Perth Glory Women's coach Stephen Peters has criticised a lack of investment in the women's A-League, which he says has not reaped the benefits of the Matildas' success at the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup.
In recent years, the Glory's women's side has been Perth's saving grace, as the men's team suffered back-to-back wooden-spoon finishes.
Despite this, they consistently draw a small, but dedicated, home crowd of just under 1,000 people, while the Glory men's worst Perth audience this season was just over 5,000.
Interesting that the numbers at our women’s games are roughly in line with theirs even though the men’s are falling short - not sure how much to read into that though.
Also interesting how Peters brings up the Tillies because I was going to post here to say how impressive their support was at the Ferns’ games recently. For all there are lots of obvious differences between their profile and the ALW, they’re proof that “people simply aren’t as interested in the women’s game” isn’t true.
I get the chicken and egg problem with putting more money into the ALW, but it also works the other way: without investment the league will continue to fall short of its potential, and we’ll keep losing our best players for the simple reason that they need to pay the bills.
As Ballane said, it’d be worth some research into why people do or don’t turn up to the women’s games and how to better target (and expand) the demographic who do. For example one thing I’ve noticed is that we seem to get a lot more families at them - for all kids mean less revenue per seat it’s still better than those seats sitting empty.