded for the success their e-series has attained and the 100% participation for the talent in their sport and also been able to attract international f1 / indycar / nascar star drivers but according to you its a ‘disaster’? REALLY?!
if there was a female driver, would you have watched it?.. i doubt it!….if you had at least watched the series before writing this ridicolous article you would know that Simona De Silversto competed in on of the events.These athletes are some of the best drivers in the world and those that have watched the e-series competition have enjoyed it.
Im sick of this culture that must find a fault in everything, so what if it was just 24 men racing?..why dont you go and buy a rig, get iracing and put your hand up to race next week???
Yeah, nah. It’s simply not good enough anymore to not *even consider* diversity as part of your comms planning. The optics are terrible. All men (and almost all of them white). Geez…
Yes, motorsports is male dominated, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t female fans. How much great PR would you get if you found female (and particularly younger women) who are fans? I know a few, just in my network (and I’m not a motorsports person…at all).
If nothing else, this is lazy work.
Hear Hear. This “girls club” apologist rubbish is just getting sillier and sillier.
“The execution though, was sloppy.”
No it wasn’t. It was executed amazingly, maybe the best E sport series in the world fyi
Hey Meggie,
Might want to do a bit more research here. The Supercars eSeries is a 10-week program featuring the actual drivers involved in the Supercars Championship series and elite drivers from international series as guests. Including former Supercars driver Simona De Silvestro who has already compted. The one-off Celebrity event was not part of the series, not held on the same time slot, and was simply a bonus to the telecast series. You clearly are not aware of Supercars and Motorsports commitment for involvement in the sport for females, just about every Supercars team employs females in a wide range of roles including engineering and team management plus the governing body, Motorsport Australia’s has a very strong Women in Motor Sports program, your headline grab is well wide of the mark.
I was putting together a streamed eSports event a few weeks back, reached out to numerous governing bodies and managers for players. The men’s sports came back with a response and the women’s sports never responded. You can only lead a horse to water and splash it in the face …
I completely agree with *Chill Karen* and have to add, that of all the local and global sports that have been able to stage Eseries type events, the team from Supercars, Fox Sports and iRacing have done an amazing job. To attract some of the very top talent from Formula 1 and other sporting codes speaks volumes of the quality of the competition and the management of the (virtual) sport. The execution was in no way “sloppy”. I expect it will be a reference point for linear + digital media rights, and sports administration, for years to come.
Sounds like an aggrieved audience of one…
Just to be clear here, are you actually a Supercars supporter or have you stumbled upon this and taken issue with it?
I commend the V8 Supercars organisation for what they have done in this CV-19 period. It has been outstanding.
The asks by some people on here are out of line. Not everything has to be a 50/50 split between male/female.
What a junk article. Having worked closely with both Supercars and athletes on this i know for a fact they tried to get females to participate but there was a lack of interest or availibility. It was pulled together at the last minute and they didn’t have a great deal of time to ensure they were ticking your feminist box. Motor Racing is inherently a male sport, fact. Throwing females, or anyone for that matter, in it for the sake of it is to the detriment of the overall product and entertainment value. If there were female in it who were crashing and coming dead last you would be writing an article about how unfair the make drivers were. Stop being an oxygen thief and find better use of your time than writing this garbage.
Wow. Unfortunately these days you can give someone a $100 note and they will find a way to complain about it.
Keep doing what you’re doing Supercars, which includes getting as many woman into the sport as possible via fantastic programs like Dare to be Different.
Jamie Whincup
Here, Here!
