More than 90 000 fans watched the United States’s historic 1999 World Cup final victory over China at the Rose Bowl in California. Intoxicated by the afterglow, many people predicted that women’s football would naturally kick on and surge in popularity. Looking back, it was the first of many false dawns.
During the subsequent 20 years, football organisers have come to learn a simple fact: getting people excited for major international events is easy. Retaining their attention for a gritty, protracted season is the hard bit.
In that spirit of scepticism it felt necessary to temper our expectations after the great success of France 2019. Thankfully, for now at least, much of that hesitation seems to have been in vain.
The FA Women’s Super League (WSL) smashed attendance records on gameday one last week. The crowds of 31 213 and 24 564 that flocked to the Etihad Stadium and Stamford Bridge, respectively, were both good enough to more than quadruple the previous attendance high. They formed the majority of the 62 931 fans that watched a live game — already closing in on the 90 000-odd total put up across the entirety of the last campaign.
These numbers are good news for anyone with an interest in women’s football. Given the Premier League’s immovable grip on the status of the most-watched league in the world, it only makes sense to entice such a massive audience with the opportunity to follow their side in a different facet of the game.
This new pinnacle, however, will not come without its own slumps back to reality.
The international break and the availability of elite stadiums were chief among the factors of last weekend’s success. What sort of numbers are we going to see when attentions turn back to the men’s game this Saturday? There will always be those who appreciate the idiosyncrasies of the WSL but the goal is to capture as wide an audience as possible.
Teams including Manchester City and Chelsea have proven the commitment is there by offering their grounds for games in the league. Fans will always be more likely to pitch up if they can attend a prestigious venue and see that the club has symbolically made the effort to provide it. Unfortunately, that is not sustainable every week.
As Chelsea coach Emma Hayes put it after the win over Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday, a long-term following will be built not with a single stroke but by a continued pledge to work on improving the league and experimenting to see what works.
“Women’s football will continue to grow and I’m so proud of this football club,” she said after Beth England’s bullet got the Uefa Champions League semi finalists off to a winning start. “I doubt I will ever work at a place that has pushed for women to progress like this place has.
“It’s about having sensible conversations. It’s not just saying we want to play here [at the Bridge] week in week out; first of all, our men’s team play here. It’s always been their home and for us it’s about recognising the opportunities. First we’ve got to build on getting people to Kingsmeadow [where the women’s team play most games], then, when the opportunity comes to play here, we will have a blueprint of how to market this game and our CEO will make sure every club in the country has it. It is about osmosis, it is about sharing information and driving standards and I’m pretty certain that’s why I was put on this Earth.”
Football fans are not fickle. Offer them up a quality product and attendance will follow.
Back when Tony Pulis was encouraging his cohort to hack people half to death, the clichéd hypothetical test of a player’s mettle was: “But can he get it done on a cold rainy Tuesday night in Stoke?” The implication being that to really be of value one must be able to perform in the grimiest of locales in addition to on the glamorous occasions.
The logic is doubly true for a fanbase. What’s worse than playing Stoke City on a cold rainy Tuesday night? Watching your team play Stoke City on a cold rainy Tuesday night. Yet people showed up. Week in, week out.
Last weekend was a fantastic kick-start but there won’t always be a Manchester derby at the Etihad. Without taking anything away from the positives of the occasion, it’s imperative to consider it the first step on a new, exciting journey rather than the culmination of a long, hard-fought battle. With renewed interest and club commitment, there’s no reason why the records can’t be smashed once more.