A Different Approach to Women in League Round

It would have been easy for the Dolphins NRL to make a pink jersey, post something about celebrating “the women in our lives”, and call it their Women in League campaign.

Instead, they took a different approach. In a sporting landscape where themed rounds often follow a familiar formula, that isn’t always easy to do.

What I loved was that this went well beyond sending creators a PR box and asking them to make content around a piece of merchandise. The box was only the starting point. The merchandise had its own identity and was genuinely wearable beyond game day, while the pre-event, supporter bay, jewellery, flags, field access and shared experiences gave creators plenty of moments to capture naturally.

That became clear in where the campaign showed up. Weeks before the game, creators were sharing unboxing videos and styling reels. As game day approached, that content developed into first-time reactions, friendship groups heading to the stadium, posts from the supporter bay and footage captured on the field.

One of the smartest decisions was making women central to the campaign’s distribution rather than treating them only as a “target market”. Content encountered through a creator’s feed carries a different kind of credibility. It reaches audiences through existing relationships and communities in a way a club’s owned channels often can’t.

The choice of creators mattered too. They weren’t all diehard Dolphins supporters, and some had very little connection to rugby league, or even sport. Too often in sport, we rely on the same people to tell our stories to the same audiences. This campaign moved beyond that familiar network and introduced the Dolphins to communities that may never have engaged with the club otherwise.

By game day, the effect was obvious: my feed was full of Dolphins content, but almost none of it had been posted by the club.

Nearly 5 million of the National Rugby League’s 12.1 million Australian fans are women, with almost half a million women joining the fan base over the past year. Women also influence the majority of household purchasing decisions. This isn’t a niche audience to acknowledge during a single themed round. It represents one of the biggest opportunities for audience growth and commercial success in Australian sport.

Campaigns like this require investment, coordination and people willing to back ideas that sit outside the usual themed-round playbook.

Credit to the Dolphins for saying “yes” and making it happen. They created an experience people wanted to be part of and trusted them to tell the story in their own way. A lot of sport organisations could learn from this. 🐬💙