Exploring how and why male fans follow women’s football

Last month, The Athletic published the findings of our male fans of women’s football survey. Almost 5,000 men responded, but we wanted to know even more, particularly about how their experiences were linked to men’s football.

Women’s football is at an interesting stage in its development. Often financially reliant on their male counterparts, women’s teams can be boosted by their connections to historic men’s clubs even as they forge their own identities. The ‘one club’ model has accelerated the growth of the women’s professional game, but the ultimate aim is for women’s teams to become profitable and identifiable in their own right. They are well on their way to the latter, but the business model is tending to tie them together, for better or worse. One result has been an influx of fans from the men’s game.

Ninety-one per cent of our survey respondents followed men’s football before they began engaging with women’s football, a statistic that begets a lot of questions. Will women’s football remain secondary in their affections? Did they hold any preconceived ideas? That 74 per cent support the same men’s and women’s team suggests the ‘one club, two teams’ model so central to the Women’s Super League’s (WSL) development is doing its job — but what is stopping the other 26 per cent from joining them?

Chris Kavanagh began following Aston Villa’s men’s team in the 1970s. Ageing family meant he was left watching the games on his own and his changing circumstances coincided with the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada. “I wanted to try something different,” he said, and the performances at the tournament impressed him.

He travelled to Coles Lane, the home ground of non-League side Sutton Coldfield Town, to watch Villa Women. “It was just a completely new experience,” he continues. “It was proper grassroots. You could chat with the players after the game and I thought that was amazing. It’s more of a community space compared to what you find in the men’s game.

“I was just so impressed with the commitment and the passion. They were wanting to do it for themselves, for the supporters, for the love of it. I thought, ‘If they can show that level of commitment towards my club and the football itself, then these girls deserve more support’. I’m going to do what I can to support them.”

Manchester City, who helped spearhead the WSL’s early strides into professionalism, set the early bar for that model and Arsenal, now attracting nearly 60,000 spectators to the Emirates for a women’s game, have taken it to another level. They have managed to tap into fans’ existing loyalties — having marketable England players such as Beth Mead and Alessia Russo helps — without compromising the women’s team identity as a unique entity.

“For most men’s fans, Arsenal Ladies used to win everything, come to the last men’s home game of the season with all their trophies, do a lap of honour — then nobody would think about them again for 12 months,” says Tim Stillman, a journalist covering both of Arsenal’s senior teams. “Signing Russo and Declan Rice in the same summer was significant.

“Arsenal included Russo in the Rice announcement, but they don’t use the men’s team to market the women’s games. They don’t get men’s players to tweet about it. They’ve kept the identities separate and had the confidence to market Mead, Russo and Katie McCabe on their own. There is a sense that the whole club is on the rise and trying to get back to former glories.”

Eleven per cent of survey respondents followed women’s football in some way but did not consider themselves supporters of a club or national team, while 42 per cent cared about men’s football more than women’s football. Those shortcomings to the ‘one club, one team’ mentality mean that fandom does not — indeed, often cannot — mirror the traditions of the men’s game.

The stereotype tells us that following a football club is a family affair, support bequeathed as a burden or gift from parent to child. To an extent, our research backed this up — one in 10 respondents got into the women’s game for or with their daughters — but the so-called ‘rules’ have proved a little more flexible.

Jason McKeown has held a season ticket for his local club, Bradford City, for 26 years. Inevitably, his daughters — 10 and six — followed, engrossed initially but less so as results and performances suffered. Those bleaker moments, Jason says, mirrored the occasional drudgery of football fandom that is dissected in Fever Pitch, the seminal football memoir chronicling author Nick Hornby’s relationship with Arsenal.

“He captures the burden of being a football fan,” Jason says. “It isn’t actually much fun most of the time and you go to matches out of habit and obligation rather than to be entertained. That type of football support was not an appealing prospect for my kids, but they liked football still. When I view the Valley Parade matchday experience in Bradford through their young eyes, I can see a greyness and a masculine environment that isn’t necessarily fun.“

The solution was to follow Manchester United Women — most kids support Premier League teams, Jason reasoned, and in his eyes, it would not be fair to pick another Bradford team for them when they had never had a choice in following the men’s one years earlier. He did, though, have reservations. “When women’s football began to become popular a few years back, I was quietly cynical, largely through ignorance,” he says. “I only saw brief clips and projected certain incorrect, negative views. Watching that first Manchester United match in the flesh, I quickly realised I was wrong about the women’s game.”

