Did you know Spain won the Women's Soccer World Cup? ...me neither.
Besides being a trustable source of bloopers, the women’s World Cup is an opportunity wasted. However, it would be foolish to say there is no real potential in women’s soccer. Nonetheless, achieving better performances will require the ceasing of comparisons with its men’s version.
Men and women are not physically and mentally the same. The media’s efforts to turn their differences into a Hegelian discussion have played terribly wrong for women’s soccer and female sports in general. Men shine at sports events because of their speed and strength, while audiences demand excellence in team performance. While trying to achieve the same level and accuracy, women’s soccer merely reaches inflated quotas of sympathy and dissatisfaction.
The Insult
Playing sports is about forgetting your daily struggles to reconnect physically and mentally. Every time a blue-collar worker watches sports, he expects to be entertained. Is there any other reason to spend time in front of a TV for more than an hour watching people struggling to catch a ball?
Unfortunately, this idea seemed too distraught to most US women’s soccer team members, who unwaveringly remained as quiet as lizards waiting for birds to pick into their jaws.
Perhaps the US team has refused to play for the Americans. Instead, they have chosen to be an ideologized team, meaning they are no longer qualified to belong to a national selection of players. Insulting the audience by refusing to sing their own anthem indicates that their politics are more valuable than the ‘sportswomenship’ mission they have been trusted to hold.
The Tennis and Volleyball Approach.
Let’s ask ourselves. Why other women’s sports are more successful? Let me guess… Perhaps because they embrace their femininity unapologetically.
Why women’s tennis is so successful? This is a question you can find in several forums and Reddit rooms. I will give you an answer: Because female tennis is not competing in strength, speed, and agility. But in beauty, grace, and style.
Sports are not just playing nice but also entertaining the masses.
How to Catch Interest?
There is a natural inclination to watch opposing forces struggling to win a prize. To win and the struggle to win, to be more precise. Organizers must exploit this interest by focusing on what women’s players bring to these events. You just must look at the most popular players in the US soccer team to notice they are not famous for their skill but for their looks, antics, and attitude.
Rapinoe is a good example of how not to play soccer for the masses. She has been the wrong card to draw at the table to represent women’s sports as something worth watching. Women’s soccer has many opportunities to be commercially attractive and mass-gathering. Still, it will require a reinvention to attract more audiences.
We are not talking about showing more skin or making more noise, but we are not condemning those ideas. There are examples in the history of sports that have brought the proper attention to the masses, like tennis tournaments, volleyball, and athletic disciplines.
Other Women's Sports
The effort to become an equal-to-men sport is going nowhere, and it is starting to stagnate audiences due to its repetitive diatribes against men and the people who choose to watch their sports instead of theirs.
Women’s soccer is still in its early stages, and more experiments need to be done to create and build magic around that sport.
Again, the example of tennis, ice skating, athletics, and martial arts (with their own differences) can enlighten minds on attracting more audiences without making them dull. Contrary to many feminists who believe there is an agreement between men to reject women’s sports, men want to see more women delivering good entertainment.
During the last five years, there has been a solid movement to turn women’s sports, mainly soccer and basketball, into more mainstream, commercially attractive events. However, whining about not being taken as seriously as the men’s tournaments will not help their cause.
I am sorry for being this hard, but if they want to become mass-attractive, they must tune in accordingly. If not, they can keep playing third-class soccer, which even teenagers can beat without struggle. Look at male boxing, for example. Do you think the press conferences and previous face-offs between fighters are performed just because? These are done to attract audiences and attract more viewers. Similarly, you need to adapt to your environment, perhaps by creating clubs that engage with people and their communities differently.
Watching a game for 90 minutes plus extra time or penalties requires a strong will. Soccer can become extremely dull if there is no action between the teams. I wonder if reducing the field’s size or using a ball designed not to go so fast might improve attention and increase the chances of annotating a goal. Still, again, that depends on how they want to manage this sport.
Indeed, teams need sponsorships and promotional deals, but this occurs in combination with the participation of sports stars in the field. Focusing attention on their stars is also an interesting point to consider.
Allergic to scrutiny and criticism
Anybody who follows men’s soccer knows that not scoring goals will hurt the current season and increase the fans’ animosity against the team. Women in soccer need to understand that if they want to play at the same level as men, there will be fans who will take losing seriously; therefore, their criticism might burn, if not scorch, sensitivities. Watch European or Latin American soccer to see how easy it is to lose patience when your team sucks.
Give it a try. Let the comparison aside and start playing for real; you might be surprised by the result.
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