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Sophie Lawson reacts to Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Chelsea to win the Conti Cup crown for the year in a row (1:47).
LONDON – Emily Fox got goosebumps. Arsenal faced Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium on December 10, 2023, and the American defender among the 59,042 people in the stands. It was a record crowd for a Women’s Super League (WSL) and it was the second time this season that Arsenal had set a new benchmark in terms of attendance. Two months later, they broke the record again, this time against Manchester United with 60,160.
“Going into that game, I didn’t know what to expect,” Fox, who signed with the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage Gunners a month later, told ESPN. “When I was there and saw the exhausted crowd, other people were chanting the players’ names, like in men’s football, it was exactly the same. And not only the crowd, the atmosphere, the taste of football, it was incredible.
“When I made the decision to come here, I got goosebumps and got excited not only for Arsenal and this club, but also for women’s football and its growth. I’m thinking specifically about Arsenal [what excites me is what they’ve done. “to grow the game, attract enthusiasts and create a network for women’s football at Arsenal.
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Fox is rarely the only one drawn to what’s happening in this part of north London. Defender Laia Codina, a 2023 World Cup winner with Spain and a summer signing from Barcelona, said the atmosphere in the Emirates is unlike anything she had experienced before. .
Arsenal Women split their home games between the 4,500-seat Meadow Park, which they share with the Boreham Wood National League, and the 60,704-seat Emirates. This season, they’ve played six WSL matches at the men’s home – the most they’ve controlled at this venue in a single season – and have averaged 52,029 spectators, which would put them in eighth place in the men’s club championship. In fact, the six highest-attended matches in the WSL have been Arsenal’s home games.
Women’s football in England has seen a remarkable surge in popularity since the national team’s triumph at Euro 2022 and no club has taken advantage of that wave of popularity on the scale that Arsenal has.
Founded in 1987, Arsenal is one of the classic powerhouses of women’s football. They have won the most trophies of any women’s team in Europe and have the difference of being the only English team to have won the Champions League. The Gunners’ greatest achievement came in the 2006-07 season, where they won an unprecedented quadruple and remained unbeaten throughout the campaign. However, this remarkable rate of good luck has declined in recent years, as Chelsea and Manchester City have used their vast resources to overcome them, with the Gunners winning just two silver titles in the last five years.
The increase didn’t happen overnight; It’s been a process and it’s taken years of behind-the-scenes work to get to this position. The record attendance is only part of the result as they attempt to reshape the narrative of women’s football in the country.
“The one-club mentality. ” It’s a word club officials have referred to several times when ESPN asked about the rise of the women’s team in recent years. But it’s also a philosophy.
The club makes no difference in how it manages its men’s, women’s or educational teams. It starts from the top, with sporting director Edu Gaspar taking full responsibility for everything. In fact, sources told ESPN that Edu has played a key role in helping them reach the percentage. Wisdom in and out of the box between teams.
Each internal branch (adding marketing, sales, and communications) serves both male and female teams. During the 2020-21 season, sections of the fan base complained about the team and questioned whether the mentality of a single club was just a slogan. It’s time for Arsenal’s consecutive trophyless campaign: they finished third in the WSL, lost the FA Cup final 3-0 to Chelsea and were eliminated in the organising phase of the League Cup.
The club conducted a review that allowed it to get feedback from players and coaches, as well as internal and external experts. This triggered a multitude of adjustments that saw the sports science and medicine departments particularly strengthened, as well as an increase in operational staff. .
An Arsenal source admitted that while it’s tricky to describe what the mentality of a single club is like in a practical sense, it’s not having walls. The opening of the club is one of Gemma Avery’s lasting memories. She had the daunting task of replacing Arsenal legend Faye White in 2016; White was head of marketing after retiring and Avery was hired to take over her position when she went on maternity leave.
“I never knocked on a door and we didn’t answer,” Avery said. “I think there will be those first conversations. It wasn’t like there was an assembly and things happened right away, but actually everyone in the club believed in that one-club mentality.
