Sign up to FREE email alerts from Football London - Arsenal Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

At the dawn of a new season in the Women's Super League a question looms large over the competition.

The summer saw England Lionesses reach the semi-finals of the Women's World Cup. Record numbers of viewers tuned in to watch the tournament, taking full advantage of the free-to-air coverage on the BBC.

For many, it felt like a turning point for coverage of the women's game in England. Even before the action kicked off in France, the talking point was whether any momentum generated by the national team and the competition could be carried on by the WSL.

Last season was a landmark campaign for the division. The league became fully professional, the first top tier in European women's football to go full-time, with Arsenal Women reigning over their rivals as champions for a record third time - 15 counting their success in the previous iteration of the English topflight.

Professionalism brought with it greater broadcasting and sponsorship opportunities, with Barclays coming on board in March 2019 with a deal worth around £10million.

However, crowds have remained relatively modest and averaged out at just under 1,000 over the season - the sort of numbers usually associated with non-league football rather than the professional game.

Arsenal Women’s head coach Joe Montemurro was at the World Cup in France and saw the impact that the competition had on the host country while ratings soared back across the channel.

“I think the tournament speaks for itself," he told football.london, ahead of his team's first game of the new season against West Ham Women.

Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now

"How it looked on television, the quality of football, the amount of fans that were going. From my perspective it was a great success and long may it last."

For the Australian, the interest generated in France has gifted English clubs a unique chance to take a major step forward that must be exploited.

“It's the responsibility of every team that’s got an elite women’s team at the highest level,” he added. “I think we all have a responsibility.

"It’s every game, it’s every interview, it’s every opportunity to expose the game to the highest level. We have to take those opportunities. We can’t afford to bring the game back to where we don’t want it to be.”

(Image: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

This season is set to see more firsts in a move that is designed to build upon the gains witnessed by Montemurro to draw in a larger domestic audience outside of a World Cup summer.

Chelsea Women and Manchester City Women will host their opening games of the campaign at Stamford Bridge and the Etihad Stadium, respetively, with claims that an impressive 20,000 tickets have already been sold for the former's cross-city derby match with Manchster United Women.

Meanwhile, West Ham Women will play Tottenham Hotspur Women at the London Stadium at the end of September, before Spurs themselves host Arsenal Women at the new Tottenham stadium in November.

It is a move that mirrors developments in the USA where the National Women's Soccer League has seen a boom in attendance figures and several clubs benefitting from switching their home games to larger venues.

Last month, Washington Spirit took on Orlando Pride at Audi Field, which usually hosts the Major League Soccer franchise DC United. Over 19,000 fans attended the game.

Sky Blue FC also set a club attendance record of 9,415 in their game against Reign FC at Red Bull Arena, the home of the New York Red Bulls.

(Image: Rico Brouwer/Soccrates/Getty Images)

Other European sides have already thrown open the doors of their grounds to record bumper crowds of late.

Atletico Madrid had 60,739 at the Wanda Metropolitano for their league game against Barcelona. Juventus filled their 39,000-capacity Allianz Stadium for their first game against Fiorentina. A record French crowd of 25,907 watched Lyon defeat Paris Saint-Germain 5-0 to clinch the Division 1 Feminine title.

In England, an idea has been put forward to take this concept further: the 'double header'.

Matches played prior to men's fixtures on the same date are set to be trialed, according to Kelly Simmons, FA Director of the Women's Professional Game.

"Our job now is to make sure we capitalise on the momentum from the women’s World Cup and build audiences and build attendances,” she told Reuters.

"There’s a massive chance for the game to pull those across this season with the WSL and get more people coming to games and watching games on television."

A feasibility study into the idea is planned. In July, Arsenal tried it for themselves.

The Gunners are the most successful women's club in England and the reigning champions of the WSL.

With their rich tradition of winning trophies, they are still to announce any plans this season to play home games away from their regular base of Meadow Park, the ground owned by non-league Boreham Wood.

However, following the World Cup, they gave the double header concept a dummy run for the Emirates Cup.

