Media coverage

[Patrick Thistle]

Mrs Thistle texted me on Friday to say that the window of William Hill was full of odds for the WWC. She commented that 'I suppose it's progress but it doesn't feel like it.'

[Hot Pepsi]

I kinda feel like that about women’s sports in general. We tend to focus on the positives - how it promotes gender equality across society and sets good examples for kids. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

But now women are involved in all the stuff we don’t like about pro sports and, in many cases, pro athletes. Female athletes and coaches aren’t inherently better people just because they’re female and their sport isn’t inherently more “pure.”


Do retail betting shops have a future or will they be replaced by online betting? Can’t one just bet from one’s mobile device? What’s the appeal of going into the actual shop?

[Felicity, I guess so]

Well the “crack cocaine” roulette machines aren’t online

[Hot Pepsi]

Oh, they have those in there? I thought those were just in bars.

[Felicity, I guess so]

I’m personally regretting the absence of any nightly highlights programme. The bbc commitment to live games might be admirable but not easy to catch up on games you missed- the online highlights are “here’s how they won” so no suspense and you miss any sense of the atmosphere or culture of the tournament

[Patrick Thistle]

Yes I'm very disappointed at the lack of highlights. There were three games on Saturday and no highlights programme.

At the risk of triggering the klaxon, imagine that at a men's world cup.

[Etienne]

I saw a full betting shop window display about the Cup in Leeds yesterday. I think it is progress. Our attempts to get our nearly 4 year old daughter to watch England vs Scotland were resolutely unsuccessful, as have been all preceding attempts to get her to watch sport, live or televised.

[ursus arctos]

FIFA are posting match highlights on YouTube

So are Fox (US), but I find their commentary to often be annoying in the extreme.

[Janik]

Oh, they have those in there? I thought those were just in bars.

The shops had moreorless become spaces for those, up until a new law this year reduced the maximum stake from £100 to £2. The Industry was up in arms about the impact this would have, saying many shops would close because the roulette machines had replaced income lost to online sports betting. I'm not sure the people they were trying to convince were particularly bothered about that potential outcome, though. Or completely convinced that the machines were not just another nice lucrative income stream that the firms didn't want to give up despite the human cost they created.

Also, along with a tendency for staff cuts that reduced many shops to just one employee (which was only possible due to the change in what the staff were needed for), the FOBT's were considered potentially responsible for a rise in violence against employees. The link to the new law wasn't directly made because that would be, you know, admitting liability, but horrifying articles such as this one from three years ago surely played their part in the change.

[laverte]

Responding to the conversation before last, as usual, i want to add my Preach! to Janik's post upthread. For women's football to expand (in other words, for the best women to be able to earn a living playing football, just as men can), it needs supporters; and although much of the top-down marketing is aimed at young girls, the most promising audience is people who already enjoy watching football; and that, for the most part, is adult men.

i'm sorry that Furtho (and perhaps others of you) has been made to feel ashamed for wanting to watch women play sport. Of course, watching women do anything at all is inherently suspect because women aren't supposed to do. We're meant to be pictures: nicely curated, and still. By running or kicking or falling over, it becomes impossible to ignore our bodies, and it follows that those bodies must be the focus of interest for a paying audience. After all, that is the case in our natural arena, the strip joint.

Anyone who calls you a perv for wanting to watch women doing an activity is enforcing the idea that the only possible dynamic between active women and male/lesbian spectators is the one that exists in a sex club. The Iranian regime and Mike Pence would approve. Unfortunately there are plenty of men (and some women) who hang around girls' and women's sport because they enjoy and wish to enforce precisely this dynamic. You'll know if you're one of them. Stay away if you are. You are not welcome.

