You do not have to be a genius to see where this carries. At the European Championships in 2005, 120,000 tickets were sold. In the European Championships in 2017, 240,000 tickets were sold. EM in 2022? More than 500,000 tickets. We are now past the “turning point” for women’s football. The revolution started a long time ago, and this summer’s tournament in England is simply a new chapter. The good news is no longer that women’s football is growing, but how fast it is happening. Even those who should have been most optimistic about the European Championships have been surprised. This includes the organizers themselves. Small capacity Much of the pre-championship debate has been about the stadiums. The opening match on Wednesday took place at the mighty Old Trafford, but three settlements will take place at City Academy Stadium close to the home ground of Manchester City’s men’s team. Four other matches are to take place at Leigh Sports Village. These arenas are already small, and are reduced by the fact that standing places are illegal during the European Championships. So City Academy will take 4,700 spectators, Leigh Sports Village will take 8,100. These are ridiculous numbers for a European Football Championship. RIDICULOUS: City Academy will only take 4,700 spectators during this summer’s European Championships. Photo: CARL RECINE / Reuters It all seems like an embarrassing miscalculation from the English Football Association (FA), which has been slaughtered by both the press and players. The FA has pointed out that several of the clubs and cities behind the largest stadiums would not host matches. Fair enough. But the organizers also admit that they have been taken to bed. In March, Chris Bryant, head of the committee behind the European Championships, said that women’s football had grown more than they had expected. “The event we are going to organize this summer will be far bigger than the event we planned for and saw for ourselves when we submitted the bid,” Bryant told The Guardian. Here it is possible to have sympathy for the FA, because the growth has been extreme. Four incredible years England won the European Championships in December 2018. Six months later came the World Cup in France, which broke TV records and sold more than a million tickets. In the European Championships in 2017, the matches had an average of 7,969 spectators. In the World Cup two years later, the number was 21,756. ONE MILLION TICKETS: 21,756 spectators watched on average every match in the World Cup in 2019. The Netherlands won the championship. Photo: Francisco Seco / AP The same year, Europe’s biggest club team broke new barriers by playing in the stadiums for men. Barcelona met Atlético Madrid in front of more than 60,000. Juventus played against Fiorentina in front of 39,000. When the pandemic came, some feared that women’s football would fall back into the dark ages. Instead, it hit back harder. Last year, the BBC and Sky Sports said they would pay around £ 8 million per season to show WSL on British television. The league received a three-year sponsorship deal with Barclays worth £ 30 million – twice as much as the previous deal. In April, the Italian top league announced that it will be professional next season. That same month, Barcelona and Real Madrid broke the world record for a women’s club match by playing in front of 91,553 spectators at the Camp Nou. RECORD: 91,553 spectators watched Barcelona and Real Madrid at the Camp Nou in April. Photo: Maria Angela Angles / AP In Norway, the Toppserien recently broke an audience record two weeks in a row. In the United States, a new team, Angel City, draws 18,500 spectators per game. All this has happened in four years. No wonder the FA is confused. The freight train There is no way back now. Women’s football has been like a freight train: Slow to get started, but unstoppable once it is up to speed. With this summer’s European Championships, the revolution will roll on. Audience numbers are important. Manchester City’s general manager, Ferran Soriano, talks about a “positive cycle” where money and results go hand in hand. When a team wins, the sponsors come. These offer money that allows you to strengthen the team, which allows you to win more again. This is how it continues. With women’s football, it’s different. There are not enough victories to attract sponsors, as long as they are seen by only a few thousand spectators. Sponsors will see interest in the product, something you get through marketing and media coverage. That is why it is so big that the European Championships have sold more than half a billion tickets. Where there is interest, the money ends up. Worthwhile framework The recent records on the club page have shown that this interest is less about the product itself, and more about the framework around it. Barcelona’s women’s team mostly plays in front of a few thousand because they have a small academy stadium. As soon as they got to use Camp Nou and were properly marketed, more than 90,000 came. The team itself was the same as before. It was everything around the match that was upgraded. Apart from a couple of small arenas, England should be able to give the European Championships a worthy framework. The coverage in the press has been brilliant. Yesterday’s match, in which England beat Austria 1-0, went in front of 68,871 spectators, which is a record in a European Championship for women. RECORD 2: 68,871 spectators took place at Old Trafford in the European Championship opening match. Photo: MOLLY DARLINGTON / Reuters With 16 teams, the tournament has a classic format, with four teams per group, two of which go straight to the quarterfinals. There is no buzz about who is the best team in third place, as you get on the men’s side when 24 teams are involved. And in a year where the Men’s World Cup will be ruined by Qatar, for some this will be the only international championship worth following. Norway as outsiders It is extra fun that so many teams can win. Spain are favorites even without Alexia Putellas, the winner of the Golden Ball, who smoked the cruciate ligament this week. England, who are in a group with Norway, have not yet lost under Sarina Wiegman, the director behind the Netherlands’ European Championship title in 2017. Germany is chasing a new golden age. France have a huge amount of talent, even after disagreements between coach Corinne Diacre and two of the stars, Amandine Henry and Eugénie Le Sommer, who are not involved. The Netherlands is too good to depreciate. Many believe that Sweden can go all the way to the top. And then we have Norway, the outsider behind the six candidates. With Ada Hegerberg and Caroline Graham Hansen at the top, most things are possible, and coach Martin Sjögren has said that the team can join in at the very end if all goes well. On Thursday, the Norwegian women also got a dream start to the championship when Northern Ireland was beaten 4-1. DREAM START: Guro Reiten celebrates with Caroline Graham Hansen after she scored Norway’s 4-1 goal. Photo: BERNADETT SZABO / Reuters Whatever happens, the European Championships should be a party. We will see records fall. We want to see better football than ever. When it’s all over, women’s football will have taken a new step forward. It seems to be a big one.
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