Don't Forget Your Tickets
Don' Forget Your Tickets is a podcast devoted to the unsung heroes of the spectator sports and events industries, the Ticketing Managers. We explore who they are, their well-guarded industry secrets, and how they entered the field. Beyond that, we delve into a broader ticketing realm, inviting experts from various fields to share their insights and stories. Our primary aim is to add value and highlight deserving individuals.
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Don't Forget Your Tickets
Sophie Downey and Rachel O'Sullivan (interviewed by Thom Airs) on Transforming Women's Football from Visibility to Vibrant Growth - A Live Special from Emirates Stadium in London
Can Women’s Football Rival the Global Impact of the Men’s Game?
The growth of women’s football has been nothing short of remarkable—but how far can it go? In this episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets, recorded live at Emirates Stadium, Thom Airs sit down with Sophie Downey and Rachel O’Sullivan, the duo behind Girls on the Ball, who have spent over a decade covering 1,000+ matches worldwide. From the 2012 Olympics to England’s Euros triumph, they’ve witnessed firsthand how visibility and investment are transforming the sport, despite historical challenges like the 50-year ban.
Sophie and Rachel discuss the sport’s start-up-like growth, the importance of challenging outdated stereotypes, and new opportunities for marketing, branding, and fan engagement. Can women’s football tap into Gen Z audiences, redefine stadium experiences, and unlock fresh commercial potential?
Join us for a fascinating conversation about the future of the game—and the bold moves that could take it to the next level.
This Live Special episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets was recorded at the Don't Forget Your Tickets conference at Emirates Stadium, January 23rd 2025, as the fifth out of 12 on-stage interviews that day. Girlsontheball was interviewed by Thom Airs.
Don't Forget Your Tickets is powered by TicketCo and hosted by TicketCo’s CEO, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg. The podcast was originally named TicketingPodcast.com
Women's football has grown exponentially over the past decade, but what's driving this momentum and where is the game headed next At? Don't Forget your Tickets. At Emirates Stadium, Tom Eyre sat down with Sophie Downey and Rachel O'Sullivan the duo behind Girls on the Ball to discuss their journey covering over a thousand matches, worldwide, reporting from sports evolution and championing women's football across major tournaments, leagues and grassroot levels. From the growing visibility of the game to the challenges that still need to be tackled, this episode delves into media coverage, investment and the future of the women's football landscape. Sit back and enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 2:We've doubled the capacity quite easily, which I'm sure some clubs would quite like to do. Getting on these chairs might be the hardest bit of the next 25 minutes. Yes, 2012 was quite a pivotal year, wasn't it? That was when Girls on the Ball was founded. Tell us what is Girls on the Ball?
Speaker 3:We are a digital platform covering all aspects of the women's game as much as two people can do across the UK and Ireland and, like the women's game, we have had to grow over the last kind of 12, 13 seasons and expand our coverage and our types of coverage. So it's kind of all different types of media, isn't it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we do everything from video, podcasting, photography for Rachel, I write as well, so kind of cover all media streams but also follow the game from here to abroad, and you know we've done something like 1200 games, so something like that.
Speaker 2:So the WSL started in 2011. The women's football at the Olympics in 2012 was clearly a pivotal moment. Tell us where we were back then to where we are now. What have you seen in those 13 years that have elapsed since?
Speaker 3:it was the team GB versus Brazil game that kind of not only sparked the girls in the ball idea, but also was a big spark in women's football. 70,000 people turned out to Wembley to watch the game and when we look back across those 10, 12 years, that is kind of one of the key points that started this incremental growth of the women's game, which has grown exponentially in quite a short space of time. We didn't have huge coverage, big numbers of fans coming to games, both international and domestically, and then we had the Olympics was a big starting point. You had the 2015 World Cup. You had the 2017 Euros, 2019. There were all these kind of moments that just pushed the game further and further. And then, conveniently, 10 years to the day, from Team GB, brazil at Wembley, england beat Germany in Wembley to win the Euros, and that's kind of elevated the game to an even larger degree.
Speaker 2:Sophie, are we still in a growth period then?