It's comforting that Reed and others are aware that (gender) politics don't vanish at the door of a stadium, but there's no need for that awareness to prevent you from supporting women's sport. When you say you're worried about what people will think, i wonder, which people do you have in mind? Remember:

- most coaches, trainers, scouts, referees and club officials are men, and women athletes are used to performing in front of them;

- as documented in the series called 'Dads and daughters' being broadcast by Women in Sport at the moment, many girls learn to love football via their dads and brothers, who will become their biggest cheerleaders;

- about two-thirds of spectators in the top tiers of European women's football are men;

- women's football is quite popular among groundhoppers, not a few of whom seem to be middle-aged men;

- with so many games being broadcast on tv and made available on sicial media, the risks of picking up a dodgy 'admirer' or enduring abuse from misogynists are mostly online now;

- the women you're paying to watch will have been told they are men or dykes more times than you can imagine, and it has not deterred them from playing;

- in comparison, it's likely that they'd prefer to be "loved" by someone old enough to be their dad for the way they play / look / comport themselves on the pitch;

- as Janik said, it's often assumed that the main reason why women watch men's football is to get a glimpse of a rapist's torso or a different rapist's bulging thighs. Although this isn't true, there's no shame in remembering nothing about a humdrum PSG walkover except the precise gradation of Neymar's quad muscles. The problem is in assuming that a) anyone else who watched the match wants to know how i feel about Neymar's thighs or b) Neymar himself wants to know how i feel about his thighs. (When i say 'how i feel', i mean of course 'how a person might conceivably feel'.)

Above all, if you attend women's football often enough, you'll start to absorb the thing that is most enjoyable about football - getting to know the players and their styles of play, their abilities and limits, and the formations and tactics which may or may not make the most of them. This emotional connection means that there will be players you love, as well as some you love to hate. For the moment, the feelings of hate and frustration are still thoroughly repressed in the spectatorship of women's football (except wrt referees), where the overriding sentiment is one of encouragement and constructive criticism, and where opponents' goals are still routinely applauded. Yes, there's less 'atmosphere', but i regard that as positive. (At the last men's match i attended, it took less than 10 minutes for the word 'faggot' to be heard, while some drunk twats beside me decided it would be hilarious to light up a few times. The play was shit, too.) It also means there's less to talk about, or less leeway to start a conversation, since a good chunk of the chat about men's football seems to be "[Player X] is rubbish." "No, he's a legend." Etc. i spend a lot of time discussing the players' haircuts, which are a consistent source of fabulousness and also bemusement.

In terms of media coverage, no sport compares to men's football. If anything, the fairest way to gauge the health of women's club football would be to compare it with men's county cricket, rugby league, European basketball. All of those seem to be spluttering on in the long shadow of good old 'footie'. The ideal outcome for everyone would be for fans to halve their consumption of top-level men's football and its attendant media circus, and go and do something less boring instead, which may even include watching women's sport. But for now millions of people continue to tune in to watch PSG roll over some less wealthy opponent for reasons other than microscopic appreciation of Neymar's thighs. This i will never understand.

[Patrick Thistle]

Thank you laverte. That's a really helpful post.

At the Wales v NZ game there were some family members of one of the Wales subs who cheered very raucously when she came on the field. Age-wise they seemed to be dad, uncle and either brother / boyfriend There was also a woman I guessed at being mum and another girl who could have been sister / girlfriend. At the final whistle they were yelling and waving to get the player's attention as she came over to the spectators, like so many other players, to talk to her "cheerleaders". There were lots of proud hugs and kisses from people who were probably dads for the players, perhaps more so than if they had been boys (although maybe then mums would have been hugging and kissing, I'm not sure).

You can probably tell from my posts on this thread that I am a convert. There was a joy in attending that game that I haven't felt for a long time.

[Patrick Thistle]

One thing I've noticed is that when you have an all-female pundit line-up (as per last night), the pundits all tend to answer the host's questions, they all talk quite quickly (which makes them sound intelligent because they probably are intelligent) and they are much less annoying. I've enjoyed episodes of MOTD2 with Alex Scott on as a pundit simply because it's nice to hear someone who sounds intelligent talking intelligently about football.

