By Sacha Gatenby, Associate Sports Editor
In my honest opinion matcha is overhyped, to me it tastes like grass and there are so many other things I’d rather order at a coffee shop. But the Orbital’s sports column isn’t the appropriate place to talk about my feelings about matcha, so I don’t understand why the content team behind Sky Sports’ new female targeted social media account, Halo, decided their platform was. In the spirit of the Orbital’s honesty issue, I’ll be providing an honest review on everything that Sky Sports got wrong with Halo, coming directly from a young female sports fan.
Sky Sports Launched a new TikTok account on 13th November this year in a bit to appeal to a new demographic of young female sports fans that they felt they hadn’t tapped into yet. They coined the account the “little sis” of their main channels, an incredibly loaded term that that tells their target audience they are lesser than the pre-existing male fans.
When announced, the broadcasting company pitched halo as being an; “inclusive, dedicated platform for women to enjoy and explore content from all sports, while amplifying female voices and perspectives.” The only female perspective they seemed to cater to however was in regards to “matcha hot girl walks”, Labubus, Barbies and anything else they deemed stereotypically hyper-feminine. Their pitch was in hindsight rather subjective, because Halo did amplify their take on a female perspective, it was just incredibly tone deaf. The product was a patronising set of videos plastered in pink and purple neon font and filled with irrelevant tokens of over-consumerism.
What was most concerning however was not the visuals they opted for, but the level of disconnect between the captions on the videos, and the content that they were playing. The previously referenced “matcha hot girl walk” was written over a video of a Premier League football match featuring Manchester City’s player Erling Haaland. This isn’t teaching young women anything about the sports that are being showcased, going against the initial goal Halo set to achieve.
So much of the content that was briefly put out onto the platform felt reminiscent of Jo Koy’s infamously bad Golden Globes joke about Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie. He completely missed the point of the film focusing only on Barbie’s physical attributes and girly nature. He disregarded the point of the story being about femininity, self love and female power. Halo shared the same disconnect as Koy’s words, with all the colours and sparkles but no substance.
I’m going to assume that either very little market research or Beta testing happened before Halo’s launch, because it was so quickly publicly scrutinised by pretty much everyone. Sky were clearly trying to find away to tap into the marketing phenomenon that is TikTok. The platform has such a hold on current pop culture, hence the bizarre references in the videos Halo posted.
For so many pre-existing female sports fans the platform was a huge setback. I can speak here from personal and shared experience with some of my friends who follow the same sporting events as I do. I can guarantee that most women who watch sports will have been asked by a man if the only reason they are engaging with it is because we want to watch the “fit athletes”. I can assure you that is not the case. We watch sport for the same reason as men, we enjoy the spectacle of it, the gameplay, the suspense, and the competitive nature.
In the recent 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup for example, BBC sports reported; “a record-breaking peak audience of 5.8 million viewers tuning in across TV and streaming […] and across the full tournament, the Women’s Rugby World Cup reached a total TV audience of 12 million”. This was all before any specifically female catered content was put out by Halo, proving that there is a female driven audience for female (and male) sports.
While I understand that the number of women watching sports is rising, and they want to cater to this demographic by creating an inclusive space, this was not the professional or appropriate way to go about it. I also understand that they want to introduce a wider range of young women to the world of sport, but this should not be done by making them feel second rate to their male counterparts. Young boys don’t get into sports by having everything pitched to them in a stereotypically manly way, so why do the same for girls?
Ultimately, Sky Sports axed the channel after just 3 days, releasing an apology statement that read: “Our intention for Halo was to create a space alongside our existing social channels for new, young, female fans. We’ve listened. We didn’t get it right. As a result, we’re stopping all activity on this account.” While many were grateful for the apology, was it too little to late?
With Halo, Sky Sports had an amazing opportunity to showcase female athletes and sports content creators on their new platform, instead of taking the disaster of a route they opted for. In my opinion, female athletes such as Ilona Maher and Bianca Bustamante have got it right. Their content is a blend of their professional sporting careers, intense training regimes, and athletic lifestyles, while also occasionally tapping into moments of silliness by joining in with popular TikTok audios and trends. Their content comes across in non-derogatory ways that highlights their resilience and hard work while still humanising them.
Halo was the most egregious solution that Sky Sports could have come up with. Women don’t need the offside rule explained in pink sparkly writing. We need to stop being treated like a niche demographic of sports fans that struggle to understand the simplest gameplay rules. After all the lionesses have brought it home twice in the past 10 years, while their male counterparts could not. We want to be a part of the pre-established sports channels without the segregation.
The girlies get sports, we don’t need the rules to be mansplained in a pink sparkly font, so please Sky Sports next time get it right.
Image via Adrian Smith on Unsplash