(if you are indeed the real JDUB) Goodluck with the rest of your season mate, hope get title no. 8!
how emphatically pedantic…there are no exclusions, it’s simply merit based, not gender based; meaning skills to compete at that high level in such a dangerous sport [virtually safely] in this case. It’s non exclusive and really terrific option in these isolation times for so many people. I must add I don’t watch more than highlights on Fox Sports news each morning as I’m not a rev-head, but many are: good for them. I should declare I have worked in sports events/marketing in several countries/continents for 28+ years so fully comprehend the well-developed need for inclusivity – many sports are best represented by women/girls in fact. This post is wrongheaded and ill-informed, as pointed out by others I note. In fact sport allows a break out and opportunity for young and older females from old school wrong headed ideals. Think it through: of many Australian sports the females are dominating: Matildas, Opals, Women’s Cricket [killing it!], Diamonds, Lauren Jackson arguably the best female basketballer ever, Cathy Freeman’s legend 2000 Olympics…the list goes on with enormous public respect and corporate support that grows of and through those magnificent efforts. Oh forgot one – please excuse the sarcasm – World number one in the most individually competitive of sports in Tennis, Ash Vardy…oh also Karrie Webb AO [yes recognised AO!] 41 LPGA wins inc majors. Enough…better knowledge and research please, I understand your intent but it blind-sides the respect and reality for whatever purpose.
It looks like Sense and Sensibility is a rarity these days.
I checked the V8 Supercars drivers list for 2020. There are 25 listed – and yes they are all male. This means that the current ‘pool’ of the top-level drivers is 100% male. Of course there have been many female drivers in motorsport and in Australian motorsport, but none in a top-level team at this point in time.
“Supercars reached out to individuals and representatives for male, female and transgender celebrities. A number (15) made themselves unavailable.”
Clearly the females approached all decided to not participate. You can theorise why all you like. And as another commenter has pointed out that Simona De Silversto participated in one of the events.
Bottom line is that the virtual Supercars pretty closely mirrored the available pool of Supercar drivers.
I also had a peek at the Netfit NZ website page for their virtual clinics headlined by the Netball NZ and ANZ teams.
Would the article’s author like to pass comment on the gender make up of this (wonderful) initiative?
Celebrity races are a joke.
Don’t be too upset that not everyone got a chance to make a fool of themselves.
The 10 week Supercar e-series championship on the other hand is getting more serious every race. It’s thrilling to watch live and shows real skill and determination. More women should be involved and it was great to see Simona race. Rather than complain about it, get training and have a go. There’s lots of opportunity for future e-racers, male and female.
It is a challenging conversation for all parties involved. I think one thing that should be kept in mind is any claims made in the original about quotes are correctly represented.
Meggie, thank you for writing this piece. Can you please clarify the following:
In the paragraph about speaking with people who participated in the race, you wrote ‘One who didn’t want to be identified admitted he knew there were no women racers, but he didn’t feel comfortable saying anything’. Can you please clarify if they meant that they did not feel comfortable saying anything to Supercars or if the did not feel comfortable saying anything about the issue.
Also, the quotes from Professor Matt Lindauer, were they specific to this event and Supercars, motorsport, or sport in general?
V8 Supercars are vindicated by these comments. Appalling article.
This is an issue that motorsports series around the world are very slowly coming to terms with. The responses in these comments make it clear that Supercars – and especially its fans – have further to go than other more progressive series.
There’s some amazing female racing talent out there. We saw it last year with the W Series. I can’t wait until the “bUt tHe ToP oF ThE TaLeNt PoOL iS MaLe” attitude dies off. It takes just an ounce of critical thinking to realise that maybe, just maybe, it’s because men have been prioritised and advantaged over women in motorsports for decades.
You can’t undo that straight away. But you can start to undo it by pushing for inclusion and actively trying to right the wrongs of the past, not by continuing with the status quo.
I’d love for someone to try to explain why the driver line up – behind a computer screen and a racing wheel – was all male. Go on, please. Is it because computers are a boy thing too?
It wasn’t all male. As mentioned a number of times, Supercars Driver Simona was competing in the regular series.
There’s also been a number of women compete in real life Supercars, especially at the endurance events when the field doubles in size.
People get offended over nothing once again.
Perhaps non-racing people were just expecting too much from this event. It also would have been nice to see a non-millionaire get the chance to compete. Plenty of non-rich people can drive well but the barriers to entry in this sport are immense.