VERSUS has fully integrated women’s soccer into its coverage. “If we want the women’s game to continue to grow and be treated with the same level of intrigue and respect as the men’s, we need to make sure that a male audience is incorporated,” says Cripps. “You can’t expect change to happen when you’re just talking to a group of people.
“The more WSL games we get on mainstream TV, and we have Ian Wright yelling about players and moments every chance he gets, the more likely we are to see women’s soccer as a crucial part of the soccer ecosystem. .”
While soccer is making headlines, other sports have made similar strides. In this weekend’s culmination of the Rugby Women’s World Cup, England’s Red Roses will take on New Zealand in a repeat of the 2017 final, bringing together many of the best players on the planet. England’s continued success can be attributed, in large part, to financial faith in the process: the Rugby Football Union has offered the Women’s XV full-time contracts since 2019, promoting another layer of legitimacy for a consistently impressive national team.
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It’s not just current athletes who enjoy the most interest. Former players are now a regular feature on primetime shows, offering up their inside scoop on the day’s major sporting events. Eni Aluko (102 England caps) and Alex Scott (140 England caps), who were part of the squad that came second at Euro 2009 and broke through to the pundits in the mid-2010s, have been joined by a growing group of experts. – Lucy Ward, Sue Smith, Rachel Brown-Finnis and Karen Carney, to name a few, now appearing regularly on shows like Football Focus and channels like Sky, BT and Amazon Prime. This opening of the main experience goes hand in hand with a repositioning of the language around women’s sport. “The most notable change has been the shift in the way the game is talked about,” says Thomson, “away from reporting the game as a good cause to great entertainment in its own right.”
This reflects a broader trend in the game. “The content we publish [on Football Focus] with female players it is often more apparent than with Premier League or international male players, which shows just how big the appetite is for content,” says MacDevitt. “There will always be an often vocal minority that will feel a certain way about women’s sport; it will never be for them. But the facts are that the audience for women’s sports is huge and growing. Everyone deserves to see content and a station that represents them.”
That representation is vital for players like Williamson, who values inspiring the next generation of girls, both in sport and in life. “I have a lot of inspiring people that I’ve always looked up to, really strong women, who don’t necessarily play football,” she tells GQ. “I didn’t want to be them, and I didn’t want to do what they did. But still they inspired me to be me. And I think that’s the point: that girl doesn’t have to want to be a soccer player, she just has to grow up knowing that she can do whatever she wants. We’re doing something that still feels like we shouldn’t, almost, until this summer.”
Banned from practicing the sport until 1971; European champions in 2022. Judging by the rise of women’s sport across the country, it was a summer in which much more than football came home.
David Taylor is a lifestyle writer and contributing editor for The Pinch.
Source: news.google.com