Quote:
Originally Posted by JPH83
In the UK the only club with anything approaching a decent attendance for women's soccer is Arsenal. Clubs like Liverpool average less than 5,000 attendance, and there IS a concerted effort to market this. People, including men, increasingly watch the national side and make no effort with the domestic league. Yes, we can market it more, but a)the product needs to keep improving and b) probably more women need to actually be interested rather than tell us to be.
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That's fair that pro league games will be slow to catch on. Nationalism is easier. But without a doubt that has boomed over the past few cups. We can see it in the quality of the teams, the players, and the attendance and ratings. But you can't just footnote the success of these more nationalist matches. It shows the support is there but it just hasn't yet trickled down.
That will take time. Way better talent has emerged recently which leads to more superstars and better quality of play. Better players and pay will improve development leagues as kids aspire to professional careers. More marketable names on the national stage will trickle down support to champions leagues and ultimately club level. So many of these comments about giving up and saying people just won't accept inferior women's soccer are similar to what we heard about MLS. A vastly inferior product vs international leagues. Americans will never accept soccer. They've proven everyone wrong. But it required decades effort and those efforts on the national level are brand new for many counties and on the club level for the US. It takes infrastructure, stadium experiences, years of marketing and TV deals. It's not like the wnba where the effort has been there but it has not correlated with any success. Here the effort was not there but it's undeniable that once they started putting the effort in there have been sizeable gains.