Written by: Alissa Flores
It’s no secret that women’s sports draw fewer viewers than men’s. In the 1950s and 1960s, women’s sports saw advancements in participation at a professional level, but mainly in the Olympics. Then, in 1972, Title IX was signed and implemented. One of its goals was to grant women the ability to participate with equal opportunity in sports at educational institutions and facilities.
However, women’s prominence in competitive sports only started to become popular in recent years, starting in the 1990s. The ability to play freely and enjoy sports at a professional level was a big step for women and will forever be appreciated by future generations of female athletes.
A recent report from Statista stated that tennis, volleyball, soccer and basketball are the top sports that women around the world play today. When looking at all four sports, the nature of tennis and volleyball seem a little bit more conducive to women, thus explaining why women don’t have to fight men on the popularity platform in these sports.
A recent data report by Data Skrive stated that within the last seven years, women’s tennis had higher viewership than men’s tennis in the United States. Additionally, volleyball’s player demographic is dominated by women. According to Zippia, 78.1% of volleyball players are women.
While these sports are dominated by women, they still lie very low on the sports viewing scale overall. At the top of the list of popular women’s sports lies women’s soccer, and while viewership has risen, it still does not compete with the fanaticism that follows the men’s version of the sport. Statistically speaking, women’s soccer will never be as popular as men’s soccer. This begs the question, “Why not?”
Soccer, the world’s favorite sport, has a following of over 4 billion fans worldwide. Men’s viewership for the 2022 World Cup averaged at 1.5 billion viewers, whereas the women’s World Cup viewership average reached only 260 million.
A lot of factors go into why the viewership of women’s soccer just cannot keep up with men’s soccer. (We’re talking at an international level, because that’s the most popular version of women’s soccer at the moment.)
Soccer is a very physical and high-intensity sport. It requires speed, agility and strength, and while women have these attributes, men have them at a different level. Soccer, at its highest level, is fast-paced, and even in men’s soccer, different leagues have different-paced games. American soccer, in the MLS leagues, is a considerably slower-paced game than in Europe and is often less viewed, because the competition in Europe is just more entertaining.
This slower paced game can apply to women’s soccer, as well. Of course, there are many women with amazing skills who excel in the sport, but their pace and physicality differ largely from that of men. Soccer is competitive, and those who watch and play it want to watch the best version of it they can, and that has always been men’s soccer.
Women’s bodies are biologically built differently than men’s. Men have the ability to be more aggressive and move faster than women, making the game more interesting. That doesn’t mean that women shouldn’t play the sport, but it does mean that speed is an undeniable factor that adds to the popularity of men’s soccer.
Instead of accepting this, many women’s teams have taken it upon themselves to get involved in activism instead of focusing on their love for the game. Women’s soccer players, especially the women’s world reigning champs, the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT), have appeared in the tabloids quite often over the last few years after expressing their opinions on matters of pay, LGBTQ+ and the unfairness of gender roles in sports. While their motives may have been good, their activism seemed to take away from the sport itself.
“The USWNT members seemed to get caught up in using their platform to promote their opinions rather than the sport they were playing.”
When you are a professional athlete, it’s important to carefully analyze how you portray yourself and your team. The USWNT members seemed to get caught up in using their platform to promote their own opinions rather than the sport they were playing. Instead of reporting about the games and players’ skills, news cycles would circulate the social issues the USWNT would support.
For example, in 2018, during Pride Month, the USWNT decided to switch the American flag on their jerseys for a Pride flag. This spiked controversy, because it seemed like the team was representing a group rather than the country. There was good and bad press over this, yet was it necessary at all? The team had already made it clear what they supported.
Decisions like these caused them to be considered less as an official soccer team and seen more as activists. It took away from the game itself. To a certain degree, it is important to push for causes, but it should not take away from the game itself, and in my opinion, I believe it has.
As sports fans, we should look at a team and a sport and see its history, its culture and its beauty. Women have achieved so much in sports since Title IX. They play professionally, they get recognition and they get paid — maybe not as much as men, but that is solely because men’s soccer generates more revenue as a whole. Yet, instead of the positives, like the fact that women play freely as they please, issues just keep arising. This is not seen on the men’s side of sports as often. Sure, sometimes it comes out that a team supports a certain cause, but that is not their identity. If women’s soccer had a little bit more of that mentality, perhaps viewership would grow.
I don’t think women’s soccer will ever be as popular as men’s. It’s nothing against gender; this is solely based on the fact that men’s soccer is more interesting and involving and is oftentimes very focused on the love of the game rather than the love of activism.
With soccer being the most popular women’s sport in the world, there is so much power in that role to enhance the image of the game and also other issues that are less political.
Women should be proud of how far they have come and understand that big steps have been made to get them this far. In turn, it’s up to them to show their love of the game on a larger scale.