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“Maybe we just needed to replace the processes. And there was never a ‘no’. I’ve never had a ‘no’ all the time. It’s rather, “Okay, we may need to take a few small steps before we take a look at this one. “
The 2017 Spring Series, an exclusive summer festival between WSL seasons, exemplifies Arsenal’s goal of doing well for their women’s team from the start. Engage the rest of the Boreham Wood crowd in a concentration domain for Avery and ahead of the opening match against Notts County. She hosted a fun day with family at Meadow Park, where they would meet and greet the players off the field. But two days before the game, Notts County disbanded its women’s team due to money issues.
The simplest option would have been to cancel the event, but the club kept it and made it an open educational session. Avery remembers Arsenal captain Kim Little and England foreigner Jordan Nobbs, both injured at the time, limping and assembling. young people at the event. ” I think there are other people who have been around for so long [and they] have championed this painting that through 1% here, 1% there, is built over time,” he said.
Whether it was engaging in a verbal exchange with the visitor relations team, ensuring the internal politics of the games, or implementing feedback systems for enthusiasts attending the games, Avery laid the first bricks of a design that would be a monolith.
“One thing I would say is that [the women’s team] has been at the center of the football club,” Avery said. “You just want other people to be ambitious enough to go ahead and make decisions that other WSL clubs could make. “I hadn’t been doing it at the time. “
The crowds that Arsenal have attracted in recent years, especially in the Emirates, have been the biggest visual detail of their success. The most surprising aspect of all of this has been how temporary it has been scaled.
In the 2021-22 season, Arsenal recorded an average attendance of 8,652 at 4 WSL matches in the Emirates. In 2022-23, that number rose to 47,000 in 3 WSL games before reaching 52,029 in six games for this year’s campaign. This season, every home game at Meadow Park sold out, and the average attendance at either venue was double that of last year.
England’s Lionesses’ good luck has certainly seen their numbers skyrocket, but Arsenal’s director of publicity, Juliet Slot, has also had a hand in it. In the past he held the same position at Royal Ascot, one of the most prestigious events for the British horse. Racing calendar, and the occasion attracts up to 300,000 enthusiasts over five days. Slot implemented the ticketing data for an event of this magnitude at Arsenal. The club has brought a three-tier ticketing formula: early registration, early registration, and same-day. which is rare in football but is not an unusual practice in horse racing.
The ticket pricing policy has been supplemented by data-driven data on audience demographics. Families and young adults make up a significant contingent of fitness enthusiasts and last season, 61% of those who attended an event had never obtained a price ticket to the Emirates. Arsenal have had to adapt the Emirates to meet the wishes of their new fans. In some cases, literally. They learned that on the days when the women at Arsenal were in shape, hot dogs would temporarily sell out while there was a surplus of alcohol. Many enthusiasts would show up on the pitch not realizing they had to buy price tickets for their babies, so the club booked insurance. Proportion of price tickets that can only be obtained on the children’s site. The design of Arsenal’s megastore is being reworked on good weather days, with accessories and merchandise featuring the club’s mascot, Gunnersaurus Rex, appearing more prominently.
The proportion of players aged 25-34 attending matches is higher in women’s matches (34%) than in men’s matches (27%). Last season, 51% of the public under the age of 35. The launch of a personalised women’s team jersey, designed in collaboration with Stella McCartney and Adidas, has only bolstered its appeal to a younger crowd and the sold-out hospitality boxes in front of Manchester United in February further illustrate the team’s growing appeal more broadly.
“It’s something that happened very quickly,” says Tim Stillman, a journalist with Arseblog. “Already at the beginning of this season, the [hotel] boxes were partially empty while they are full. It’s like a position to see.
“This [hospitality] is not an area that women’s football has had to sell before. It just never happened. You’ve never had to. Most of the fields they play on don’t have executive boxes, so promoting hospitality has been a necessity. Before, Arsenal [who did it for the Manchester United game] shows that other people see them as a premium event. “
The prospect of six more sold-out matches in a season has made it commercially viable for Arsenal to host the women’s tournament in the Emirates.
