EU Broadcasters Clash Over Women’s Coverage

women's soccer team celebrating on the field — Photo: Leonard Zhukovsky / Shutterstock

European broadcasters have been told to stop using camera angles that can make women athletes look sexualized instead of seen as competitors.

Quick Take

The European Broadcasting Union and European Athletics issued new guidance on women’s athletics coverage.
The rules warn against low angles, tight rear shots, and slow-motion replays that do not add value.
The guide says these shots can create compromising images and shift attention away from performance.
The advice is part of a wider fight over how women’s sports are filmed and presented.

What the new rules say

The European Broadcasting Union and European Athletics released a 23-page guide called Raising the Bar to shape how broadcasters film women’s track and field events. The document tells crews to avoid low-angle shots from beneath athletes, tight shots from behind, and slow-motion replays that do not help explain the action. It also uses illustrated examples to show which views should be used and which should be avoided.

The guidance says the goal is to keep coverage focused on athletic skill, technique, and effort. Reuters reported that the organizations want wider camera angles that show the full movement of an event and reduce the chance that footage will be taken out of context and shared inappropriately online. That concern reflects a larger problem in modern sports media, where a single replay clip can spread far beyond the broadcast itself.

Why broadcasters were singled out

The guide was written after feedback from athletes who said some camera work made them uncomfortable and pulled attention away from competition. BBC Sport reported that the European Broadcasting Union worked with female athletes while building the recommendations. The result is not a demand for less coverage. It is a demand for better coverage, with fewer body-focused shots and more attention to what the athlete is actually doing.

Several examples in the guide show how that works in practice. For high jump and pole vault, broadcasters are urged to use wider views that show the run-up, takeoff, and landing instead of close, upward shots. For running and horizontal jumps, the guide pushes crews away from revealing angles and toward framing that captures the full performance. The message is simple: the sport should be the subject, not the camera angle.

What this says about sports media now

The debate is bigger than one guide. It sits inside a long-running argument over whether sports television treats women’s events with the same care and respect given to men’s events. Supporters of the new guidance say it sets a clearer standard for dignity and professionalism. Critics of similar efforts often argue that broadcasters already face enough pressure to create engaging coverage, but the EBU says better framing does not reduce storytelling quality.

The timing also matters because the guidance arrives ahead of major European competition, which makes the new rules hard to ignore. That gives the story a broader edge: it is not just about one broadcast style, but about who controls the image of women’s sports and what values shape it. In a media world built on clips, slow motion, and viral sharing, the line between sports coverage and objectification can be thin, and broadcasters are being told to draw it more carefully.