GROWING THE WOMEN’S GAME THE ROUTES TO FURTHER ROWTH
with; dedicated family friendly stands where children can feel comfortable, for example. We had four matches at Stamford Bridge in the 2022/23 season,
has something to do with that: it’s more affordable to bring your children, or friends who might not be avid football fans but are prepared to have a day out at a match for 30 or 40 pounds. The higher we’ve priced the tickets, the better the attendance percentage. If we’re doing a lot of complimentary tickets, or charging at a very low price point, people decide not to come if the date changes, or the weather is bad, or something similar. For the game to grow commercially, it has to first break even, and it has not been doing that because previously it has been priced too low. We can’t tell broadcasters or brands that they should be paying big sums of money for the women’s game if we aren’t valuing it in the same way. We know there is quite a low percentage of people in our men’s membership database buying tickets for women’s matches, so that’s a big area for us to focus on, along with people who are London experience seekers – those who show an
interest in women’s sport, or the Lionesses audience. Those groups are more talent- and personality-led; they’ll be a fan of Sam Kerr or Millie Bright, for example, rather than a fan of Chelsea specifically. Social media is another big area for us. It drives the more transient audience – those who perhaps might not be able to get to a match for whatever reason – rather than the hardcore attendees. You’ll see more performance-related imagery on there because that’s what engages people – the players as athletes. It’s important for us that the long- standing women’s season-ticket holders and match attendees can still purchase at Stamford Bridge. We give them a priority window and recommended areas where they could all be seated together and build their own atmosphere section. It’s communicating these things as much as possible and making sure the established fans feel they’re still valued by us.” n
with the rest at our smaller ground Kingsmeadow. Our
research shows that there are a lot of repeat purchasers attending a match at Kingsmeadow – less so at Stamford Bridge, the turnover there is quite high, although this may be due to the relative novelty of holding matches at Stamford Bridge. The more games we hold there, the more confident we are that repeat attendance will follow. At Stamford Bridge we have more adults attending than children, and there are equal percentages of men and women attending. We have seen that a high proportion of men who come to women’s games tend to come from a younger demographic – more in the 20 to 35 age group, whereas the average age attendee for our men’s matches is higher. The reasons they’re attending are probably slightly different. Price
33
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator