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• O n March 30, a record 91,553 fans attended a women’s Champions League match between Barcelona and Real Madrid, at the Nou Camp • There are almost three million registered players in England – it is now the top participation sport for women • Twelve clubs are represented in the Barclays FA WSL – England’s domestic football competition • The bottom-placed club is relegated to the FA Women’s Championship, with the next tier down being FA Women’s National League, divided into Northern and Southern Premier • BBC has live coverage of Euro 2022 in July, while also showing the Women’s FA Cup and a live WSL match each week • Sky Sports have up to 44 live matches per season
football can bring communities together, rather than the normal rhetoric around Manchester City versus Manchester United and blue against red. That’s conflict. COPA90 took a totally different view. It was more about how fans have similarities. And that’s what I really loved – the values of the company. They brought me in and said, “We need you to integrate the women’s game into what we do. Whatever resources you need, we’ll help you.” So, I started working with the strategy team to try to figure out: What’s our proposition? What’s our tone of voice? How do we see the women’s game? And we came up with a cool strategy for how to rebrand women’s football. XTREME: What specific steps did they take to rebrand the game? BEX SMITH: We had to look internally and see how we, as a company, bought into that strategy. It was all well and good putting it out on our platforms, but you need the company to understand and really live by that culture. I started sitting with the different parts of the business, asking how we ensured that we included women’s football, operationally or systemically. What are the KPIs that are relevant, but also not jarring? We had a 91% male, very young fan base when I started – we don’t want to suddenly say everything has to be 50% women’s football.
“IN THE UK, WOMEN’S FOOTBALL WAS BANNED FOR 50 YEARS. THAT BAN WAS ONLY LIFTED IN 1971”
We knew we had an opportunity during the World Cup to make an impact and plant our flag, so we set up clubhouses. There was a physical space in Paris, near the Pompidou, with different activations for the entire month, and the last week we moved it to Lyon, where all the matches were. We had an art exhibition, plus a photography event with Goal Click – a project that sends disposable cameras to players, to document their own stories. Let’s not forget the fashion show, plus a music night with an awesome DJ named Krystal Roxx. She has her own company, Superfoxx, which promotes other female DJs. We had three of the biggest players – Abby Wambach, Ada Hegerberg and Nadia Nadim – and did big content pieces on them.
We screened all the matches, so people who came to the clubhouse could watch every World Cup game. Alongside FIFA, we did their daily women’s football show. There was just this all-the-time buzz. We wanted to create a hub where you don’t have to watch the matches, or like women’s football or say you’re a fan. Just come hang out. We wanted to offer as many excuses as possible to get fans involved, while building a community on the ground. XTREME: How has the uptake of women’s football changed? BEX SMITH: Metrics for the digital space can be quite black and white – what’s your reach? What’s your engagement? We weren’t looking to compare it to men’s football, because you’re not going to get
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