England’s women x2
Pump-priming football and rugby. Back the bid!
By my back-of-the-envelope reckoning, the national team’s 4-0 win over Northern Ireland’s women at Wembley was the 14th best supported sporting event in England this weekend. An attendance of 23,225 drew criticism in some media quarters, but a Saturday afternoon kick-off made this a proper test of the female game which it clearly passed.
True, both the Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday games in League One drew bigger crowds, but these are two clubs with rich heritage and embedded loyalty to match, in spite of their current lowly status. And England’s women are building on foundations that were only really laid in the public consciousness by Team GB’s appearance in the London 2012 Olympics. Nine years isn’t a lot of heritage.
Better yardsticks for fan engagement are the average Championship attendance of around 16,000 this weekend, and Premiership rugby crowds averaging only about 11,000 this season. Of course, smaller stadia are a constraint, although ‘full’ signs are a rarity in top flight club rugby these days. And the lure of a trip to Wembley for £20 and £2.50 for kids will have been an attraction in itself, whatever the gender of the players.
No doubt a kick-off that didn’t coincide with the bulk of the weekend’s men’s matches, and even lower ticket prices, would have boosted the crowd, but I applaud the FA for having the confidence to schedule the match when it did. It provided a true test of the market.
The Wembley game was almost certainly a loss-maker. Money is being pumped into elite women’s football at present, which is not without risk to the health of the game. Already the top end of the Women’s Super League is only accessible for those club owners with deep pockets and a willingness to shoulder hefty losses for the foreseeable.
The same is true in other sports. Within the past week the RFU has flagged its desire to host the 2025 Rugby World Cup for women and, having sought a £30 million commitment from government, was promised a big chunk of this sum by the Chancellor in his Budget on Wednesday. The RFU claims the tournament would provide a £156 million fillip for the economy, based on work by a specialist unit at Sheffield Hallam University.
I’ve no doubt hosting RWC2025 would provide a great boost to the women’s game in England. However, I’m always sceptical about the costs of big events and their claimed economic windfalls.
In my experience, the army of itinerant ‘experts’ who deliver major sporting events are often far too profligate, eager to spend their backers’ cash and move swiftly onto their next gig in a different sport. Indeed the RFU itself had just such budget and spending problems heading into the men’s World Cup in 2015.
My first reaction on seeing the £30 million request was, ‘are you sure?’ Just how much need it cost to host a cracking competition for sixteen teams over the space of just under four weeks? I’d counsel the RFU to build a line-by-line budget from the bottom up asking a healthily sceptical ‘why?’ at every stage.
Similarly, the consultants who calculate economic impact to justify the cost of staging big sporting events - both in the bidding phase and in the post-event analysis - are notorious for their ability to conjure up eye-popping numbers which can never be either proven or disproved.
It may be, though, that this particular investment by Rishi Sunak is principally for money to pump-prime grassroots female rugby union on the back of the 2025 World Cup - investment that the RFU can’t afford itself after the hit from the pandemic. The breakdown of his commitment between bid costs, event staging and legacy projects is not yet publicly available.
I’m delighted that the government is backing the RFU’s bid, but hope it is doing so because of the governing body’s ambitious plans to use the tournament to build the foundations of the female game, not because of some ephemeral macroeconomic payback. The RFU’s target of 60,000 new women players would certainly prove transformative if met - it dwarfs the number of those currently registered.
Few professional men’s sports can stand entirely on their own two financial feet, so it would be wrong to judge elite women’s competitions across sports on that basis. Injections of government cash should be welcomed, so long as there is genuine linkage to the growth of grassroots female sport. Just let’s not blow valuable money on superfluous event day razzamatazz.
Sunak pitches in
The £700 million investment in sports facilities that was also contained in the Chancellor’s Budget is welcome news. As highlighted here last week, there is currently a facilities crisis exacerbated by Covid-19. Sport England’s latest survey of the nation’s sporting habits confirmed what we all knew anecdotally - that overall activity levels are down, with deprived corners of society most badly affected.
I’m assured there are long term ambitions to ‘join up’ the work of government departments to find permanent solutions. That’s all very well, but how long will it take? In the meantime we don’t just need facilities reopened, we also need short term stimuluses to get the nation moving again - especially its youngsters.
“Maybe the £300 million in vouchers could be funded by some sort of tax on the multi billion esport/computer games industry? It seems this is where a lot of people who should be doing sport are spending their time. Sorry, sound like a grumpy old man!” Sport inc. reader responding to last week’s ‘nudge vouchers’ idea.
Ran, jumped, thrown?
My phone almost melted down last Thursday evening when the news broke that both the CEO and performance director at UK Athletics were leaving with immediate effect after less than two years in post. A new chair of the organisation has just arrived too, which is surely no coincidence. There’s nothing like decisiveness. In time, the changes will probably prove to be in the best interests of everyone concerned.
I suspect the departed leaders underestimated just what is required to succeed in this most competitive of global sports. With three major championships in the calendar for 2022, time is of the essence - but as a fan I’m hopeful that in due course the past shambolic eighteen months will appear as no more than a hiccup in British athletics’ storied history.