In March 2021, they visited Old Trafford for United Women’s first match there in front of a crowd. “The kids loved it and it was great to show them the very inspirational sight of women playing football in a huge stadium,” he says. “At Valley Parade, you’re acutely aware that a lot of us haven’t turned up expecting a good time. At WSL games, there’s a strong atmosphere of people wanting to be there, of being excited about the occasion.”

The family have been to Old Trafford for WSL matches twice since, including the Manchester derby, and plan to go to the Etihad Stadium for the reverse fixture this month. His daughters own pink Manchester United scarves. Jason’s affections have not reached that level, nor do they rival the passion for Bradford City that has led to him writing blogs and books about the club. Instead, going to United Women allows him to “watch football without the same level of apprehension and duty” that he has following Bradford.

Gavin Dimmock has found the opposite. Despite following Bradford City for more than 40 years, he grew disillusioned with men’s football. He saw City lose to Millwall in the League One play-off final in 2017, leaving Wembley with the realisation that he just didn’t care like he used to. There were several reasons, he says: family changes, mental health challenges, men’s football’s unrelatable finances and its sense of corruption. He did not even know that England had a women’s football team until he followed the 2015 World Cup — the England captain, Steph Houghton, had started dating her future husband, the then-Bradford City captain Stephen Darby.

Six years on, he received tickets for the Women’s European Championship at Christmas, his family having plotted the route to the final should England top the group. It was, he says, “the best football experience I’ve ever had”, ahead of Bradford’s promotion from the old Wembley in 1996 and their League Cup final in 2013.

“It was just magical — absolutely magical,” Gavin says wistfully of England’s Euro 2022 triumph. On the way home, he heard broadcasters imploring those who had enjoyed the tournament to support the WSL. Manchester City and Manchester United were Gavin’s closest two clubs, with United edging it because of their slightly cheaper season tickets and the pull of England internationals Ella Toone, Russo and Mary Earps.

Ella Toone and Alessia Russo celebrate for Manchester United in 2022 (Ashley Allen via Getty Images)

“I don’t know if one has taken the place of the other or whether the void was there and the women’s game happened to arise,” he muses of his changing relationship with men’s football. “I’d never had a player’s name on the back of my shirt or been to an international England game until I started following the women’s game. I’ve got (Katie) Zelem on the United shirt and (Chloe) Kelly on the England shirt. I’d probably drive two or three hours to go see the Lionesses. I wouldn’t go if the men were playing on the local corner.”

In women’s football, he found an atmosphere that aligned with his “own values”. He had dished out anti-Leeds chants on the terraces in his youth because “it’s just part of what you do”, but now wants to “enjoy our match and chat with people about football”.

Gavin continues: “I want to go there and not feel threatened in any way. At the Euros final, you could see all the young faces, the families, lots of women, gay couples. There wasn’t that antagonism and that underlying sense something could kick off at any moment if somebody said the wrong thing.”

Largely, the women’s game has demonstrated it can maintain this atmosphere at matches without diluting the on-field competitiveness. Gavin recalls Kelly cupping her ear to the Old Trafford crowd during the Manchester derby last year — “I just loved it, even though she was effectively goading me” — but as the women’s game has grown in popularity, not everything has remained so innocuous. The Chelsea manager Emma Hayes said “racial profiling” accounted for much of the abuse directed at Lauren James following a stamp on Arsenal’s Lia Walti in December; West Ham United’s Hawa Cissoko received racist abuse following a red card in October.

More broadly, new audiences have brought with them new perspectives on who the women’s game should serve and what kind of atmospheres it should build. Nikki Doucet, the chief executive of ‘NewCo’ (the company taking over the running of the WSL from the Football Association), for example, drew ire last month when she likened atmospheres at matches to Glastonbury festival.

There is almost always a sociological subtext: the expectation for players to sign autographs after matches is resisted by those who feel it forces players to play up to the stereotype of obliging, compliant women, as well as devaluing the matches themselves when they play second fiddle to nominal meet-and-greets. Criticism of those chants found in men’s football angers fans who feel it patronises female players, while older fans grow frustrated with the perception that WSL matches only have something to offer young families.

“There are debates on the women’s side about which elements of men’s football culture are undesirable,” says Stillman. “The chant Arsenal fans have for Kyra Cooney-Cross includes the lyrics, ‘When she’s on the ball, she’s f****** magical’. It apes the chant for Martin Odegaard in the men’s games, but it opens up the debate about swearing at women’s football, which has traditionally been a more family environment. At Brighton away recently, Lotte Wubben-Moy asked the away fans to ‘tone it down’, in a semi-joking manner, when they chanted, ‘What the f****** hell was that?’ at a wayward Brighton shot on goal.

