Women in gaming: How Entain is gearing up with F1 for gender balance

One of the most exciting things about working in this industry is the sheer diversity of roles that are available. From artificial intelligence experts to marketing gurus, sports data geniuses to player protection specialists, the range of opportunities for inspiring and rewarding careers is endless. However, that variety is unfortunately still not reflected in the demographic of the people employed within the industry. But, with our customer base changing, we, at Entain, are determined to match that change within our own workforce.

Among many other initiatives, we want to address the gender imbalance that’s prevalent across the industry. We’re making good strides – around 45% of our employees worldwide are women, including our CEO and many senior managers – but more still needs to be done.

For instance, it’s critically important that we’re able to attract the brightest and best people from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) backgrounds. Our success is driven by our unique Entain platform, which is developed by some of the very best people in tech – not just in our industry, but in the world. However, industry data shows us that there’s a real gender imbalance in STEM roles. Statistics from an organisation called STEM Women reveal that just 26% of STEM graduates in the UK are women, and only 24% of the overall STEM workforce are women.

Making a comeback

With that in mind, we recently teamed up with the McLaren F1 team to create a returnship programme to help women return to careers in STEM. We’ve joined forces to do this, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it makes business sense. For both organisations, women make up an increasing proportion of our audiences – so it’s only right and logical we should look to reflect that in our own people. Our own market research shows that 26% of sports bettors globally are now women, and F1 continues to experience a rise in women viewers – now accounting for around 40% of the total fanbase.

As part of the programme, we’ve created a number of ‘returnship places’ which offer a fantastic range of opportunities with either ourselves or the McLaren F1 team over a six-month period. The roles available include software engineers, back-end developers, data scientists and design engineers, among others. One-to-one support is provided by a transitional coach who specialises in returning to work, and there’s an emphasis on flexible working, as well as plenty of opportunities to spend time with senior executives. The aspiration is that the programme will lead to permanent role opportunities, but, fundamentally, it’s a platform to help women reignite their careers, whether that’s with Entain, the McLaren F1 team or another related business. In turn, this will hopefully inspire future generations of girls to enter the STEM world.

And that’s just in the UK. Elsewhere, our Reboot@Ivy initiative helps women return to their technology careers at our locations in Hyderabad and Manila. We also run an internal Women@Entain network, an executive sponsorship scheme, and a partnership with Global Gaming Women, whose mission is to support, inspire and influence the development of women in our industry.

We are truly determined to do our bit and we see huge scope to make real progress through these and other programmes like them. This way, the diversity of the members of our working teams around the world will start to come closer to matching the variety of roles within them.

Jo Bleasdale is group director of engagement and inclusion at Entain. She leads the diversity, equity and inclusion strategy, internal communications, engagement and employer brand on a global basis. Prior to her role at Entain, Bleasdale served as head of internal communications and corporate social responsibility for BT Consumer.