Last Saturday, while out for drinks with my friends, I announced that I was winding down for the night. “Sorry guys,” I said apologetically. “I have to be up in time to go to the football.” It’s a sentence that, if you’d told me two years ago would have come out of my mouth, the only explanation I’d have is that it was a cry for help from some kind of Stepford Wives cult.
In fact, until a couple of years ago, I had never even stepped foot inside a football stadium. My aversion to the sport started off as genuine ignorance — since neither of my parents are from London, we didn’t grow up supporting a local team, and I generally wasn’t exposed to the sport as a child. But increasingly it became a choice — each time I tried to dip my toe in, I found I couldn’t stomach the toxic culture of machismo, racist bigotry and violence that seemed inextricable from the men’s game. (Plus, it did develop into a petty way to rile up patronising men: “no, I have no idea how the offside rule works and I don’t want you to explain it to me, because I do not care”).
That was, until July 2022, when I found myself on my feet in my local pub after Alessia Russo’s spectacular 68th minute back-heel goal which helped the Lionesses sail into the Euro’s final. Suddenly, I felt like football, this national drug that had evaded me for so long, was for me. I finally got it. So when I discovered that I could pop down to the Emirates — a stadium within walking distance from my flat — to see these very players in the flesh, I was hooked.
As the Women’s Super League season starts again this month, the matches at the Emirates are now a mainstay in mine and my friends’ social calendar. Along with, apparently, the rest of north London. While attendance at women’s football matches saw a post Euro-boost across the board, Arsenal WFC has achieved uniquely stratospheric success — of their six league games at the over 60,000-capacity Emirates Stadium last season, average attendance at the matches was 52,029. Incredibly, only seven Premier League teams can boast higher attendance figures. The numbers are 15th-highest of any English side, men or women, and the highest in the WSL by about 20,000.
The Lioness’ triumph at the 2022 Euro’s turbo-charged the Arsenal WFC campaign. While the women first played at the Emirates back in 2007, attendance really took off during the 2022-23 season. Like me, many were attracted to the star power of England players like Leah Williamson and Beth Mead — and now Alessia Russo who signed to the team two summers ago.
There is none of the bravado and unsavouriness that for so long has alienated women from the game
Arsenal was already the trendiest football club in London, with its swathes of stylish young renters in Hackney, Stoke Newington and Finsbury Park populating the stands. In the last three years, Kim Kardashian, Bella Hadid, Little Simz, Justin Bieber, Idris Elba and Daniel Kaluuya are among the star-studded spectators who have been spotted watching matches at the Emirates. But the addition of the WFC success story has only heightened the club’s cultural kudos. Arsenal women’s matches are as much a social event as they are a sporting one. I regularly bump into friends at the matches who, like me, are not “traditional” football fans (read: have little interest in the men’s game). Analysing their stats, Arsenal found that many of the fans are new to the game like myself — 61 per cent of women’s game spectators in 2022-23 had never been to the Emirates, as reported by the Times.
And, crucially, there is none of the bravado and unsavouriness that for so long has alienated women from the game. There is a distinctly family-friendly atmosphere — you’re just as likely to see a group of lads with pints as a young family with hot chocolates and a buggy. Plus, unlike the men’s game, tickets to the women’s matches aren’t prohibitively expensive, ranging from between £12 and £18. So, as well as serving fans of the women’s game, it also attracts more casual fans of the men’s game who don’t want to fork out for upwards of £100 for a spot in the stands.
This season marks the first time that the Emirates will be the women’s team’s main home. It is a remarkable feat, and one which demonstrates that there is an organic and authentic interest in women’s football waiting to be mined. Other women’s teams should take note — if I can be converted, anything is possible.