Speaker 4:Very much so I think you'll often hear it said that the game is still in startup mode, especially in the domestic game. I think for a long time the international game has driven audiences, but now you're starting to see in the last five, six, seven years the domestic game is really, really growing and you've seen what Arsenal have done in in recent years in terms of selling out the Emirates here. I think that was two seasons ago in the Champions League for the first time that they got to sell out the Emirates. So it's an era of exponential growth, but we're very much at the start of it because we've got so much more to go.
Speaker 3:I think it's often forgotten that the women's football was banned for 50 years, so you're always kind of much further back than people might think. You know the game only professionalised in maybe 2015,. 2016 was when teams turned fully professional. So you kind of have to keep in the forefront of your mind. When people desperately try and compare women's football to men's football, it's just kind of a pointless comparison at this time.
Speaker 2:That ban was lifted only in the early 1970s, which is really recent history. Is it unfair, then, to compare, like for like, the men's game with the women's game? Would you say it's a standalone entity and with it brings many opportunities.
Speaker 4:I would say so. I think it's going to be natural to make comparisons, but I think the context is always completely necessary and the fact that for 50 years women in this country were banned from playing professional football, any football association football it's really important to remember because you think about how much of a setback that is in terms of turning professional training, nutrition. You know some of the senior players to this day still came of that generation where they had to work you know one, two jobs to be able to go and train in the evening and then play at the weekend. So you're still getting out of that kind of phase. Thankfully, it's changed massively in the last few years and the investment that everyone's put into the game is just starting that process now where you know, in the next 10 years you're going to see footballers who have been professional their whole career.
Speaker 2:Rachel, how different is the women's game than from the men's game? What's the difference, perhaps from a fan point of view, then, from the men's game? What's the difference, perhaps, from a fan point of view, from a club point of view, what are the things that can be sort of exploited in a good way, should I say, from clubs and fans point of view?
Speaker 3:I think there was a really interesting stat that came out after the women's Euros that spoke about Gen Z and that kind of more difficult to reach demographic when it came to live sport, and that was one of the fastest growing demographics in the women's game. So that in itself shows you that we don't have to approach fans exactly the same way for men's football and women's football. That's not to say that there isn't a correlation between fans of the men's game and the women's game, but there is that statistic, I think in the last three years, 56% of fans of the women's game have only come into football in the last three years or so. That's a huge amount of people that you could be capitalizing on. We see different ways that fans approach the game.
Speaker 3:Women's football fans actually have a higher spending potential compared to men's fans. They'll spend 71% more on merchandise than men's fans will, 41% more on entertainment than men's fans will. So there's lots of things we can learn, but we don't have to treat them the exact same way, because for a long time women's football hasn't been untouchable. Right, I know we're selling out stadiums now, but fans are able to see players afterwards get selfies, know them a little bit better develop those relationships and I feel like that's something we're trying to hold on to in the women's game is that connection between fans and the club, because it can be very difficult to hold on to as the game gets bigger and bigger.
Speaker 4:I think, across women's sport as well, not just women's football, but you're starting to see a real understanding that there's an untapped audience out there that have never really been interested in football before. And I go over to rugby. If you look at what Bristol Bears did with Alona Meyer coming in to Bristol Bears recently, she's obviously the big superstar in USA rugby they got like 9,900 fans, I think, to Ashton Gate for her first game for the club. Over half of them had never been to see a rugby game before in their life. So you're talking about real audiences who have never ever been attracted to the sport. And so you've got that ceiling of growth is still there.
Speaker 2:Is it fair to say, then, that those individual stories that perhaps men's sport don't tap into, say, bar Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, where fans might support the player over the team? Is there more of that in the women's game? Is there more scope for women's teams to really tell their audiences and their fans about the individuals on their teams?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I mean a lot of people might know a lot about, say, your lionesses, but actually it's a unique thing in women's football fans that one of the key indicators that fans like that makes them feel connected to the club is knowing more about individuals and knowing more about those grassroots stories and telling those stories. Fans are willing to engage more with that kind of content. It's also another opportunity to develop the relationship with the fan and the club and it's another hook to kind of draw them in and, I guess, make them feel more connected to that club environment. But it is something in terms of content wise, it's something that fans are more interested in in the women's game.
