On 20 November last year, Chelsea Women welcomed a club record crowd of 38,350 to a sold-out Stamford Bridge for their 3-0 defeat of Tottenham. Yet that match is an outlier. Because, despite unrivalled success on the pitch in recent years in England, the club is still struggling to fill the main stadium when the women’s team play there. Chelsea built on the 24,564 that watched them play Spurs in 2019, but this year’s game against the same opponents attracted only 14,776. Why is this? Why are the winners of the past four league titles unable to regularly get closing to filling Stamford Bridge and what can they do to hit that target?
Let’s be clear, only one club, Arsenal, is getting this right at the moment and consistently attracting large crowds at its main stadium. Arsenal have also sold out only one game, their Champions League semi-final loss to Wolfsburg last season, at a ground with a capacity about 20,000 larger than Chelsea’s. This is a journey that every club is on, and each is a different distance along the path to regular crowds in excess of 30,000. Chelsea show how difficult the job is, because they demonstrate that being serial winners isn’t enough. Large crowds have to be attracted, built and held on to.
Kerrie Evans, of the Chelsea Women Supporters Group, is keenly interested in how they grow the fanbase at Stamford Bridge. “I think the club have previously just assumed that because you’re winning trophies and are technically the best women’s team that everyone’s going to come flying through the doors, and that’s not the case,” she says. “They need to be more proactive.”
That is easier said than done though: “It’s a proper learning curve and I don’t think there’s a straightforward answer. One of the reasons is, for years, it feels like growing the fanbase was the forgotten part. Because we were doing so well on the pitch, the need to build the fanbase got forgotten. The previous owners or the hierarchy didn’t help, we didn’t play that many games at Stamford Bridge. Women’s football has grown so much since we first played there in 2016.”
It could even be argued that success could possibly prevent the growth of an active fanbase. Why? Because Chelsea win so systematically that there is very little jeopardy around the fixtures. That is added to by the choice of the games played at Stamford Bridge.
Whereas Arsenal have picked games against Chelsea and Manchester United, plus their derby rivals Tottenham, for the Emirates treatment in recent years and have used the pull of those headline fixtures to attract fans, putting emphasis on the importance of the 12th man (or woman) in getting a result, Chelsea have played London derbies against Tottenham and West Ham and, this season, an opener against Tottenham.
Go to Stamford Bridge to watch Chelsea in the Women’s Super League and you will watch them win; go to watch Arsenal at the Emirates and the result is much more likely to be on a knife edge. Watching a routine 3-0, 2-1 or 3-1 win leaves fans pouring out of the ground feeling as if they’ve had a nice day out, but watching a thrilling 2-2 draw, 3-2 win, narrow defeat or a comeback against title rivals and you start to build a bond, an emotional investment.
This season, that will change. On Saturday Chelsea host Liverpool at Stamford Bridge but in January they will host Manchester United at the stadium for the first time before playing Arsenal there in March. This season, for the first time, all Chelsea’s Champions League games will be at Stamford Bridge, starting with Tuesday’s tie against Paris FC.
Evans says: “I’m very interested in what’s going to happen with Arsenal and Manchester United because they’re our bigger games. I don’t think it has helped with the games that they’ve picked previously. Spurs, West Ham and Liverpool are not big fixtures in the women’s game at the moment. I know two are London derbies but you’re not going to see the same competitiveness you do in those fixtures on the men’s side.”
Finding the right price point has been an issue too. Chelsea have experimented with higher prices this season, with tickets for the Tottenham opener ranging between £12 and £50 (the latter causing “an explosion through the fanbase”, says Evans) and packages where fans could buy all five WSL matches ranging from £50-£170. The higher prices may have put off some supporters but in 2019 the club gave away lots of free tickets and had to deal with a large number of no-shows.
Chelsea’s sales strategy on social media stands in stark contrast to Arsenal’s. Where the Gunners announce their sales milestones, with players urging fans to come as each 5,000 tickets are sold, an almost “Your Country Needs You!” type strategy that also builds a relationship between fans and players, Chelsea are quiet about the progress of sales. Announcing milestones is important for building momentum; as sales get higher fans become increasingly fearful of missing out.
The more people you get through the gates, the better the data set you can build of your fanbase and the easier the job becomes of attracting them in greater numbers. It’s a catch-22. You have to play in the bigger stadiums, risk defeats there and lose money with gates not covering costs, in order to reach a point where more fans come, ticket prices can be raised (not prohibitively), money can start to be made and a fortress can be built to aid the play on the pitch. There is no magic bullet, there can be no shortcuts. Clubs need to be creative, experimental and work hard at it, but the rewards could be huge.