It was billed as an opportunity for fans to watch Arsenal play Bayern Munich before the men's team took on Lyon straight after. Unfortunately it proved to be a failed experiment.

(Image: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

With the women's game kicking off at 12:30pm, there were simply not enough people in the stadium to make it feel like the spectacle it should have been.

The idea of double headers remains controversial. An obvious counter-argument to the concept is that it lowers the women's game to the status of pre-match entertainment before the main event, undercutting efforts to boost the brand and promote the sport.

Bayern Chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenige had optimistically written in his programme notes that he was excited that the game was happening, so that “the women can show what they can do in front of 60,000 supporters”. Unfortunately there were nowhere near that many present on the day.

The actual figure was hard to quantify. Arsenal announced that there had been a peak of 28,500 during the women’s game. Maybe this accounted for how many had come through the turnstiles by the end of the match - some would’ve been buying food, others simply milling about the stadium.

It certainly didn’t feel like there were that many people watching the game itself.

Still, the match had its moments and those who did take their seats responded as Tabea Kemme got past her defender to threaten the Bayern goal, and in the second-half, as the footfall increased with punters arriving ahead of the men's game, so did the noise.

Regular match-goers who follow the team home and away were also left unconvinced by the experience. Sylvain Jamet has been supporting and writing about Arsenal Women for 15 years.

“I don’t know if it’s the best way, because as we saw people were only arriving late in the second half for the women’s game anyway," he told football.london. "They probably had about 5,000 maximum for the girls really.

"As we can see already, a lot of clubs are doing standalones, like Spurs and Chelsea. I think that’s the way forward.”

(Image: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

Claire Sweeny is Communications Officer for the Arsenal Women Supporters Club and a regular at Meadow Park.

She also found the double header at the Emirates Cup slightly unusual compared to watching the team at Boreham Wood.

“It’s a very different atmosphere to what I’m used to,” she said. “We missed being able to make a racket. We were singing the players’ songs and they couldn’t hear us!”

What about the players on the pitch?

For Kim Little, it was an experience she enjoyed.

"When I was at the club previously we used to play one game a year there," the Scotland international told football.london. "I’ve got some fun experiences from when I was younger."

Back in 2008, Little scored a goal against Chelsea at the Emirates in front of 5,000 fans.

"It was great to be back, and obviously to play before the men which we’ve not done before," she added. "It was great to play a competitive team there, to have a lot of fans there to support us as well as the men. It’s always nice to play at the Emirates.

"I'm not sure it can happen all the time but I think it’s definitely a small step towards bigger support and bigger numbers of spectators at games."

While Arsenal do not currently have any standalone fixtures planned for their women's team at the Emirates this season, they are a side that live up to the 'one club' ethos that has become more common in the English game.

(Image: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Players from both senior squads have appeared in campaigns to launch kits and sponsor brands over the last few weeks ahead of the new campaigns in the Premier League and WSL.

However there are still lessons to be learned from the mistakes of the past according to Jamet.

"I think the marketing the women’s game is very hard actually and the FA’s been trying for years and years," she said. "It actually marketed the wrong population.

“It marketed it to kids and their parents. There’s actually a lot of adults coming to the games and they’ve never been the marketing target. I think the club is trying but it’s really hard to market. It’s not an easy thing, basically. If it was easy, all the clubs would be doing it!"

But progress is being made.

"Obviously, 15 years ago we had maybe 50 people," she added. “Now we’ve got probably 2,000 today. It’s improving a lot in 15 years.”

The players too paint a largely positive picture, and not only with regards to professionalism.

A lot has changed since Vic Akers set the team up 30 years ago as Arsenal Ladies, playing in hand-me-down shirts, shorts and boots from the men’s team. The former kit man had to haggle with the Gunners to let them use the coach for away games and access to training.

He also helped some of the players to get jobs at Arsenal, such as washing the kit, in order to ensure they had an income to stay in the game. This long before the professional era arrived.

Little saw these waves of change for herself since making her debut for the club as a 17-year-old.

