Why does Women’s Football not having as big of an audience or following as Men’s Football? And how does that impact Women’s football?

1.Details of Research

 

Proposed title:

 

Why does Women’s Football not having as big of an audience or following as Men’s Football? And how does that impact Women’s football?

 

2.Introduction:

 

Football is seen as one of the biggest if not the biggest sports around with around 3.5 billion people being fans of the sport. But Women’s football is still seen as ways behind from achieving the amount of viewership and fans as male football receives. Women’s football was played around the same time as Men’s football but what really stands out is in the 1920s also known as the ‘first golden age’ for women’s football a game would attract 50,000 people to attend (which was larger than men’s footballing events) showing the potential that women’s football possibly had. But unfortunately, in 1921 the UK banned women’s football for the 60 years until 1971 meaning that all the momentum that was created just disappeared. Men’s football has had time to grow but women’s football is a relatively new sport because of the ban and because of the old narrative that women shouldn’t play physical sports this has led to the growth of the sport not going as quickly as they would’ve wanted. But thanks to the rise of feminism and people’s views changing for the better this led to women’s football being put back on track after a long period of time.

 

Women have unfortunately been seen and still seen this way to some as just to carry babies and take care of their families especially in underdeveloped countries meaning that most women who did like football wouldn’t see it as a potential job because of the way they’ve been raised and because of the values that they’ve been taught. This led to not a lot of women going into football because it is seen as a masculine sport and women are often seen or portrayed as more physically weak and sensitive which is to a certain extend is true but it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t go after a sport like football because it is a ‘male’ sport but on the bright side nowhere days more and more women/girls are being encouraged to play football with 29 million women and girls are now playing football according to FIFA, FIFA are looking to also increase that number to 60 million. But this takes us back to the main question why doesn’t women football still have a big audience? In this research I am going to outline the main reasons to why women’s football isn’t as popular as male football and why there’s such a big audience differential between them when they are the same sport. I’ll do this by looking into detail on the history of women’s football, research the marketing techniques used in order to promote it, see if it’s easily accessible for the public in different countries, then finally researching why people don’t want to watch the current product that is being displayed and what could be done to change their minds in order to watch the product.

 

3.Preliminary literature review:

 

This next section will discuss the theoretical framework of the topic we are looking into.

I will analyse all the relevant information that is in the topic in order to understand it better so that it could guide me to create an accurate research project.

 

3.1 Female Footballers obstacles

 

One of the main issues to why women’s football hasn’t been getting as much attention as males’ football is because football is still seen by many as a male sport and in order to get into to the one must start at a young age, and they were also encouraged by their family members to play football (Williams, 2003). This shows us that females aren’t motivated or in some cases like in underdeveloped countries have been told to not play football because it is seen as a man’s sport, and it also isn’t necessarily a popular choice meaning that females who aren’t encouraged to play football would most likely never do play football. In countries like Spain professional’s footballers who are female only played when they are older because they didn’t have the encouragement of their families to take on the sport (Williams, 2003). On the other hand, nearly, all males are encouraged by their families to try out for sports especially football because of how popular it is meaning that there are much more male footballers, and this leads to the sport being bigger in the male side of the sport because there is so much, and this means facilities are more open for males because the sport is so popular and gains so much money. On the other hand, because women’s football isn’t as popular this leads to less women going for football as a job choice and less clubs investing in the women’s side of football because the money that is made out of it isn’t nearly as much as it is for male’s side. This explains the narrative of why female footballers aren’t seen as good players and it is because of these factors that lead to them either not having the facilities in order to be better or to have more experience and practice or it is because they start from a very late age. This also leads to the overall attendance and the viewership to the games being low because the quality of play is low compared to the male’s version. But this also doesn’t mean that the quality of play won’t get better and this is because for another sport (wrestling) it also started off with females not being good at their craft compared to men but as the times went on and the facilities, equipment and more opportunities became available female wrestling now in the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) performance just as well and arguably even better than male wrestlers regardless of this ‘sport’ being dominated by males for so long.