With the news that Sky & BBC have agreed a 3-year £7-8 million deal to televise WSL / WC football, there’s a tangible sense of excitement and achievement in the air: perhaps best illustrated by the joyful tone of the tweets of those in the sport as the announcement approached. 

This feels like a big leap forward. A decent portion of the new income will go to the Women’s Championship, where challenges abound, not the least of which is bringing facilities up to the standard required for promotion to the WSL (Women’s Super League). Investment in referee development and pitch protection will also be welcomed by those who love the game. So, what should the game’s priorities be now, as we emerge from the pandemic? 

We first started working with the FA to improve match day experiences and grow attendances in 2011.  I still remember our first game: Lincoln City Ladies v Liverpool Ladies.  It was a warm Sunday afternoon in August: just perfect for a ‘summer league’.  Fast forward a few years and the move to winter competition (to align with the UEFA Champions League, among other things) would see less meteorological collaboration.  The ‘Ladies’ moniker wouldn’t last long either. A decade later, the new elite Finnish women’s league would drop the moniker ‘women’ all together, settling simply for ‘The National League’.

The likes of Sophie Bradley, Sue Smith and Casey Stoney (currently coach of Manchester United) all turned out for the host club during that season.  The football was very good (Sue Smith scored direct from a corner in the game that we watched) but the experience less so.  Perhaps the lack of a sense of fan experience was heightened by the fact that we’d just come back from a tour of MLB games in the States. The Boston we were dreaming about wasn’t in Lincolnshire, but if the game was going to be a natural destination for obvious target segments like young girls interested in the game, for example, it needed to take a few leaves out of the US sports game day instruction manual.

Finances were devoted to getting the games on in those days.  For Lincoln, revenue challenges ultimately led the club to move to Meadow Lane in 2014 and to re-brand as Notts County Ladies.  Like the proposed move of Wimbledon FC to Milton Keynes, it didn’t go down well with fans at all. Not only that, but supporters of the new ‘franchise’ only had 3 seasons to enjoy it before it also folded, with the owner performing a debt balancing act that would permit only the men’s club to rattle around in the lower tiers of the EFL. 

The irony wasn’t lost on many.  The undoubted potential of a local top tier women’s club was eschewed in favour of one in the fifth tier of its own league. But this has been women’s football’s story: ‘surviving male prejudice since 1921.’

The 2017 re-structuring of the women’s game saw other clubs drop into FAWNL football, including the always-impressive Yeovil Town, whose ‘In the Company of Champions’ initiative invited victorious local girls’ teams to parade their trophies around the pitch before one game every season: a wonderful way to engage the local community.  My beloved Sunderland: the original home of so many of today’s star players (including Beth Mead, Lucy Bronze, Jordan Nobbs and Steph Houghton) also dropped a couple of tiers, just as the Mackems were getting their match day experience together in South Shields.

Back in 2011, the FA had asked us to provide our fan experience assessment service to help clubs to attract, engage and retain a growing match day audience. Naturally the focus was on the game itself, but with clubs like Reading, Oxford United, Durham and Brighton continuously innovating and making the most of the mascot, match day food, noise, colour and pre-match entertainment, attendances began to grow. 

Our assessment services helped to pinpoint practical improvement opportunities, but always with an eye on what the clubs could do to bring the women’s game USP alive in a match day setting.

Durham Women were an example of what could be achieved by creating a match day that would not only showcase a great squad of players, but which would frame that in an experience capable of growing community engagement too. Without any assets of its own and while playing at a ground over which it had no influence or control (and not easy to get to either), it went from being founded in 2013 to regularly hosting 500 fans just half a dozen seasons later.

The FA’s Sister Club initiative made a big impact on attendances too. The programme, launched in 2016, helped grassroots girls’ clubs to ‘partner’ with their local WSL / WC team and get access to a range of benefits.  This led to more than 100 girls’ clubs signing up in just the first three years of the scheme.

Then came the great leap forward.  Lewes FC announced that their men’s and women’s teams would each be paid the same.  Lewes became Equality FC overnight. As General Manager Maggie Murphy told me at a Liverpool University event that we both took part in recently, what motivates the club is to ‘do the right thing’ rather than to focus purely on profit margin. 

There was an explosion of interest in the story globally and it wouldn’t be long before another slow-burning issue would be addressed: that of admission prices.  Low ticket prices were undermining intentions to transform perceptions and to grow the game.  At Lewes you were paying £12 for seventh tier men’s football, but only £2 for a second-tier women’s game. The impact of equalising entry prices at the turnstiles not only proved itself with average 560 attendances for both clubs, but a new revenue record for an English women’s league home game at Lewes (a second-tier club).

The converging paths of a stunning broadcast deal, just at the point that the women’s game is taking its biggest steps towards equality, puts the game in a strong position as the pandemic’s grip begins to loosen. The investment in branding the game; elevating its star players to celebrity status and the arrival of Manchester United have all done the game a power of good

But the question remains, will the appeal of actually attending a match override the barriers put up by Covid-19?

The pandemic’s impact on future attendances is less well understood. If assessments made by men’s clubs are anything to go by, we may see up to 30% of fans missing as the turnstiles open for the 21/22 season. Some will come back when they perceive that ‘normal’ has returned, but many won’t. 

Streaming, for example (something designed to help those who can’t get to a game) is now becoming the reason why some won’t ever return to the stadium.  It’s just too comfortable to stay at home right now.  So, if this deal allows four games to be televised each weekend, then maybe two thirds of clubs are unwittingly giving fans a reason not to turn up.

How risky this is remains to be seen, so I’d argue for a renewed focus on the fan and the match day experience. Those who steered the game so successfully over such a short period of time rightly deserve praise.  The ‘win’ however will only come when attending matches is acknowledged as the best way to show solidarity with women’s football. With so much uncertainty in the air right now, we need to give people more reasons for attending, not fewer.

As Megan Rapinoe said in 2019, ‘If the only thing that’s said about us is how inspiring we are to little girls, then our marketing plan is a complete and utter failure. Make me want to go to the game.’ 

A match day experience that encapsulates everything that is so magical about women’s football with values shaped by the needs of fans and future generations of supporters.

That’s my hope for the seasons ahead.

Further Reading....

Our White Paper on the topic of safety and fan experience 'It's Just Like Watching Pret' can be found here