How Women’s Soccer Is Attracting More Fans To Games

March 17, 2021
By Johanna Haas

Which came first, the women’s soccer audience or televising women’s games? Soccer on TV is undergoing a change that will, hopefully, build the audience. However, it has been an arduous process.

Excitement builds around the World Cup every four years, and stations bid for broadcast rights – and then immediately forget about women’s soccer afterward. To fight this, the NWSL requires networks to bid for three-year terms.

The league is caught in a Catch-22 that goes like this: networks want to see bigger audiences for the women’s game before airing the matches. Teams need time on-air to build those audiences, and it is almost certain that broadcasting will bring in more fans.

The question becomes, how do we show TV networks that women’s soccer has an audience?

CBS Is the New Home of Nwsl in the Us

CBS has bought the rights to air NWSL games and put one game on the air each week, just like Lifetime did before. Fans can purchase Paramount+, the expanded streaming service, and watch the rest of the games. I will pay for it to watch Crystal Dunn and my beloved Thorns play from outside their market zone. (And the exciting new Racing Louisville FC from inside the market.)

Alternative Places To Watch

Like 2020, Twitch will also broadcast several games. Between CBS, Paramount +, and Twitch, fans should be able to watch all the games. Fans wanting to tune into Spanish broadcasts can watch at Univision.

The Fan Project

The Fan Project is an organization that links the fans of many women’s sports. It encourages fans to use social media to share their love of women’s teams and athletes and share their social media data with them.

The Fan Project then analyzes and packages the numbers to present them to media, sponsors, and others to show there is an enormous fan base for women’s sports. The hope? Encourage the bigwigs to increase access to women’s sports. Showing fan excitement through this tool may spur broadcasters into giving fans better access to the games.

Featured Image via Unsplash @jefferyflin