Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to announce a $200 million investment in women’s sports as the Matildas progress to the World Cup semi-finals.
The ‘Play Our Way’ program aims to improve sports facilities and equipment specifically for women and girls.
Mr Albanese said the Matildas, along with the Diamonds and the Wallaroos, had captured the hearts of the country and ‘changed Australian sport forever’, and that momentum must ‘be carried through generations’.
“The Matildas have given us a moment of national inspiration. This is about seizing that opportunity for the next generation, by investing in community sports facilities for women and girls across Australia,” said Mr Albanese.
“We want women and girls all over Australia to have the facilities and support to choose a sport they love.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will announce the ‘Play Our Way’ program on Saturday morning, to improve sports facilities and equipment specifically for women and girls
The Matildas will play for third place on Saturday evening. Photo: FRANCK FIFE/AFP
Sports Minister Anika Wells said the $200 million would be spent helping the ‘next generation’ of female athletes enjoy safer sports facilities.
“Too often women and girls change in men’s bathrooms, wear hand-me-down boys’ uniforms, play with men’s equipment on poor fields that boys’ teams wouldn’t train on,” she said.
The program will be available for all sports, but as football is the most active sport in the country – with around 1.5 million players nationally – it is expected to require “considerable resources” in the wake of the impressive campaign of Matildas.
Beau Busch, Co-CEO of Professional Footballers Australia said one-off “sugar hits” of funding for historic events was a really important part of the strategy going forward, but stressed the need for funding to trickle down.
“What we need to get to is this sustainable and consistent level of government investment that will allow us to make continued progress, rather than the kind of one-off big investments in big, big, big events,” added Mr. Busch .
“But what we also need to do is ensure this consistent investment so that we can build great professional leagues, and also a really great grassroots experience.”
Millions of people across Australia have followed the Matildas’ World Cup run
Australians young and old jumped on the bandwagon last month, gripped by the story and success of the Matildas – who will play Sweden for third place in the World Cup on Saturday.
More than 7 million Australians tuned into the semi-final on Seven – a figure not including the hundreds of thousands who gathered in stadiums, pubs and live venues across the country.
Only 15 matches of the tournament were streamed on free TV, while the other 49 were only accessible through Optus Sport, many behind a paywall.
The government stands by its commitment to combat siphoning, saying free access to key events is important and the scheme should be modernized to include online services to ‘reduce the risk of events slipping behind paywalls’.
Communications Secretary Michelle Rowland will release three reform models on Saturday to consider modernizing the anti-siphoning system.
“Every Australian deserves the chance to enjoy live and free coverage of these events, regardless of where they live or what they earn,” she said.
The government’s preferred model affirms free broadcasting as the ‘safety net’ for free access to ‘nationally significant and culturally significant sporting events for all Australians’.
This would prevent streaming and online services, as well as subscription television channels, from acquiring rights to cover an event on the list until a free-to-air broadcaster has the right to televise the event.
Ms Rowland said such reforms would ‘bring online services into the regulatory framework and broaden the range of events on the list to include more women’s sports and para sports’.
All three reform options being proposed include men’s and women’s rugby league, rugby union, cricket and football matches with a senior Australian representative team added to the roster.
Feedback on the proposal document will inform the development of legislation to modernize the scheme and list, which will be tabled in parliament in the coming months.