Over the past few seasons women’s football has taken huge leaps to becoming on a par with the men’s game. Teams are now playing at the main stadium with England Women playing against Germany at Wembley earlier this year and the WSL equivalent of the North London Derby being played at Tottenham’s new stadium. Alongside this the Women’s Super League is now being broadcast live on BT Sport from time to time which means that broadcasting companies are now seeing women’s football as a commodity, a money maker. But it’s not quite there yet, many fans still have no interest in following the female squad of the team they support and a large majority would never have attended a match. I sat down with your everyday male die-hard football fan to find out why.
So what can we learn from this fan insight? It seems that there are a few reasons as to why the everyday football fan has little to no interest in following the women’s team so lets break it down.
Difference in Quality
Football fans want two things, to win and to be entertained and this could be considered difficult in certain tiers of the women’s game. It’s easy for Arsenal fans like myself to follow the women’s team because we can watch a multi million pound team fighting near the top of the Premier League on a Saturday and a world class team fighting to retain the Women’s Super League on a Sunday but what must it be like for fans of other clubs. It’s difficult to see the appeal for Norwich fans like Doeke to watch the women’s team because of the vast gap in quality with the men experiencing the riches so the Premier League and the women playing in the fourth tier of women’s football, the lowest possible professional tier, resembling that of the men’s National League.
The solution to this problem? Time. With the money now being pumped into the game, especially the youth academies via multiple revenue streams such as broadcasting the next generations of female footballers are going to get better and better. We’ve seen over the past few years teams like Manchester United set up women’s teams and invest heavily to help them compete with the best of the best in the higher divisions and the same can be said to numerous other teams. Given time and faith in the academy teams like Norwich will only get better and climb the tiers of football, getting closer to mirror the quality of the men’s team.
Matchday experience
A 65,000 seater, state of the art stadium with a pitch like a carpet. That’s where you go to watch Arsenal, The Emirates Stadium. Ranked as one of the best places to go and watch football the visit to the stadium itself makes up a large portion of the matchday experience and draws fans from all over the globe to watch a match. Now why does this not have the same affect on the women’s game? They don’t play their home matches at The Emirates, they play at Meadow park, a little stadium in Borehamwood home to a National League side with a capacity of 4,500 most of which is standing.
As mentioned in the interview the appeal to visit these lower league stadiums isn’t there and this is something that has been addressed slightly this season with women’s teams being given the opportunity to play one or two games a season at the home ground like Tottenham playing at White Hart Lane and England playing at Wembley. This appeals to the everyday fan with Doeke explaining in the interview that is Norwich Women played at Carrow Road he would want to attend as a Norwich fan but he currently fails to attend women’s games because they are not at a stadium of any decent calibre. The solution is therefore simple, give the women’s team the same facilities by letting them play at the main stadium when the men have an away game and watch the following of the women’s team increase massively.
Awareness
Does the women’s game get the advertisement that it deserve or not? Judging by my conversation with Doeke probably not. Doeke describes himself as a die-hard Norwich fan, going to every game possible and getting as involved with the club as possible and therefore if anyone was to hear about the women’s team it would be him. However it is evident from this interview that the women’s team at Norwich simply isn’t mentioned anywhere near as much as it should be with Doeke struggling to talk about the women’s team in detail specifically what division they play in. He also mentions that on a typical matchday the women’s team is hardly mentioned with fans at the ground not being made aware of upcoming fixtures and results.
If the team is to grow they need fans to attend games and for this to happen they need more exposure to the everyday fan. Arsenal lead the way with this by taking a different approach to Norwich by having the women feature prominently in the men’s matchday program and the upcoming fixtures being mentioned by the stadium announcer before and after kick off accompanied by a location, date and website to book tickets. This is the way forward for women’s football because you can see how this has benefited Arsenal with the ladies team being streaks ahead of most other clubs especially in terms of attendance and therefore following. The following of Arsenal Ladies makes it very appealing for other Arsenal fans to follow suit and it also increases the size of the club globally with players all around the world hearing of the club and aspiring to play for them.
So the answer is simple, increase exposure and effort put into the women’s game and watch the team and the following grow tenfold.
The Rise Of Women's Football 