The only time of year that I usually have a little cry at a television advert (or admit to it) is around Christmas, when John Lewis drops its latest offering featuring a child, snowman or cute woodland animal on a trampoline.
All that changed this week — though I can’t honestly say that I ever thought I’d find myself welling up at a football advert. Particularly a seemingly standard montage of good goal-scoring and fancy footwork by Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann. I mean, England fans are usually only made to weep by French players in World Cup quarter finals, right?
Yet the tear-jerking twist is this: halfway through the advert comes the big reveal that what you’ve just watched was, in fact, a deep fake.
Those male footballers were actually France’s women players — including Sakina Karchaoui and Selma Bacha — with the men’s faces superimposed.
It’s exactly what we needed to see.
When viewers don’t know the gender of the footballers they’re watching, they rate the quality of male and female players the same
Why? Let’s put it this way — a study published last week by the University of Zurich found that when viewers know they are watching men play, they rate the quality of the football as being much higher than that of the women’s game. When viewers don’t know the gender of the footballers they’re watching, they rate the quality of male and female players the same.
Simply: the argument that women’s football isn’t as popular, well paid or prominent as men’s because the quality is lower, just doesn’t add up. It’s our preconceptions that get in the way.
Not to mention the collective amnesia among certain people that England’s women did what the men’s team have not, by winning the Euros last summer.
That victory was accompanied by promises to level up the game. Yet the lack of build-up for the World Cup on TV has been noticeable, while the British broadcasting rights have gone for just an eighth of what was paid for the men’s tournament.
An advert like this is a clever way to challenge our bias and remind us just why women’s football deserves to be on a level playing field.
