At O2 we’re on a mission to help close rugby’s gender gap with our longstanding partner – the RFU.

In 2020, when women’s sport had been left behind as the pandemic hit, we signed a new 5-year principal partner deal with the RFU, committing to equally fund the England men’s and women’s teams. A first for a national team sponsor.

Then in 2022, we launched a four-year strategy to close rugby’s gender awareness gap in the run up to a home Rugby World Cup in 2025. We set out to achieve this by bringing the women’s team out of the shadow of the men’s, connecting them to fans and supercharging support.

There were two core business drivers behind the campaign:

1. Differentiation is hard to achieve in a heavily regulated telco market, we need to stand out from competitors. Closing rugby’s gender awareness gap is a pointed and memorable mission.
2. We know our core audiences, Millennials and GenZ, expect brands to act on societal issues, including gender equality.

So, we set out to use the power of our rugby partnership to deliver real change around gender parity.

Using the power of O2’s Wear The Rose rugby platform, we set out to make the Red Roses unmissable by increasing their profile which in turn would help O2 build affiliation with key audiences. The key areas of the partnership which were measured were:

• Increase the profile of the Red Roses
o 14% growth in awareness of the Red Roses.
o 1.25million+ documentary views on ITV1 & ITVHub.

• Recruit new fans to the Red Roses
o A new world record number of tickets sold for an international women’s rugby fixture.

• Improve brand attractiveness and consideration
o O2 took the lead in ‘customer brand attractiveness’, with a 1% increase above its competitors.