Last weekend marked the start of the new Bundesliga season. Perhaps you heard about it through your preferred media, whether radio, television, newspapers, social media or other digital channels? Did you hear or read the countdown to the start of the season, the predictions and previews, then the match reports, results and league tables? – No? Hmm. That could be because it wasn’t about the men’s Bundesliga.

Role models in Sport

Today I’m writing about sport, or more precisely about sports news in the media. And since my aim is not just to point out problems – because that’s always rather frustrating – I’ve come up with something that could change the current status quo, which is worthy of criticism, and possibly improve the situation. More on that later.

I am primarily concerned with those short sports news items at the end of “normal” news programmes, or in between segments of a magazine programme or similar. You know the ones: “Now we turn to sport” or “Rob Rickards has the latest sports news”. And also the online (short) reports and sports pages of daily newspapers, wherever there is current sports information outside of pure sports programmes or broadcasts.

Are they important? Well, apart from the obvious (= information), sports news provides a source of small talk or icebreaker conversation starters, draws attention to achievements, people (= athletes) and inequalities, can inspire, provoke head-shaking and controversial discussions, and more.

Sports in Media

Sport is a good umbrella term, as it refers to both separate competitions for women and men and joint competitions. These are rather rare, but they do exist: mixed doubles in tennis and badminton, for example, or mixed beach volleyball, the sport with one of the most ridiculous dress codes for women, but that’s another topic, and in recurve archery. Everyone runs the marathon together, but they are judged separately; even in amateur runs, athletes are usually judged by gender and overall performance (see also my report on the half marathon in Riga, May 2017).

Then there are competitions in which women and men take turns on the same court / field and/or play simultaneously on different courts / fields / pitces, for example in athletics and in most tennis tournaments – although the last final is always reserved for the men (‘It’s always been that way,’ oh really).

Here’s a little anecdote related to this: the US Open tennis tournament was just taking place in New York. After my favourite (female) player was unfortunately eliminated in the semi-finals, I didn’t follow it any further, but now I wanted to know who actually won. So I entered ‘US Open ladies‘ final’ into my trusted search engine on Monday morning, two days after the final was played on the Saturday. The top search result was a link to a German sports newspaper, followed by three links with videos/preview images side by side. All three referred to the men‘s final, which took place on Sunday. I could have understood that if I had searched for ‘US Open final’, as that was the last one. But I had specifically typed ‘ladies’ into the search. Strange.

A few weeks ago, the Rhine-Ruhr 2025 FISU Summer World University Games took place, a kind of Olympic Games for students, but held every two years. The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris had rekindled my former enthusiasm for (apparatus) gymnastics, and that was also on display here. It is now aptly called artistic gymnastics, and, as in my childhood, it is a “television sport” and really very exciting and impressive! It’s also great how friendly and supportive many of the participants were, but that’s just a side note. 

I watched the last day of competition (26 July) on the FISU stream, where the men’s and women’s individual medal competitions were held. They alternated between the two, which was great. That meant you automatically got to see both, even if you had only tuned in or come to the hall to watch one of them. Incidentally, Japan cleaned up in this sport with a total of 17 medals, including 5 gold medals for the women and 3 gold medals for the men. Japan ended up leading the medal table at the end of the Universiade, but that’s really another topic; I just wanted to mention it in passing.

Let’s get back to ‘We now come to sport.’ In theory, anything could happen. But unfortunately, that’s not the case, because most of the time it’s about male athletes and men’s sports: men’s football, men’s basketball, men’s ice hockey, men’s motor racing, men’s cycling, men’s handball… and not just from Germany. I was able (had?) to find out from radio news who won the men’s basketball and American football championships in the USA, and I am also constantly and involuntarily informed about men’s Bundesliga football player transfers and coach dismissals.