[Hot Pepsi]

It's comforting that Reed and others are aware that (gender) politics don't vanish at the door of a stadium, but there's no need for that awareness to prevent you from supporting women's sport. When you say you're worried about what people will think, i wonder, which people do you have in mind?

The kind of people that say "won't somebody please think of the children." I suppose their opinion shouldn't matter, though.

I'm certainly not going to support any women's sport just to make a political point. I'd rather send whatever I would have spent on a ticket to some charity that helps girls education in developing countries or something like that. I have a hard time caring too much about the livelihoods of professional athletes of any kind. Their job is to be entertaining and sell advertising. I feel no obligation to give them money if it's not good value.

But of course, it often is good value. I used to go to a lot of Penn State women's soccer games. Admission (for now) is free, and they're a bit more fun than the men's team's games because there are usually a lot more goals and the home team is usually the side scoring them. I don't like the liberal substitution rules of college soccer, but its not a deal breaker.

I also used to go to a lot of women's volleyball, women's ice hockey, and some other college sports around here but I don't go to any sports, men's or women's, very often any more. I rarely have anyone to go with and I find that I'd rather be at home or out and about with my dog than sit alone to watch other people play a game, especially if it costs money to watch.

Watching a game alone in a crowd feels very lonely these days and as I get older, I find myself thinking that intently watching a bunch of "kids" play a game and getting worked up about how they're performing is not a good use of an adult's time. I recognize that this message board wouldn't exist if everyone had that attitude, but it's something I've been thinking about.

Perhaps that's why I have been enjoying the cricket. Because I don't actually care who wins or have any long-standing emotional investment in it. It's just interesting to follow now and again. And most of the fans and players seem to have a pretty mature view of it too. I haven't heard of any cricket hooliganism. Yet.

Speaking of cricket, I can't see how women's cricket is any less interesting than men's cricket, so I hope I can follow the women's world cup too. Perhaps, like a lot of women's sports, it's still not quite as competitive as the men's version, so maybe that makes more of the matches less compelling. Same with rugby. But hopefully that will change over time.

[Janik]

Well, the games are exciting, but like Football some aspects are undoubtedly different with the Women's game less explosively powerful. The pitch is the same length and the stumps the same height, but physiology means that the fastest female bowlers cannot deliver the ball at the same speed as their male equivalents. Male fast bowlers will send the ball down regularly at 85mph-plus, with the lightening quicks (Shoaib Akhtar, Brett Lee, Shaun Tait) touching 100mph. The fastest women's bowlers speeds are in the 70-75mph range with the player regarded as the quickest ever (Cathryn Fitzpatrick of Australia) pushing towards 80mph. I don't think she was on the speed gun much when she played around the millennium, so whether she ever broke that goes unrecorded. In Men's terms, even Fitzpatrick is struggling to be into the medium-fast category let alone genuinely fast, and her contemporaries are all medium pace.
The same issues with more limited muscle mass and also less tall individuals on average applies to batting, with women tending to opt for a slightly shorter, slightly lighter bat than men. That allows them to maneuver it as fast which is important as quick hands are needed to adjust to variations of bounce, but means the momentum of the thing is reduced. It also means the bat isn't as strong, which is balanced by the reduce momentum of the incoming ball both from it's lower speed and that that ball is slightly smaller and slightly lighter for the women's game (~95% of male size). However all of this adds up to the ball coming both on to and off the bat with notably less momentum, resulting in women's shots not traveling as far for identically well performed technique and timing. Again, a compensation is used with boundary ropes for a Women's game noticeable closer to the wicket than they would be for the Men. This also puts less exposure on the throwing which, though again generally as technically as perfect as male players is also affected by the lower body mass/arm strength issues. The lighter ball does up the relative exit velocity from the hand, but will be at a momentum cost.
Whether any of this adds up to 'less interesting' or 'not as good' rather than just 'not identical' is down as much to the political leanings of the observer as anything. And one thing for certain, they are all much better than I am.

