Women’s Super League clubs are making plans to hold matches in main club stadiums after Atlético Madrid and Juventus drew record crowds of 60,000 and 39,000 respectively to domestic games last month.
“I think what’s happened in Europe has made people rethink,” said Kelly Simmons, the head of the professional women’s game in England. “The focus was on trying to pack smaller grounds and getting regular repeat attendance and now people have looked at what’s happened at Juventus and gone: ‘Wow, how have they done it?’ I know a lot of the clubs are looking at how and when they open up the stadiums.”
Although WSL attendances are up 13% on last year, to 937 on average, they still sit lower than the 1,128 average of two years ago and Sue Campbell said the Football Association, where she is the head of women’s football, “still has a job to do”.
Campbell and Simmons were talking at the second-year review of the FA’s Gameplan for Growth strategy. Campbell described women’s football as a “bush fire that’s gone slightly out of control”, adding: “It’s going at an incredible speed and the wind is blowing the fire faster and faster. We’re running like the clappers to keep up with it.”
The figures show the number of players is up by 9% to 2.7 million, coaches in the women’s game up by 24%, referees up by 13%, and seven new commercial deals in 12 months, including the WSL title sponsorship by Barclays. Attendances, though, remain the elephant in the room.
Being ready for even more rapid growth is a concern. “Should we win the World Cup the demand for this game will exceed anything we’ve ever seen,” said Campbell. “The demand for the women’s game might exceed the supply and therefore one of the biggest challenges for us is making sure we’ve got the resources both from the commercial sector and from the FA itself to be able to respond to that.”
England’s hosting of Euro 2021 is regarded as a judgment point. “I hope we will have ‘normalised’ women’s football,” Campbell said. “In other words, a little girl that wants to play will be able to play in school or at a club down the road. If we haven’t got that we’ve failed.”
