The 2024 U20 Women’s World Cup for women under the age of 20, was held in Colombia from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22 to highlight youth teams and allow them to play on the world stage.
Despite this, sports channels worldwide did not air the matches, nor did they advertise the event. According to FIFA, FIFA+ was the only streaming platform that broadcasted the matches live.
This added on to the already low percentage of women’s sports coverage in the media. They represent 15% of sports coverage as of 2022, according to Forbes, a number that has only recently risen.
Senior Rina Hoang said she did not see any media coverage of the U20 Women’s World Cup, nor was she able to watch it live.
“[I was] only able to watch highlight reels, videos and clips because I was not able to watch [it] live on TV,” Hoang said.
Senior Annabel Porter, a goalkeeper for Lincoln’s soccer team believes that the lack of media attention is unfair and does a disservice to women’s sports.
“Girls like me deserve to see ourselves represented on the big screen, and we deserve to feel like people care about us and our sports. It’s super discouraging to feel like nobody is paying attention,” said Porter.
Hoang believes that the US team represented their country well. In the quarter-finals, Germany was in the lead with 2-0, but the US pulled through to end up winning the match.
“[The US team was] somehow able to tie with Germany during stoppage time, and then won penalties. I didn’t even think they’d be able to score, but then they actually won,” Hoang said.
Florida State forward Jordynn Dudley scored first in the 98 minutes and then USWNT captain and Utah Royals midfielder Ally Sentnor scored, tying with Germany, and also scored in penalties.
Porter also watched some of the matches. She was discouraged by the team’s performance in the semifinals.
“[It was] a difficult one to watch. [North Korea looked] so much stronger than we did. We pulled it together a bit in the second half but it all looked a little messy and disconnected,” said Porter.
As an avid soccer fan, Hoang enjoys watching women’s soccer at the club and national level. She’s glad women’s sports, especially soccer, have started to garner the attention they deserve.
“A lot of people are starting to watch women’s sports, which helps push for equal pay and better training facilities for the athletes,” said Hoang.