“One of the things that’s underestimated in all of this is that the benefits [in women’s football] are still very small,” Stillman adds. “So, it doesn’t make a big difference like qualifying for the Champions League, winning the league and”
“It may seem unusual for Arsenal’s advertising director to advertise tickets for a match we are not going to be involved in,” Slot wrote on LinkedIn a week before Chelsea hosts Barcelona in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final. He said an emerging tide lifts all boats. After another season of progression, it’s imperative that we continue to create the most productive situations for the game to expand and succeed. “
Slot’s mentality of championing women’s football is seeping into the club, with sources telling ESPN they would welcome another team breaking their WSL attendance record. To that end, the north London side have been outspoken in sharing their ticketing methods with other clubs.
A source told ESPN that while much of the painting around the women’s team was born in the past out of a sense of community, it’s now a transparent precedent within the organization. Accelerating women’s football is one of Arsenal’s six key strategic pillars.
Arsenal women share the London Colney Education Complex with the men’s team. They have a separate building, while the gym is a community facility. The women’s team plays in a box adjacent to the men’s team and training takes place at the same time. A source Those interested in transfers at the club discussed how the educational services inspired agents and players on their visits, and how this has been significant in attracting talent.
“We have the resources and the opportunities to grow the game and that’s important,” the Arsenal defender Fox told ESPN. “You have to spend money to make money, as we all know, and Arsenal are in a position to do that and take the credit. “of the expansion and excitement of women’s football”.
Fox was one of six newcomers to Arsenal this season, along with Codina, Alessia Russo, Cloé Lacasse, Amanda Ilestedt and Kyra Cooney-Cross. After all, the Gunners made a record offer of around £500,000 to sign Russo in January. pointing him out about a sluggish move from Manchester United this summer. To secure Cooney-Cross’s services, Arsenal broke their record for moves and paid Hammarby a reported payment of £140,000, amounting to £250,000 with potential additions.
The expenses have yet to translate into effects, as Arsenal were knocked out of the Champions League’s first qualifying round via Paris FC and although they won the Conti Cup against Chelsea, they fell into the name race and stayed with Chelsea. Manchester City. The Gunners have not won the WSL since 2019; They have amassed 60 trophies in their history but have only won two in the last five years.
“Arsenal will have to have star players in their squad because that’s the culture, it’s run by the players,” Stillman said. “So if they have England captain [Leah Williamson], Alessia Russo, Beth Mead and [Vivienne] Miedema, and players like that, it means they’re going to do well. In any case, also on the court.
“So, while remaining too complacent, I don’t foresee [a drop in popularity] coming to Arsenal. But it’s a complicated time. So it’s ironic that this is all going down right now. Look at Chelsea, who are currently an incredible success in women’s football and don’t attract as many numbers. “
The only thing Chelsea have managed to get are trophies. Under the leadership of Emma Hayes, the west London club have won the last 4 WSL titles, but are unlikely to regain them this year. Since joining Chelsea in 2012, Hayes has won thirteen first trophies and led the club to the Champions League final in 2021, but at the end of the season, he left to take control of the USWNT.
“I think it’s unlikely that anyone will absolutely dominate [like Chelsea], but I think Arsenal deserve to take a look at the next few years: ‘OK, Chelsea are in another cycle, they’re trying to win the league, they’re trying to win. ‘””Arsenal are going to have huge monetary merit above everyone because they’re promoting all those tickets, which now has to translate into good luck on the pitch,” Stillman said.
“So it’s not just about Arsenal being hyped up and the Emirates being sold. That has to mean that they can now sign the most productive players and offer them the most productive contracts and everything in between. It has to be a virtuous circle. “
Arsenal’s women’s team is traditionally England’s most successful team and, fuelled by a slew of difficult jobs behind the scenes, also looks set to take control of the future. Having 60,000 fans fill a stadium to watch your team is worth its weight in gold. , but translating that momentum into trophies will mean more than any record for enthusiasts.