{"id":141845,"date":"2025-11-18T21:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T21:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/141845\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T21:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T21:31:08","slug":"sky-sports-staff-involved-in-heated-talks-over-axed-halo-account-with-women-employees-left-particularly-upset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/141845\/","title":{"rendered":"Sky Sports staff involved in ‘heated’ talks over axed Halo account with women employees left ‘particularly upset’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sky Sports terminated their new TikTok channel aimed at female sports enthusiasts after merely three days following intense public mockery. <\/p>\n

The broadcaster had devoted months to developing Sky Sports Halo, assigning two employees exclusively to the project, including one from Sky Sports News.<\/p>\n

Staff at the broadcaster’s west London headquarters received an enthusiastic company-wide message before Thursday’s debut, describing the platform as catering to female supporters across all sports. <\/p>\n

The channel was set to feature commentary on Sunday’s England versus New Zealand netball fixture.<\/p>\n

However, the platform was abruptly withdrawn at 9pm on Saturday following widespread criticism. <\/p>\n

Viewers ridiculed the channel’s content, which featured pink heart graphics, references to wellness trends like “hot girl walks” and green tea drinks, Barbie figurines, and collectable toy mentions.<\/p>\n

Particularly striking was the channel’s decision to showcase male athletes in five initial posts, despite targeting female viewers. <\/p>\n

Tennis content included a post about the “bromance of the century” between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, labelled “Sincaraz core”.<\/p>\n

A video of Erling Haaland scoring against Bournemouth carried the caption “How the matcha + hot girl walk combo hits”, leaving viewers puzzled about any connection between the striker’s goal and these Instagram wellness trends. <\/p>\n

The channel featured Barbie doll representations of professional female athletes.<\/p>\n

\"SkySky Sports Halo sparked a furious backlash from sports fans | SKYSPORTSHALO<\/p>\n

Describing itself as the “lil sis” of Sky Sports immediately suggested female viewers were somehow less knowledgeable than the broadcaster’s regular audience. <\/p>\n

This infantilising approach implied that women required sport to be presented through memes to comprehend it.<\/p>\n

Monday’s internal discussions about the debacle turned tense, sources revealed, with employees confronting senior executives Mark Alford and Andy Gill about how such material gained approval. <\/p>\n

The 45-year-old Sky Sports News director and the head of social media faced particularly fierce questioning from female colleagues.<\/p>\n

Women working at Sky Sports expressed deep frustration, having spent years building the broadcaster’s reputation in women’s sport coverage. <\/p>\n

They viewed the incident as undermining their efforts to establish credibility in the field.<\/p>\n

\"Sky<\/p>\n

Sky Sports was accused of sexism as the broadcaster suffered backlash after launching the Halo account<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

SKYSPORTSHALO<\/p>\n

Alford, who encourages colleagues to address him as “Alfie”, appeared to feel the reputational impact acutely. <\/p>\n

He subsequently removed his presence from both LinkedIn and Twitter platforms, suggesting awareness of the damage inflicted by the failed initiative.<\/p>\n

Industry experts expressed astonishment that Sky proceeded without conducting any focus group research, despite the broadcaster controlling over 70 per cent of televised women’s sport in the UK. <\/p>\n

Andy Gill, who rejoined Sky following 18 months at Facebook, had proclaimed on LinkedIn: “I couldn’t be prouder and more excited about this launch.”<\/p>\n

The women’s football platform GirlsOnTheBall immediately criticised the output, stating: “The branding (one day can we please be past the pink\/peach stage?!), the premise, the copy…”<\/p>\n

Social media responses were scathing, with one user writing: “So condescending. Creating a dumbed-down sports channel for women is unbelievably sexist. Incredible that it was approved.” <\/p>\n

\"Sky<\/p>\n

Sky Sports Halo uploaded clips with love hearts on them<\/p>\n

| SKYSPORTSHALO<\/p>\n

Another described it as “Truly a slap in the face of every effort in the last 50 years to get women in sports – whether participant or spectator – taken seriously and treated with respect.”<\/p>\n

When criticism intensified on Friday, crisis meetings occurred but executives initially decided against removing the channel. <\/p>\n

Alford defended the project on social media, emphasising female team involvement in content creation.<\/p>\n

The official Halo account responded to one critic who questioned their understanding of female sports fans with: “I can’t believe you brought that energy.” This tone-deaf reply further inflamed the situation.<\/p>\n

By Saturday evening, executives recognised the venture had failed catastrophically, with a Sky representative stating on Monday: “We hold our hands up. We didn’t get it right.”<\/p>\n

One Sky journalist acknowledged the lasting impact: “It will take some living down.” Gill’s LinkedIn announcement remains visible, accompanied by over 30 critical responses, including one stating: “It shouldn’t have got past a Post-It note, as an idea.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sky Sports terminated their new TikTok channel aimed at female sports enthusiasts after merely three days following intense…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,43,139,69,96116,51066,2022,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-141845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-other-sport","14":"tag-sgg","15":"tag-sport","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}