A short panel discussion on how grassroots football must keep pace with the visibility of the professional game.
Women’s professional football in the UK had been growing at a steady pace since the Lionesses came third at the 2015 World Cup. But it was last summer, despite succumbing heroically to the USA in the semi-final on the same world stage, that the tide of women's football swept up and down a country ready and waiting to embrace it. Almost 12 million viewers in the UK tuned in to watch captain Steph Houghton consign national hearts to familiar heartbreak with her saved 83rd-minute penalty. The final between USA and the Netherlands drew a global audience of 82.18 million people, up 56% on 2015.
The FA have moved quickly to keep the audience from ambling away by making the women’s game more visible and accessible to fans, starting with the WSL. The newly-launched FA player means fans can watch every game and matches played in men’s Premier League stadiums have helped smash the attendance of women’s domestic league games twice this season already. Over 38,000 fans cheered on the first WSL North London Derby at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Chelsea broke the attendance record for a women's ground on the inaugural Women's Football Weekend. Just a week earlier, the Lionesses smashed the national side’s attendance when 77,768 England fans filled Wembley to watch their World Cup stars.
The WSL is far from a finished product, as Chelsea manager Emma Hayes's comments on the state of Liverpool's pitch attest, but it's undeniably moving in the right direction. Getting brands and sponsors investing in the game is key and the attendance records are a huge help in making the game a more commercially sellable product. Clearly, good work is being done on making the women’s game more visible. Considering the FA's strategy for women's football is to double participation as well as double fans, the hope is that this will pay dividends in attracting players to the game from grassroots up. With 605 new girls’ youth teams and 260 new women’s clubs registered to play since that giddy summer, the numbers speak for themselves.
All of this is an emphatic force of positivity for a sport that took a fifty-year hiatus on the sidelines when the FA banned it from 1921-1971. Speaking to ex-pros today, they don’t recognise the product it is becoming. But amidst all the talk of 'growing the game', are councils and the FA doing enough to harness support at a grassroots level? With the fight for pitch space in London becoming an increasing barrier to women’s grassroots teams, and a raft of women's and girl's pitches up and down the country unplayable in the winter, the danger is that the World Cup frenzy becomes 'a moment’ and the grassroots scene struggles to catch up with demand.
As good as it looks to consumers, growing the game isn’t only putting on showcase events in big stadiums and smashing attendance records. To grow the game organically, the grassroots teams offering opportunities to players in the community need the space, support and infrastructure to, firstly, attract young girls to the sport and, secondly, give them the resources to flourish. After all, the whole point of visibility is getting womxn, girls and non-binary people engaged, and prospering in an industry long dominated by men. Growing the game means growing a culture and an environment that is more inclusive and welcoming to womxn and non-binary people throughout the industry, not just on the professional pitches. This means investing in and supporting female and non-binary coaches, referees, physios, operations, PR co-ordinators, marketers and strategists who would never have considered football a viable option before.
It starts with the professional players – but it shouldn’t end there. More visibility doesn’t automatically translate into a flourishing game if the resources and the space aren’t there for grassroots game to grow. Womxn's football has long been playing catch up but is slowly starting to gather pace.
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