Speaker 4:I think it's also happened quite organically because for years, you know, the coverage of the game was low, so the players kind of had to make their own brands. And you've seen that across the board with the top players, players, but also you're seeing it now across the championship as well. Players are understanding that they can use their own brand to build their following, and you've seen it, whether it be on TikTok or across social media, and then the clubs are then tapping into that popularity that they've developed on their own. So it's kind of upended. I guess what's happened in the men's game where, because of the coverage and because of the size of the clubs and the sport itself, that naturally brings publicity, whereas, I think quite organically, the women's players have had to do it kind of themselves.
Speaker 3:It's the same, though. I think the Telegraph or the Guardian, I think maybe did an article recently off the back of the Olympics about how female Olympians were utilizing their social media platforms much more because they were getting more income from those avenues than perhaps they were from the sport they were playing, and that's just an interesting angle when it comes to looking at marketing your women's team.
Speaker 2:Who's doing it well? You've been all over the world with Girls on the Ball. Who's doing it well? From a league point of view, from an individual club point of view, who's out there, sort of top of the class?
Speaker 3:We have to say Arsenal, don't we? I know we're at the Emirates, but they are arguably doing a very good job.
Speaker 4:So yeah, I mean Arsenal were the kind of the first club to sell out their stadium, the Emirates in the WSL in terms of that respect, and they put a whole lot of work in behind the scenes to get that over the line. It's not just thinking that, oh, we'll just put tickets online and they'll come out. I know there was a whole lot of market research trying to understand the different behaviors between fans who go to men's football to the fans who goes to women's football. You know, when you have people coming through the door that have never been to a game before in their life, they don't really understand the messaging that you've been saying to the same group of people for the last 20 years. So they've put in the work, they've understand their demographic and they're trying to talk to different audiences. And you saw that with the success of that game against Wolfsburg. Yes, they lost the game in the end, but getting the sellout here and you've just seen that sustainability ever since.
Speaker 3:And we also spent a couple of weeks last summer in America at the NWSL and we wanted to go and experience it from a fan perspective because we wanted to look at what they were doing well and what they were not doing well, what maybe could work over here. There's definitely some Americanized things that maybe we'll leave there. We don't need to sing the national anthem before every match, I don't think. But their engagement with fans was entirely different and we came away from that thinking the clubs there feel lucky to have the fans coming to the stadium and experiencing the match. Here and maybe more in Europe it's almost the other way around, where the fans feel lucky to get to go and watch a game. So the kind of activations over in the NWSL were totally different. The amount of hooks they had in stadiums to keep you there.
Speaker 3:You know we bought a shirt at one of the games before kickoff in the club shop. By halftime we had a text message. They were putting the name on the back of the shirt for us in the stadium. Halftime we got a text message to tell us the shirt was ready for collection. You know we'd paid for customization, whatever we wanted in the stadium and went halftime picked up our shirt and went home with it. You know there's so many ways for you to buy dinner. You ways for you to buy dinner. The amount of food trucks they have available, local food trucks they have a great relationship with the local community the amount of ways that you can spend money at this stadium, naturally and it was such an interesting approach to how they saw their fans versus maybe how it is over here Sometimes there's an assumption that fans aren't going to spend money, particularly women's fans aren't going to spend money, and that's just not true.
Speaker 2:If that's the do's, then what about the don'ts? What's sort of an anecdote of something that hasn't quite chimed with you. What can people in women's football here still learn?
Speaker 4:I think it's just trying to avoid falling into the same stereotypes that we've thought about the women's game for so often. I remember in the kind of nascent years of the WSL it was all kind of pink and fluffy and girly and understanding that it's not just a family friendly sport. Yes, that's a big aspect to getting kids through the doors and you know that tagline inspiring the next generation has been huge for the women's game in recent years. But actually understanding that the audience that you're getting in that are going to spend the money through the doors are going to be your 18 to 40 year olds getting in that are going to spend the money through the doors are going to be your 18 to 40 year olds. So marketing it towards that rather than just thinking about the kids or activation for the kids, it's about understanding that for longevity of the sport you need to think about the here and now. Who's going to be investing in your club right now to get through that door?
