The announcement for an LFL ‘All Fantasy Games Tour’ in Australia in June was made last week and was immediately met with criticism by many women’s sports advocates.
However, the organisers say it is a legitimate sport that values women’s skills and athleticism. LFL Chairman, Mitchell Mortaza, said they have plans to establish LFL teams in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide to compete in a local competition by next year. The June tour will be spearheaded by 24 year old Aussie player, Chloe Butler.
The LFL Australia grew out of a Super Bowl half time show in 2009 and today spans 12 teams playing a 20 week season which culminates in the Lingerie Bowl, which 43 million reportedly viewed this year.
But Tracy Taylor, Professor of Sports Management at UTS in Sydney says the LFL has little, if anything, to do with sport.
“The game itself of course is based on physical activity, but the hype surrounding it and the target audience are not generally attending to support sport but to be ‘entertained’ by women running around in their lingerie getting hot and sweaty and getting physical with one another,” Professor Taylor said.
“While many of the players in the existing league are athletes they are certainly not taken seriously in North America and I cannot see how the introduction of the league here would be good for women’s sport.”
But using sex appeal to sell women’s sport in Australia is nothing new.
The Australian women’s football (soccer) team, the ‘Matildas’, frustrated at both the lack of funds for the sport and the lack of public profile, took it upon themselves to address both issues in 1999. They published a calendar of not-so-discreet nude images. It worked: the calendar sold 35,000 copies and garnered them more publicity than they have had previously or since – despite playing in several Women’s World Cups and being the Asian Women’s champions. The team has tried to ignore ‘the calendar incident’ ever since.
Football was at it again more recently with highly stylised – but much more modest – images of players for the Westfield W-League launch in 2008 with a tagline of ‘Football with Style’. The Melbourne Vixens netball team used a similarly styled campaign to promote their team and the sport. In both of these latter instances, the campaigns were official ones of the competition or team.
The President of the Australian Women Sport and Recreation Association said that one of the key issues for players is having lingerie as a uniform requirement, describing it as “problematic” for a contact sport. Crosswhite believe it could put players at greater risk of skin injury and the uniform detracted from the fact that the players are serious sportswomen.
This view has been confirmed by one of the star players, Liz Gorman of Tampa Breeze who believes that LFL will ‘evolve’ as other women’s sport has over the decades.
"I don't like it," she said recently. "You'd rather wear full clothing. I have a bunch of scrapes on me. But you look at basketball, you used to have to wear skirts. Obviously it's changed, they have the WNBA now. So if you look back, women's sport has constantly evolved and I think that this sports league is going to end up changing the uniform."
Perhaps the last word should go to Australian radio commentator and columnist Dominic Knight who said: "Claming you watch the LFL for the contest is surely the boofhead equivalent of claiming to read Playboy for the articles."
Further information
Make up your own mind. Check out the Australian tour website at www.lflinaustralia.com
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