GET BEHIND THE fight: that’s the message from the Ladies Gaelic Football Association as they look to increase attendances.
They hold the current record for a female sporting evening in Ireland: 56,114 fans attended the 2019 All-Ireland finals at Croke Park, but as with most women’s sports on this shore, figures are not consistently strong away from the showpiece.
As Lidl unveiled new research this morning — including the stat that 59% of Irish people have never attended a live women’s sporting event — two experts in the field were on hand to share their insight and experience.
Holly Murdoch is the Head of Operations of the Women’s Professional Game at England’s FA, and responsible for running the Women’s Super League, which has recorded increasingly strong attendances.
Across the WSL, crowd numbers are six times higher than five years ago, with Arsenal setting yet another new record of 59,042 for their pre-Christmas clash with Chelsea, while Wembley Stadium hosted 87,192 and 77,390 for the Euro 2022 final and 2023 Women’s FA Cup final respectively.
“Using the successes of big major tournaments, to ride off the back of those huge moments and turn that one-off moment into something more habitual, that’s been really important,” Murdoch tells The 42.
“I think the way that we have approached creating awareness around our game, not doing it in the traditional ways. There’s always the constant comparisons, ‘This is how it’s done in men’s football’. Actually stop comparing ourselves because we’re not the same. We’re something that’s quite unique and different and distinctive, and we want to be seen as distinctive.
“Really trying to find those sweet spots where we are different and doing things a bit differently has really helped us create a new narrative.
“The work of ouur clubs, and having our media rights deal, broadcast deal, has propelled us onto a new level. Being able to have our games on free-to-air television and on Sky TV has been hugely helpful to grow that awareness and break down those barriers.”
Lindsay Peterson is the Director of Operations of Nebraska Volleyball Programme at the University of Nebraska. In August 2023 at Memorial Stadium, they set the current world record of 92,003 for attendance at a female sporting event.
What began as a pipe dream soon turned into reality. Nebraska Volleyball had already been hugely successful in collegiate sports, building a loyal fanbase through the years.
“Most of our matches had been ‘the most highly attended match,’” Peterson says. “We had the record and one of our rivals in our conference went out and beat our record the year before. Their attendance record was a little over 19,000. We didn’t have a venue within our city to beat that record, our only option was to take it outdoors.
“At first it started as somewhat of a joke: ‘We should put it in the football stadium!’ And then we started talking seriously about it. Starting off, the list of cons versus pros was probably much greater, but the biggest thing was, ‘We’ve got to take this risk if we want that reward.’
“We started out hoping to maybe fill half the stadium and that would put the record out of reach for anybody that could do it at any venue.
“Our ticket sales that first day, within two hours, we were over 40,000 tickets sold and it continued to grow. The system shut down because there were so many people on trying to buy tickets. We went into Plan B and thought we’ve got to do something more, so that’s when we opened another part of our stadium, and soon the entire stadium was filled.
“That’s when we started talking about the world record and what we needed to beat for that.”
While the world record attendance was a real splash, Nebraska Volleyball underwent steady growth beforehand.
They started by offering free entry to University of Nebraska Football fans after their games in an effort to fill seats. Slowly but surely, they added value and increased the fan experience. They moved to a bigger venue and achieved consistent sellouts, with prices now $17-$20 for a standard ticket, $3000 for a court-side season ticket and there are suites that will set you back $30,000. Peterson says there are over 1000 people on the season ticket waiting list, which far outweighs the football one.
“It’s a tough ticket to see our team play. Our venues sell out. But this was gonna provide an opportunity for so many young girls to come witness our team play, fans see it, and hopefully leave inspired. They can do bigger things when they have that opportunity. That was probably the biggest motivation behind it: to continue to go as big as possible, knock down barriers and do something that nobody else could dream possible.”
She added: “We continued to push. We weren’t afraid to take risks. With great risk comes great reward, that was our biggest motivator. You don’t know if you don’t try.
“We’re fortunate that our fanbase is extremely loyal. We don’t compete with professional sports in our state, but our size and our population is very similar to here. In Nebraska, we say it’s in our blood. Sport is a huge part of our community, the family feel.
“It took a lot of time. From our athletes having to fundraise to buy uniforms they wear to setting up the chairs, sweeping the floor, taking down everything to now, our players are literally superstars in our state. They can’t go out to eat in public without getting pictures taken or being asked for autographs. That’s how far we have come in 45/50 years. It is very doable.”
Interestingly, Nebraska Volleyball don’t have a stadium match this year to avoid “watering it down,” but will focus on visibility with live games on ABC.
The hope for the FA and WSL, meanwhile, is to use big stadia for more and more games.
“That would be utopia, wouldn’t it,” Murdoch, who believes women’s football in England can be one of the biggest spectator sports in the world, says. “It would be fabulous.
“I think the opportunity is massive. If we can see that continue to grow and push, you’ll just see more and more clubs choosing to play games in bigger stadia.
“I think it’s inevitable really.”