The sport where I struggle to discern any worthwhile differences is golf. We know statistically that female players drive the ball on average less far than male players. However, we also know that their accuracy is higher both off the tee and from the fairway (the LPGA leader will generally be well ahead of her male equivalent of fairways hit and greens in regulation). Once around the green things tend to equalise, with Men scrambling and putting a little but not massively significantly more efficiently. And overall the scoring is about the same. So the difference is the power of the tee shot. However, if you don't know the course, I want to know how someone watching on TV could possibly judge the difference between a 300 and a 350 yard drive. Do they look different at all?

[Hot Pepsi]

That’s good information. I didn’t realize the ball was smaller or that the boundaries were shorter, but that would seem to balance it out.

Those same issues affect women’s baseball. I’ve never really seen women’s baseball. There isn’t much of it. The growth of fastpitch softball has largely prevented women’s baseball from becoming a thing.

[Uncle Ethan]

Media coverage in Australia has been extensive. Australia's games are on SBS as well as via Optus and the ratings were excellent on Sunday (though the result wasn't).

In part this interest has been prompted by the controversial removal of former coach Alen Stajcic and the subsequent mess the FFA have made of handling the issue. Support for the team has grown significantly over recent years and many feel the FFA therefore felt obliged to to stuff the situation up for the sake of consistency with its mishandling of the game in general.

One thing the FFA did right is create a marquee payment to enable superstar player Sam Kerr to stay in Australia.

I'm told she was offered a very significant (for the women's game, given inequality as it stands) six figure sum by PSG to move on this season. That has been matched and a little bit more by the FFA and Kerr is expected to stay with Perth Glory. This is good news. I get to do the occasional TV commentary on the W-League and players like Kerr make it exciting and enjoyable.

[CY_Boaby]

As a bloke in my 40s, I've had no problem heading along to see Perth Glory Women on my own a few times this season. I managed to get my son along to a game one Saturday evening, but when he's not wanted to go I've certainly not let that hold me back. I must admit, I'd be utterly flabbergasted if someone in the ground called me a perv just because I'm watching a game of women's football on my own.

As Uncle Ethan has said, Sam Kerr is a big draw and the fact she's chosen to remain at Glory when she could easily have gone elsewhere certainly makes going worthwhile. Her partnership up front with Rachel Hill was fantastic and with the games being played in the summer, getting out of the house, watching entertaining football and being able to purchase full-strength beer from the the clubhouse, all made for an enjoyable experience.

[San Bernardhinault]

Is it deliberate satire on Fox's part that they're hosting their coverage from "Cafe de L'Homme"?

[ursus arctos]

You silly boy

It is called that because it is part of the Musee de l'Homme, but any broadcaster with the slightest bit of awareness would have re-branded it for this tournament.

But this is Fox

[San Bernardhinault]

You're saying that Fox aren't bright enough to try and make a snide sexist point?

[ursus arctos]

They also cannot recognize the validity of other languages

[Nesta]

Going to take a stab in the dark that the fox tv coverage is a little insufferable right now

[Janik]

One thing that is frustrating me at the moment is over-praise of saves. Obviously this is somewhat in response to previous criticism of female 'keepers, and Pearce is a very unreliable narrator, but the save Chile's Christiane Endler made from Christen Press yesterday was "One of the best saves at any Women's World Cup ever" apparently. Really? Really truly? Her feet were barely if at all off the ground when she stretched to save it, though her momentum did make her leap a bit straight afterwards. I mean it's a good save, but not exceptional, surely. And don't tell me Women can't get airborne and horizontal. I've seen what England Cricketer Fran Wilson did last week.

[Kevin S]

That WIlson catch gets better every time I see it.

[Satchmo Distel]

Imagine watching that catch live. Wow.