It’s frustrating that women’s football is still considered so charitable – with all tickets free for a massive Scottish top-flight game on Sunday.
Hibernian host derby rivals Hearts in SWPL 1 at Easter Road on Sunday afternoon, where the domestic attendance record is expected to be broken.
But what does that potential record – which currently stands at 5,512 from the same fixture last season – really mean if all the tickets are free?
We don’t want women’s football to be exclusive – we want it to be an environment where everyone feels welcome – which is a good thing the women’s game has.
That’s all valuable, but if we want to push the women’s game in the right direction, we need to have all elements of the sport being elite and high performance.
And that means not undervaluing the game by matches having only free tickets.
The players in SWPL 1 are supposed to be the best in the country, you just can’t be handing all the tickets out for free – it undervalues them and the game.
I respect that there is a time in a place where you might change your price of tickets, say for a Friday night game you might have some sort of promotional offer.
I’m not so sure you can celebrate a record crowd if all tickets are free.
I understand that the game in Scotland is still in a period of transition and we’re accelerating at quicker pace than small steps, but free tickets is just a shame.
We’re talking about an Edinburgh derby that is one of the biggest sporting rivalries in Scotland, that’s got to be worth something?
There are plenty of youth teams in the city – girls and boys – who might not have much of an opportunity to watch live football right now because of the World Cup.
To me, free tickets tells people that going to watch the game is a charitable thing – it’s a “kind” gesture to support the women, rather than wanting to go and watch the football.
People should be going to Easter Road – but they should be going and paying because they’re keen to watch a game of top-flight football.
Looking across the pond for the right strategy
If you want to grow the women’s game, you need to have a strategy and you need to implement that properly.
I look to America as one of the best examples.
This season there was a new club Angel City – who are the first professional women’s team in Los Angeles in over a decade and don’t have an affiliation with a men’s team.
They had a sell-out crowd of 22,000 in their first-ever home NWSL game.
When I played for Utah Royals – although there was the backing of the club which had a men’s team – there was no history of a women’s team.
On the opening day of our first-ever season, we had almost 20,000 fans in the stadium.
The club made sure that people knew it was going to be something that was worth going to, so they paid the money and showed up in their numbers.
So, how do you show that the women’s game is worth going to?
It’s about having the right marketing strategy – throughout the entire season and not just in the lead up to the big games – and not just doing the odd thing.
People go to games for so many different reasons. It might be they’re a die-hard fan or maybe they’re going along with their mates, so clubs have to tap in to that.
It’s about understanding why people want to go – and then showing them why it’s an event that’s worth going to.
By handing out masses of free tickets – there’s no worth or meaning to the why.
It can’t be the same strategy as the men’s game. There will be some overlap but the strategy for selling women’s games needs to have its own purpose.
It can’t just be we’ll send a certain amount of emails to season ticket holders, put it in a men’s match-day programme or send out a few tweets.
One of the stumbling blocks is that for so long people working at football clubs have only had to think about things through the lens of the men’s game.
So all of a sudden they have an additional job – working with the women’s team – piled onto them, which they might not see as one of their priorities.
That needs to shift and clubs need to starting having more staff behind the scenes who work solely with the women’s teams.
In Scotland, we should be looking at the progress in America and clubs down in England as a blueprint to learn quicker and not repeat their past mistakes.
Pressure for Aberdeen Women ahead of Tannadice test
There’s real pressure on Aberdeen Women when they go to Tannadice to play Dundee United on Sunday following their 4-1 defeat to Motherwell last week.
It’s a game against another team that is relatively close to them in the table, so a win could help them get that one step closer to catch the likes of Dundee United.
But if the Dons lose then they’ll be looking below them and hoping Glasgow Women don’t catch them – because they’ll become further adrift from the teams above.
That can be a difficult environment to perform in and Aberdeen have a young team, who might be finding it difficult to play with that pressure.
It’s a shame because Aberdeen do have the resources and players at their disposal to be doing much better than they are.
The other standout game in SWPL 1 this weekend is the first Old Firm derby of the season, as Rangers host Celtic on Saturday evening.
Rangers performed poorly against Celtic in the cups last season, so they might be apprehensive going into this game.
Scots showdown in UWCL
In the Uefa Women’s Champions League, it was a clash of the Scots in Group A on Wednesday evening as Erin Cuthbert’s Chelsea hosted Caroline Weir’s Real Madrid.
Fresh from signing a new contract with the Blues, it was Erin who claimed bragging rights as her side prevailed 2-0 winners at Kingsmeadow.
Not only did Erin finish on the winning side, she had a direct impact in both goals sending in the corner for the first and scoring the second.
ERIN CUTHBERT! 🎶 pic.twitter.com/gJDtTq8Jxt
— Chelsea FC Women (@ChelseaFCW) November 23, 2022
After their disappointment in the UWCL last season, Chelsea have firmly put themselves in a safe position early on in the groups this season.
As for the other WSL side left in the competition, Vivianne Miedema rescued a point for an injury-stricken Arsenal in Turin, as the Gunners drew 1-1 with Juventus.
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