'Life is tough in women's sport', says W Series CEO after 'extreme' call to cancel races

W Series

The money has run out for W Series, which has cancelled this season's final rounds. Champion Jamie Chadwick is expected to get her prize money, but what will happen next? asks Damien Smith

Emma Kimilainen in front in the 2022 W Series Hungary round

F1 claims W Series will not be usurped by F1 Academy

Dan Istitene/F1 via Getty Images

Women’s sport has progressed so far in recent years. At least in certain spheres. Last Friday my family and I were among the crowd of 76,000 at Wembley to watch England’s European championship-winning Lionesses take on double World Cup winners the USA in a friendly. What an occasion, especially as England won 2-1. The football was high in quality (which is more than can be said for the Wembley hot dogs) and it was a thrill to bear witness first-hand to the feel-good rise of the women’s game. The best part is how the kids don’t think about whether we’re watching men or women – it’s all just football, and simply England.

What a contrast to the deflating news a couple of days later, from ‘our’ world of sport. W Series, the all-female motor racing initiative, has been forced to cancel its final rounds of the current season in Austin next week and in Mexico City the following weekend. Why? Money, of course. As CEO and founder Catherine Bond Muir explained, “We had not been in receipt of contracted funds due to us.” Reality has bitten where it hurts the most. The cancellation has to be judged as a major setback for the promotion of encouraging more women into motor sport.

The critics, of which there remain plenty, will smirk. W Series remains contentious, on the basis that it can be seen as a form of ‘segregation’, in a sport where women should be able to compete on equal terms with men. When they get the chance, that is – which is precisely the problem. They don’t, at least not in great number and for a number of reasons. Which is why I’m sad to see W Series hit the skids. Having spoken to some of the drivers who race in the series, it’s clear that without it many of them wouldn’t have been racing at all. Since its founding in 2019, it has provided that golden word: opportunity – on an invitational basis, on merit and without the requirement to bring (usually eye-watering) funding. As the now confirmed three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick once told me, “I’m genuinely not sure I’d be racing without it.”

Hemp scores against the USA in the Wembley friendly in 2022

76,000 watched England’s 2-1 win over USA at Wembley

Marc Atkins/Getty Images

Bond Muir made the call “with both great sadness and frustration… We have worked hard to raise the required funding to enable us to finish the season. Unfortunately, it was not possible to do this in the short timeframe required following the failure of contracted funds to arrive and the global economic downturn.”

But she also insists this is not the end of the W Series story. We can only take her at her word that the series will return in 2023. “While we are all incredibly disappointed that this decision has had to be made in the short term, we remain positive about the future of W Series in the long term,” she said. “It is well-documented that women’s sports receive far less funding than their male counterparts, and W Series is no exception. We are incredibly thankful for the help and support we have received in recent weeks following the news of the financial difficulties we’ve been facing, which has accelerated our fundraising process and given us great optimism as we look to 2023 and beyond.”

W Series is not the first motor racing entity to fall short of promised funds and it won’t be the last. But to pull the final races is extreme and clearly, it hardly bodes well. It highlights the fine margins promoters and venues must run to in order to exist at all, and it must be said Bond Muir and her team have achieved much just to have made it this far. Falling short towards the end of its third year of competition, W Series was also mothballed during 2020 because of Covid, but bounced back strongly last year as an anointed Formula 1 support series. But again not for the first time, F1’s blessing – while a boost to audience numbers – is no guarantee of long-term success for any associated business.

Related article

Some in the past couple of days have questioned why F1 promoter Liberty Media or perhaps a well-funded team such as Red Bull or Mercedes hasn’t stepped in to help W Series get over the line to the end of the season. ‘Come on, put your money where your mouth is on gender diversity!’ On face value, it’s a fair question – although for F1 teams such an outlay would clearly have to be outside the budget cap! Bond Muir said: “In Singapore [where she had given warning of W Series’ perilous financial state] I said we were speaking to a number of people and we have continued those discussions. We’ve had offers from a number of people but the problem is getting money in doesn’t happen at the shake of a money tree and people have got to go through due diligence. We believed up until this weekend there was a possibility for us to get to Austin and we’ve just had to call it because obviously there are deadlines on payments of things. We had to make a pragmatic call.

“Having set up W Series in 2018, I am acutely accustomed to the relentless work that goes on to not only keep our business operational, but also acquire the fundraising and sponsorship to grow our business further. We are grateful for the continued support of our incredible and growing fanbase, and we hope to share positive news regarding the future of W Series in the coming weeks.”

So will the series remain on the F1 undercard next year? “Certainly we do want to still be on the F1 support bill,” she said. “But we need to be mindful of our costs. Sitting where I am now it would be prudent to have more European races, but they are somewhat a scarcity with F1. So we haven’t been told yet what races we have been offered. F1 [will] come back to us and offer us certain races and then we go from there.” She added that W Series could also support other series, as it did with the DTM in its first season.

Jamie Chadwick celebrates 2019 W Series win at Hockenheim

W Series supported DTM in 2019: a future, cheaper calendar could see a repeat

Matthias Hangst/Getty Images

What about the much-vaunted prize fund? When asked whether Chadwick would receive her third prize of £500,000, with other drivers receiving their share of the fund too, Bond Muir said: “Where I sit at the moment it is my expectation that that will be paid out. I can’t say 100% but I don’t see any reason why that won’t be the case.”

That will be crucial for W Series’ future. If the promised prize fund is withdrawn, all credibility will be lost – and her answer might be a concern to Chadwick and co.

So how did the drivers respond to the news? “They are drivers and all they want to do is race – and they were incredibly upset. At the same time they were understanding. The feeling that came out of it was ‘this is rubbish, but this is what we’ve dealt with for 20 years. We’ve had contractual promises of money and they haven’t come through’. It was more of a feeling of ‘welcome to our world’. I’ve said we want to keep the DNA of W Series going and it is our intention to still be providing all of the expenses for the drivers.

Jamie Chadwick sprays champagne on the W Series podium at Barcelona

Champion Chadwick should be able to collect her prize money, says Bond Muir

Clive Mason/Getty Images

“The majority of W Series drivers find it difficult to get any form of sponsorship. We know that’s exactly the same on the male side, but I do think for the women it’s even tougher and you only have to compare what is happening with us to all other female sport. The going is tough. The only sport that seems to have had any sort of parity with men’s sport is tennis and that is because Billie-Jean King has been fighting the fight for 50 years. Obviously football in this country has had a massive fillip winning the Euros and then beating the world champions this week. They are getting the audiences. We are getting the TV audiences.

“I’m not comparing ourselves to football because they have been going a lot longer than we have, but my overall belief is women’s sport will continue to grow exponentially. What has been announced today is just recognition that life is still tough.”

Now Bond Muir must regain the inevitable lost momentum. Perhaps if Chadwick or one of the other frontrunners could graduate and show a clear path to a higher level – not necessarily F1, although clearly that would be ideal – it might make the sell a little easier. But as we have seen, that in itself is a tall order and clearly it’s a stretch for the series itself to financially back individual careers further up the chain.

Bond Muir and all who have skin in the W Series game have their work cut out to come back from this. Then again, that doesn’t mean that they can’t – or that they won’t.

Comments

Loading Comments