Critical Analysis: BBC News/BBC Sport — WSL: As womens football breaks records, can it also break barriers?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-66940017

Genre: Sporting Media, Women’s Sport

Audience:

• BBC Sport/News consumers
• Womens football fans
• Global women’s football fans/younger players.

The content engages with most ages for a female demographic, especially those from an Asian/mixed heritage background. As the articles main focus is breaking down barriers female footballers from different backgrounds have/continue to face.

Therefore the audience can relate to the story.

Characters: Luke Wolstenholme (the writer), Marva Kreel (presenter for football content creators copa 90), Renuka Odedra (freelance football writer) and Amna Abdullatif (a member of anti-discrimination group ‘The 3 Hijabs’).

• As characters in this story Marva, Renuka and Amna all reflect/share some of their own racial/discriminatory experiences within the footballing world and how they now feel somewhat happier/are demanding more change to get these barriers addressed.
• The characters also have three different job roles, which gives the audience different people who they can relate too and hear from, I.e. it gives the story more dimension and angles.

Narrator:

The writer Luke is the main narrator throughout, however, all 3 speakers, even though you can’t see them directly are the other narrators as even though you don’t hear them directly through audio you can still hear what they have to say through their written words. And we do see a picture of each one of them too so we know what they look like.

Movement:

The story somewhat progresses chronologically, Luke introduces the story by talking about some of the records that have been broken in the WSL and then gives us some context into some of the barriers women in football face, and then we get introduced to the three speakers.

The story then allows us to hear the 3 speakers experiences before ending on a quote from Amna saying “That they feel like they belong”. This is in my opinion a plea/call to action for the government to take action and make it so womens football is a place for all women no matter what background or religion they come from.