Ms Denholm pointed to 39,454 spectators watching last week as Barcelona beat Roma women 1-0, the WNBL who recently broke their attendance record with 7681 fans at Melbourne’s John Cain Arena and the rise of Matildas -Captain Sam Kerr, who now plays for Chelsea and will become the first Australian footballer to earn over $1 million.
Football Australia’s head of women’s football, Sarah Walsh, told the conference that this year’s Women’s World Cup is expected to draw 2 billion viewers and draw 1.5 million participants. Australia’s 2023 Women’s World Cup opening match against Ireland has been moved from Sydney’s Allianz Stadium to the 83,500-capacity Accor Stadium in anticipation of a near-record crowd for the historic clash.
Sam Kerr scores for Chelsea against Manchester United. Twitter
Melbourne Football Club president Kate Roffey said the commercial benefits of women’s sport would flow as more eyeballs were driven to games.
AFL operations director David Stevenson said getting AFLW into free-to-air is really important and Kayo’s reach means “we’re so optimistic at AFLW.”
Cricket Australia general manager Stephanie Beltrame referenced the sale of media rights to the Women’s Indian Premier League for $175 million.
“There are examples where it stands on its own, but there are also other examples where we continue to nurture and grow,” she said.
PGA Australia CEO Gavin Kirkman said the “sleeping giant” is the 43 per cent of the 5.8 million Australians interested in golf who are women.
February’s game between the Flames and Southside Flyers at John Cain Arena was played in front of a record crowd for the WNBL. Getty
But News Corp Australia chief executive Michael Miller warned minor sports were facing a “critical time”.
“The pool — the pie available to sport, whether it’s from broadcast, sponsorship, ticketing or merchandising — isn’t growing much. Top-class sport accounts for the largest share of this. In Australia we probably only have three: rugby league, AFL and cricket,” he said.
“The rest of sports in Australia, I would say, are struggling to get from tier three to tier two, struggling for a smaller slice of the pie and now also competing with the international sports that are coming in and – rightly so – funding women’s leagues and have to invest in youth sport.”
But Ms Denholm said despite the economic turmoil and the drop in consumer spending, the countries and companies that invested in innovation would thrive in the long term.
“Sports and technology compete on a global scale and are in a race to stay one step ahead,” she said.
AFLW star Jess Hosking. AFL photos
But Ms Denholm said more work was needed to maintain participation in women’s sport, as more than half of girls give up the sport by the age of 17, despite the reported benefits.
“It’s no surprise that 80 percent of women executives at Fortune 500 companies played sports in their early years,” said Ms. Denholm.
She pointed to a wave of female CEOs leading the country’s biggest tech companies, including Melanie Silva at Google, Pip Marlow at Salesforce, Vicki Brady at Telstra and Kelly Bayer Rosemary at Optus, as well as female start-up founders like Mel Perkins at Canva , as a sign of the changing times.
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