Speaker 3:I do remember back to being at a kind of round table this was a number of years ago, so not the current crop of staff in the FA, but at a round table at Wembley where they were discussing marketing and how we should push things. And it was pinks, it was purples. People actually said, well, girls don't want to see tough tackles, so let's not include that in the marketing. We don't want them to be put off. And I just remember a lot of the women around the table were kind of looking at each other saying, do we not? Is that not what we want to see? So I do think that's changed, but it just makes you realise how far we've come in quite a short space of time of maybe moving away from that stereotype. And I know we've touched on Alona Mara, but she's absolutely someone that proves that is what inspires people, is that a strong athlete? And that's what we want to see.
Speaker 2:If I'm a curmudgeonly chairman at my club perhaps a lower league men's club and I've been asked why haven't we got a women's team here? And I fold my arms and I say I don't really want one. What's in it for me? Come back at me. What would you say to that imaginary chairperson?
Speaker 3:We were talking beforehand and you kind of posed this question to me and I realised I kind of had to tame down my answer a little bit because it was a bit provocative. I guess my way of looking at it is apply your thinking towards a relatively new startup in any other business. You would look at it and say this growth is amazing, the interest is amazing. It's going at such a fast rate all over the world. Just because we put women's sport in front of that doesn't make it any less of a good investment, and I think that's more of a cultural shift. You look at the basketball in America, the ice hockey in Canada. The growth is incredible. They're constantly breaking records in terms of attendances, in terms of viewers, in terms of money spent. I don't know what more proof you need to show that this is an area of growth and investment.
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, I would argue that the ceiling is incredibly high in terms of where you can reach and I think, in terms of the men's game, there's still growth, of course, that you can make, but I think you're quite close to the ceiling. It's a whole new world in terms of women's sports, women's football, in terms of really understanding what is the hook into the game, what potential it has. I know all the research around, like return on investment, and everything you know is showing that there's going to have such good potential in terms of that in the next 10 years. You just have to be a bit patient with it. Yeah, it's in that startup phase. It's also, I always find that you know when we say, well, we need to spend a bit more money in women's sport or women's football, people go, well, it's not bringing any money in and you don't have to justify that on the men's side, long-term project, it's a long-term investment and all of the numbers are showing that it will go in the right way.
Speaker 3:And we're also still in a situation in the women's game where we can shape it. It is growing fast, but we don't have to go down the exact same route as the men's game. That's not to say the men's game isn't working it clearly is. It's doing extremely well. But, as we've touched on, in terms of demographics, people engaging with it, how they're engaging with it, there is still opportunity to try new things and potentially make it all the more worth investing in, and I think that's quite exciting. But I feel like we're at a closer position now with the women's game where we're going to get to a point where we can no longer turn the ship. I feel like it's a hard thing to do, but I think being invested in it now is a great opportunity to try and shape it.
Speaker 2:And talking about exciting new things, innovations. There are some innovations that the women's game are doing. That the men's game isn't Alcohol in the stands is a recent thing, a recent trial that's going on in the second tier of women's football. Any other innovations and any more sort of thoughts on what's going on innovation-wise?
Speaker 4:I think that's a really good example in terms of just trying something different. You know that lore about alcohol in the stands has been around for decades in the men's game. But understanding that we do have a different audience and maybe we can just trial that. I also think that maybe it goes back into the last question a bit, but in terms of investment and thinking about branding and stuff, I think the women's game is starting to show that you don't have to think about always going for the traditional brands. You know, the ones that we always associate with men's football or the game in general. There is opening up a whole lot of potential to. You know Il Makiage. Here at Arsenal they sponsor the women's team. That's a makeup brand, right. You've got a whole different world of maybe interest that they'll see, that they could tap into the women's game. So that's another piece of innovation.
Speaker 3:That was definitely one thing I enjoyed at the NWSL was frozen margaritas in the stands. Granted, we had a very different climate over there, but it is something that can be locked into. You know, there's things like kickoff times, the 3pm blackm blackout. Could that actually be an opportunity for women's football? I know this weekend we had a game on Friday evening, Saturday evening, and then the games were spread out across Sunday and I think we attended four of six and managed to watch all of them without having to go back on Monday and try and go through them all again.
