If they demand a ready made elite-level league a la English Premier League or NBA, then they will require substantial subsidies from the men’s leagues and generous broadcasters who wish to signal their virtue (literally what’s happening right now with British broadcasters and the Women’s Super League football). The league will struggle to attract fans who follow the game week to week and they will rely on viewing figures from main events (World Cup, European Cup etc) to bolster TV numbers. Actual in person support, even with vast numbers of match tickets given to schools, is barely enough to fill a single stand and so actual match operations lose money if held in the main venues.

Now, what they could do is invest in grassroots women’s sport, organically grow a fan base and build interest and value. If I were doing it I would select a sport that has either no male equivalent or has a male equivalent but is paid no attention, netball, field hockey, lacrosse or maybe even a sport where men and women compete together like Korfball, which has specific rules to ensure that gender differences are taken into consideration and teams must field both men and women.

The trouble is similar to the every other issue with gender equality, no one wants to wait for changes/efforts to pay off, they want to implement a needed change and see the difference immediately and that’s ridiculous.

At the end of the day, women’s sport as entertainment is always going to run into the issue that men are by far the largest consumer of sport and they are not going to watch their favourite sports played at a lower level by women. They might watch a new sport that isn’t played by men, if it was marketed properly, but if the sport targets women and girls as spectators and fans and ignores anything that might appeal to men, it will need subsidies or it will fold.

I teach, I even taught for years at an all girls school, and I never once got asked by any of the hundreds of girls I’ve taught what football team I support, I don’t even recall a single conversation with the girls about football. With boys that is the first question they ask me, followed by whether or not I play call of duty.