(Image: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

"We’ve become full-time, we’ve now got more working staff than we’ve had before, we’ve got a bigger squad," she said, now a key member of the team and one of the best in the world at 29.

"It’s just all progressing in a really great way and it’s so nice to be a part of it throughout it all. In my opinion from all the places I’ve played, each place can probably learn from all of the others.

"Australia, here and America - all do things slightly differently. Purely because that’s just the way it is, they’re just completely separate countries. I think that’s the best way for different places to get better, is to learn from other places or how other teams or leagues have done things well."

Back in the familiar surroundings of Boreham Wood, the atmosphere tends to be more coherent. The team are at home there with a strong bond has been built with the regular fan base.

A new stand, named the ‘North Bank’ in tribute to Highbury, has been opened for the new season with a covered stand the home dugout where the most loyal and vocal supporters tend to congregate.

Here they write chants on some of the new players and are near enough to the action to even speak with them afterwards and get photos with their heroes.

For Montemurro, this connection between the team and the fans is vital when playing at Boreham Wood.

“We’re comfortable there," he said. "We love the little stadium, we love the atmosphere and for the fans I think really important that they’re very close to the players.

(Image: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

“The players are amazing role models and after the games they can see them, they can get autographs, they can interact with them and that’s the beauty of Boreham Wood.

"It’s important that we grow in the right manner. Can we fill up the Emirates Stadium week in, week out? No, we can’t. We’re not at that level yet.

"There are costs involved, there are operational things involved that make it very, very expensive to do that but like anything, let’s fill up Boreham Wood first.

"We love playing at Boreham Wood - let’s make that our cauldron, let’s get that bursting at the seams and then we can start to look at a standalone game at the Emirates."

It's a view shared by Little and others in the dressing room.

“We’ve played at Boreham Wood since I was a 17-year-old," she said. "We have great ties there and we feel at home there. The pitch has been looked after and done up over the years, which makes it such a good playing surface for us as a team.

"There’s definitely loads of positives to playing at a bigger stadium, one that you can attract more people to, but then from a performance perspective it potentially can take away from you playing at your home where you feel comfortable. There’s a lot of things to think about when you’re making those decisions."

For the fans, it is a decision that should be easy to make.

"I can see why they do it [playing at the Emirates], but, to be honest I think the numbers need to grow first,” said Sweeney.

(Image: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

“At Boreham Wood we are loud, at the Emirates we can’t make as much noise. Plus, the players don’t really have the opportunity to see the fans properly, which is one of my favourite things about women’s football."

Not that more games away from Meadow Park would deter Sweeney or the other regular match-goers.

"We will follow them where we can whether it be Emirates or Borehamwood, rain or shine!" she added.

Arsenal head into a new WSL season as champions with a vibrant fan base and a home away from home that they are in no rush to leave any time soon.

Perhaps it would be a mistake to assume success for the women’s team should not be measured by the same metrics as the men.

Striving for four or five figure attendances because they look nice on paper and feel like familiar numbers for those who scrutinise the turn out in the Premier League and the Football League may be out of step with the needs of the sports and its clubs as things stand.

“We need to do it in our way," said Montemurro. "In our unique way and we need to do it in a smart way where we know it’s going to build with sustainability.

"The players are just getting better, so the product is getting better and it’s better to watch, so we will just by that default attract fans."

The World Cup may have captured the nation’s attention but converting that interest into match-going support was always going to be a new challenge.

Arsenal will no doubt be watching with interest to see how fixtures at the Etihad and Stamford Bridge pan out on the opening weekend of the WSL season.

Montemurro has his eyes set on the bigger picture.

"Success for me, it’s not about trophies," he said. "It’s not about winning leagues, it’s about the opportunity to make this game an amazing profession for a lot of people and for it to be at the level that it deserves to be.

"If we’re seeing as much women’s football on television as we are men’s football, if the sustainability of the contracts for these players is one that they can leave at the end of their career and still have enough left in them to live their lives, if we can get it to those levels then that for me is success."