Speaker 3:So there are little things that can be trialed, and I think the way Arsenal are doing some of their approach with fans with that can be trialled. And I think the way Arsenal are doing some of their approach with fans with some like in motion, collective and stuff like that and doing events with fans is a really interesting way of engaging. The kind of growth of that fan base here in such a short space of time is something I think every club should be looking at, because I think it's been really innovative the way they've done it.
Speaker 4:You mentioned it earlier as well like the kind of whole thing around a game. I've been down to St Mary's recently in Southampton and they do it for both sides of the game, but they built a fan park and they've got their local food trucks and it's the same at Ashton Gate in Bristol City and really bringing the community into the club and you have local businesses providing the food. You don't have just your standard burger and chips or whatever on a match day. People have a choice and therefore it makes them want to bring their friends down, their families down, spend more money in the area, give back to the local community. In terms of local businesses, there's a whole range of stuff that I think because we're normally traditionally bound by contracts, say in stadiums, about what we can provide for entertainment or for fans and actually thinking outside the box a bit and how we bring the local community towards the stadium that was something that they do very well in the NWSL, and we spent a day tailgating with some San Diego fans, which they were given permission to do.
Speaker 3:Obviously, parking is amazing in America we don't really that's always seems to be a problem here but stadiums are built with that in mind and they're given their own space. A local pizza company gave them 30 pizzas every time they did any kind of tailgating. You know we did it in France with the Lyon fans. After the game they brought us out into the car park and they're very different to America. They had wine and baguettes and cheese and, you know, meats. It was lovely, Lit by the car lights, because all the car park lighting had turned off, but they're just like little almost experiments and moments that you can say that's really nice, that works really well. That probably wouldn't work with the audience here and I think the fact that women's football is willing to try these new things is really exciting.
Speaker 2:So the women's game doesn't have to be forever tethered to the men's game. It doesn't have to be an offshoot of the men's game. It's obviously a standalone entity and therefore you can experiment, you can innovate no-transcript. If we came back here 10 years on from now, what would we be talking about? What would the landscape look like in women's football?
Speaker 3:I mean, if we're talking WSL, I'd like to think every team is playing at their main stadium week in, week out, selling a good number of tickets. I mean, arsenal are kind of, as I said, paving the way. I promise we've not been paid to say this, but last year, I think, their average attendance was something like 30 or 40,000. And that was because they had, I think, six games here where every attendance was over 40,000 around that mark, which is incredible. So I'd love to be seeing that for all teams.
Speaker 3:I'd like to see investment going further down the pyramid as well and having promotion relegation all the way through. It'd just be great to see maybe our approach to how we finance things slightly different in the women's game. Again, that's another area we could be a bit more innovative with in terms of grassroots as well, and I think we might see different approaches to investing in clubs. When you look at the NWSL, the way they invest in clubs over there it's totally different to here. They don't have a men's club to rely on. There are other ways of setting up clubs and I'd be really intrigued to see if anyone could make a go of that here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean in 10 years time, I expect it to. If I look back at the last 12 years since we started Gulls and Ball and we were one of maybe 500 in a stadium, if that, and to now when you regularly get you know five, 6,000 in the lower down stadiums and then you know, for a line essence game you pretty much sell out. It's changed so fast in that 10 year period and I can only imagine that it's going to change like that again in the next decade. And I just think more investment. I'd love to see more players on wages where they can really afford to play football, because if you increase the product on the pitch you're going to increase the enjoyment of it from the stands. So that's kind of what I'd like to see.
Speaker 3:And I also think about you know we were at the under-17s World Cup Dominican Republic in October and, seeing the investment FIFA are putting in at that level now, I can only imagine where, in 10 years time, those under 17 players are going to be because of the investment they've received from that level. So that's the other thing I'm really excited about is, yes, investment is coming in now, but how much that's going to influence and impact the game in 10 years time it's kind of hard to imagine.
Speaker 2:Exciting times. Rachel, Sophie, girls on the ball. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Cheers. Thank you very much, cheers, thank you.
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