“As women’s games become more popular, I don’t doubt we will see more of these questions and debates, especially if young men priced out of the men’s game start to see watching the women’s team as an attractive alternative. The majority of spectators at Arsenal Women’s games are still men, but it’s much closer to 50:50 than it is in men’s football.”

Players and fans have tended to mix quite freely after WSL matches (John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

Max Radwan, 25, began watching Arsenal Women 10 years after following the men’s team. His first match was played in front of 500 people and he attended on his own; he felt self-conscious, he says, when he was one of only a handful of fans chanting. That was one of the most jarring aspects of his early experiences in women’s football. “But I was very conscious I was moving into a different environment,” he says. “I was aware that coming from men’s football, I didn’t want to, after a few games, go: ‘This is my experience of being a football fan, so that should be imposed on the women’s game’. It can suit various types of fans.

“You’ve got the families who go for the day out. It’s pretty good to see women’s football as a space where they’re comfortable doing that. You’ve got fans who come over from the men’s game and are more casual fans. That’s the category I was in initially. Then you’ve got the diehards. They were less visible in the earlier games I went to.”

Arsenal fan Max with fellow fans (Lauren Coffman)

Increasingly, the social aspect plays a big role in his enjoyment of women’s football. “The supporters’ clubs will arrange the pub where fans can meet up,” Max says. “It’s a sign of the game’s growth that an Arsenal Women’s game at the Emirates can replicate a men’s matchday experience. It’s perfectly normal for pubs to be packed out after games. You could barely get to the bar after the United Women’s game. It can be family-friendly for those who want it to be, but there’s also something for people like me who want to feel emotionally invested in their team. I’m going to games and sitting with people who aren’t treating it like a day out.”

More than a third of survey respondents became acquainted with the women’s game through major tournaments. Their journeys were similar to Max’s, with a passing interest becoming something more substantial.

For Brighton fan Duncan Price, the unveiling of the Amex as a host stadium for Euro 2022 was the catalyst for his support of Brighton Women. “I thought, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever get the opportunity to attend a World Cup or Euros. This is on my doorstep. It should be a spectacle’,” he recalls.

The tournament also provided an opportunity to introduce his seven-year-old daughter to the sport in a safer way. He had resisted taking her to men’s games knowing “what the atmosphere can be like”.

Then England beat Norway 8-0. “As soon as we came out, she was asking to go again. I wanted to keep going. I didn’t want to pick it up and put it down every time there was a major tournament. It’s developed from me being the only real football fan in the family to where we’re all going, but I’m at the point where if they had something else that they had to go to, I would still want to go.”

Almost 40 per cent of our survey respondents said they cared about men’s and women’s football equally, with only three per cent comparing women’s football negatively to men’s football. Twenty-three per cent did not compare the two at all and 51 per cent acknowledged there were differences between the games but did not think either one was better or worse in any way.

“It’s the same storylines and stuff you get invested in,” Duncan says. “I’m a big fan of (centre-back) Lewis Dunk because he’s from Brighton. I’m invested in him because I can feel something for him. When I see (forward) Katie Robinson regularly and she gets in the England team, I’m super proud.”

Our survey also demonstrated that advocacy, of many kinds, was important to male fans of the women’s game. Ninety-five per cent responded that they cared about social issues and 93 per cent that women’s rights, equality and feminism were important to them.

There was admiration for players who speak out on social issues and an understanding of why engagement with women’s football is an inherently political act, rightly or wrongly. Many discussed feeling a sense of responsibility to raise the profile of the women’s game, in small ways — “If you see a book or film or a song you like, you want to tell people about it and that’s what I want to do the for the women’s game,” Gavin says — and bigger ones. Duncan has since established SheGulls, a Brighton Women blog, to that end.

“I tend to place a lot of my interest in things where I feel like there’s some value in me being there,” Duncan says. “I don’t necessarily feel with the men’s team that me turning up or not is going to make any difference. Getting people to games is the ultimate goal. They would come to see that it’s a worthwhile endeavour in and of itself and not just a side thing to the men’s game.”

Demian Arriaga, a percussionist who runs That Arsenal Women podcast and blog, echoes this view. “Being a feminist and loving the sport go hand in hand,” he adds. “I wanted to be more active and supportive and that’s why I do my podcast and write my blog.

“Their social consciousness and raised voices inspire me, motivate me and drive me to be a better person. I admire these women beyond words and when I read about anything they do regarding a social issue, I’m reminded of how brave they are. They have empathy and are emotionally intelligent. If someone that has those qualities isn’t worth supporting, then who is?”

(Top photo: Paul Harding/Getty Images)