England's women benefit from post-Olympic interest
Coverage and reputation improved
25 September ~ The England Women's national side played its first fixture since the Olympics last Wednesday, seeing off Croatia 3-0 to top their qualifying group and secure a place at Euro 2013 with an unbeaten record. It is hoped that the increased awareness of the women's game after a string of impressively attended Great Britain games at London 2012, coupled with an England side which is arguably the most competitive in its history, will help achieve the long sought after increase in interest and gates around the country.
The Croatia game, at Walsall's stadium, attracted a crowd of 5,821. Thursday's Independent felt the need to prefix the gate as "just 5,821", despite the fact that recent home games are the most highly attended matches in this country since England hosted the European Championship in 2005.
Given the novelty factor of the Olympics it is unrealistic to expect those kind of viewing figures to be matched but it does suggest that interest is there. Performances such as the 1-0 Wembley win over Brazil should also do much to command respect in a game that has historically struggled to achieve it: as Sir Bobby Charlton commented: "I was sceptical of women's football. That was a mistake. Women's football used to be ridiculed but not any more."
Despite gates still falling well short of those seen at the lower end of the men's game, the FA Women's Super League (WSL) has benefitted from a move to summer. The average attendance last season was 550 with four of the eight clubs breaking their record attendance, leading to a 604 per cent rise in the number of fans coming through the turnstiles compared to when the league was played in winter.
Hope Powell's Great Britain side, made up of English and Scottish players, played to at least 24,000 fans in each of their four games, including over 70,000 against Brazil. Even before then England attracted an average of 4,500 fans to their first three Euro 2013 qualifying fixtures.
At the end of August 1,500 people were at Skelmersdale to see Liverpool face Everton in the WSL. Allowing for the fact this was a derby match it was still a significant increase on the usual numbers. The issue will be to maintain interest in the game once the positive memories of Great Britain's campaign have died down. Liverpool's next home game against Birmingham was witnessed by 143.
Speaking in the aftermath of the defeat to Canada in the Olympic quarter-final, Powell noted that "People are now aware that women's football does exist and that it is a fantastic product". Perhaps the word product is key: it is all very well being high quality but it won't be a success unless it can find an audience.
ESPN holds the rights to highlights and six live WSL matches per season, including this Sunday's possible title clincher for Arsenal against Doncaster. The Olympics, television presence and a move to a summer league away from clashes with the men's game are positive steps towards a more successful future for women's football in England. The challenge now is to sustain it. Matt Ramsay
Totally agree "it won't be a success unless it can find an audience" but the choice to go with the higest bidder (ESPN) has ruined that, an incredibly short sighted decision. Giving the rights for free to the BBC or Channel 4 would have given the thousands of young girls who play football each week access to role models and would have helped clubs promote the game.
Is ESPN not widely available in the UK?
Here, getting matches on ESPN would be considered a boon.
ESPN is a subscription channel in the UK. BBC, Channel 4 etc are free to view and the other subscription sports channel (Sky)is separate. WSL is bottom of the ESPN list of sports (literally) with no link from their website to the WSL website.
tv.espn.co.uk/gb/espl/sports-on-espn/football/
With regards to women and football, I would like to point out that of 103 pre-season previews in the 2012-2013 Season Guide (104 if you count the Conference round up), only two (Manchester United and Hibernian) were written by women.
Various things.
5,821 seems like a good attendance for a midweek evening game with a kick-off time of 5:00pm. Especially as the game was shown live on BBC2.
The deal with ESPN doesn't help the reach for WSL games as ESPN is very much a minority cable channel in Britain (in fact, will Disney even bother continuing without Premiership football rights?), and even with that the WSL games are treated as schedule filler, shoved around into wherever they have a hole. But I'm not sure any of the other broadcasters would do more, without coercion. c.f. that 5pm kick-off time for the England-Croatia match, presumably purely for the convenience of the BBC. On the other hand, the WSL is an attempt at a professional, or at least semi-pro, league. So giving their games away for free to a more mainstream channel when they have a cash offer from elsewhere isn't really practicle. The league can't afford to play a long game, slowly building itself up. It needs all the funding it can get.
Personally, I think the BBC should be covering the WSL and paying to do so. Not as a commercial decision, but in it's role as a public service broadcaster. The gender imbalance in the sport they cover ought to embarass them.
I also think the FA should be bundling the Women's team in with the Men's and putting the two FA Cups together, with more coercive restrictions on the chosen broadcasters to give the various elements as close to equal prominence as they can be arm-twisted into. At the very least, every England Women's home competitive match screened live in a prime time slot on their main channel, if not neccesarily scheduled against other football. And if that makes football internationals less attractive for ITV to buy, well then everyone benefits.
Women's football won't attract a crown of 70,000 again anytime soon, people were there for the Olympics not the sport. It's the same reason that there were crowds of 30,000 for rowing, I'd be surprised if even elite level regattas get a tenth of that.
Women’s football is a different sport to Mens football with over 100 years to catch up on. The first ever Mens international between England and Scotland in 1872 attracted a crowd of about 4,000 so ‘just 5,821’ is actually not bad going at this stage of the sports development.
A pay TV deal is not really going to help in the long run of the sports development, promoting participation from an early age is what will ultimately increase awareness and maintain interest.
The biggest challenge for women's football is to confront negative and patronising attitudes at all levels of the game. Here's me doing my bit.
A World Cup Final might attract 70,000-80,000, for similar reasons to the Olympics, i.e. it's an event. Men's football only touches those sort of numbers for very big games, so I don't see why Women's football should be expected to aim at that.
Women's Football was the UK's fastest growing in terms of participation sport a few years ago. I'm not sure that much has changed, although I can't find any recent statistics, so I don't think it needs that much additional driving to get people interested and started. But what it does need is an objective to keep people involved. And for that it needs a stable, professional league. To get that established will take money as well as exposure.
Currently they are in the position of some money without exposure. That isn't good, but I don't see some exposure without money as being any better. The league isn't really the vehicle for long term development, their thoughts are rightly on the short term. Growing the game is the job of the FA, not the WSL.
In fact, bidding for the 2019 Women's World Cup is such an obvious idea that the FA must have thought of it...
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