Football - what if women ruled the world?

[Katiekitty]

I've been wondering - if women ruled the world, would football quietly go away?

I'n not concerned whether it was played by men or women, but, if women held the majority power, as men do now, would football players be billionaire heroes? Would it make the news headlines? If not, where might the seemingly endless money involved in the game be channelled instead?

Whadya reckon?

Of course some football fans are very intelligent people.

I don't understand Eastenders or Hollyoaks but I appreciate that all the avid watchers aren't bunny boiling inbreds :)

Interesting perspective smallwhitecat, although Albert Camus might have disagreed with you, bearing in mind his most famous quote:

?All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.? (He played close to international level football as a goalkeeper)

HerBex - Homer's a moron. Baseball is brilliant.

I can't disagree with that Herbex :)

Well to be fair some of them will be terribly simple minded.

And some of them will be great intellectuals. Like everyone else, they're a cross section.

Football fans are not "Simple Minded" they are lovers of a beautiful game.

Manchester United play manchester City this weekend.

You wont want to go to any pub that has SKY screened because all the viewers of that unpopular pastime will be crammed in wearing their colours.

So is the nature of the beast and long may it continue.:)

Has anyone seen that episode of the Simpsons where Homer gives up drink? He goes to a baseball game and says: "I had no idea how boring this game is!"

Welcome to the feminist board Deepheat.

Only on the feminism board because of another thread but am a massive football fan and couldn't help dipping into this one. Should stress that I'm not a bloke looking to pick a fight, but I really do find some opinions here odd.

Firstly, football is obviously a massive presence in our media. Sadly, the nature of our media is such that it is difficult to find positives about anything that 'enjoys' this level of exposure. The stories will always be about the shagging, the hookers etc etc.

You have to dig a little deeper to find the positive stuff. The times ran a faascinating few articles on Craig Bellamy and his charitable foundation in Africa recently (would link, but I think it was after the paywall went up). Roy Keane has endured some pretty horrific savaging in the media (some of it justified), but the only time he actually took legal action was when a journalist, with the best will in the world, revealed how much of his salary went directly to charities back in his native Ireland (It was a very significant portion). Football has taken the lead in addressing issues of racism and sexism in the game. From the moment the Premiership was formed there was a formal agenda to encourage more families to games (having been to enough matches in the '80s, I can't tell you how great this has been).

Football is a million miles away from perfect, but it has a great deal to teach other sports and interests. Bear in mind that while some people think of football as simply what is on the back pages and the TV, for the millions of fans it is actually about community, it is about scouring through the small print later in the Sport section to see if there's a report on their team, its about getting up on a Saturday or Sunday morning and getting some exercise with your mates.

Football is like a pen: in the right hands it can be a massive force for good, in the wrong hands it can do the opposite. The majority of people who love football love it for good reasons.

Football has always been popular. Its lowest ebb was the '80s, when English clubs were out of Europe and crowd trouble, racism etc was rife. It learnt its lesson. It still has a long way to go, but the vast majority of criticisms on this thread are without insight or foundation.

To understand the footie mentality you have to be part of the clan

Not really, you can understand something without having to be part of it. I can understand why Take That are so popular even though I'd rather claw my inner ears out with a spoon than listen to them.

The f-word article has some good points but also some utter inanities. The mid afternoon scheduling was to do with the tournament organisers, not the broadcasters and besides, I remember pretty England men's World Cup football games being screened at 7.00am in the morning, middle of the afternoon, lunchtime etc. The game was carried on one of the five main terrestrial channels (BBC2) which is actually a pretty good slot - plenty of other football games which get higher audiences (e.g. UEFA Cup) are screened on digital only channels, e.g. ITV4, BBC3.

Interesting question about gymnastics, but the same applies to a lot of other smaller sports which used to get more coverage by virtue of the BBC having a larger sports rights budget and having much more sports dedicated programming (e.g. Grandstand, Ski Sunday). We used to have a lot more track and field on television and a lot more winter sports as well.

To understand the footie mentality you have to be part of the clan

Agreed: for me the love some men show for football is utterly incomprehensible.

Football isn't popular because it's on TV it's popular because it appeals to the watcher.

The Women's game is different to watch and will never take off unless Women in particular go and watch it in droves.

Quite rightly Tennis and athletics get good viewing figures, but how good would those viewing figures be without the Men's game to back it up?

To understand the footie mentality you have to be part of the clan....it's too hard to judge from outside the fence.

I have seen women's football games including the national teams there is a difference. It's really not because they are women, women's tennis and athletics receive the same amount of attention as the male versions.

Good article.

I didn't even know the England women's games were being shown.

If you schedule it in the middle of the afternoon and don't tell anyone, of course it will have a low audience.

As with any TV programme. Whereas if you heavily promote it, raise a buzz around it, do a bit of marketing, biogs of the players etc., people will watch it. Same as they do with hitherto obscure athletes who've got media attention at the Olympics. They don't bother to create a buzz around women's sports.

Some woman swam round britain a few years ago. I can't even remember her name, to my shame. If she were a man, she'd be a national hero.

this article about women's football & the media is interesting:

www.thefword.org.uk/features/2007/10/did_you_watch_a

Hello (OP here) sorry to post and run but I've got a lot on.

Lots of replies here to catch up on, I meant to contribute more, but stuff's got in the way.

I'll read through everyone's replies in a bit

(not much point to my post here, sorry!)

Yes I remember watching loads of gymnastics when I was a kid.

Maybe I've got False Memory Syndrome.

cestlavie - What about gymnastics? It seems like that would provide many hours.

I feel like it used to be on and reported about when I was a kid a lot more than it seems to be now.

I dont' think Thatcher de-politicised young men.

Union membership was already in long term decline when she came along and of course there was a closed shop in many firms which meant that lots of members didn't actually want to be in that club.

I think a lot of people were de-politicised after the war with prosperity when it looked as though everything was going in a progressive direction and you didn't need to worry too much about things bar the odd nuclear weapon detonating by accident or a full scale soviet invasion.

Then the fall of the soviet union de-politicised a lot more people, as it looked as though there was only one way to orgainise society now. The only noisy opposition to that, is Islamic fundamentalism which is not attractive to most people.

Ironic to think that someone as colourless as Nick Clegg has managed to re-politicise the i-pod generation.

Oh just as an aside as to why women's sports are discriminated against, that absolutely is not the case in my experience.

When you're screening sports, there are broadly two types of sports you look to.

Firstly, premium sports like football, motorsports, some golf, some cricket and some rugby union (in this country) - although the rights to these are expensive these attract large and loyal audiences that you can make money out of in some way (via advertising or subscription).

Secondly, in-fill sports like snooker, athletics, darts and second tier golf and cricket. These might not attract large audiences but they have lots of TV hours coverage at a very low cost of production and rights acquisition. Think about how many hours you get out of a snooker tournament vs. football matches.

Certain broadcasters I know have tried broadcasting the most popular women's sports, especially women's football but also women's rugby and to a lesser extent, and including the highest profile tournaments. Unfortunately the reality is that these sports have neither a large and loyal audience and don't give enough TV hours to make it worthwhile.

As an example, when Hope Powell led a brilliant England women's side to the final of 2009 European Championship, a thrilling game (which sadly we lost) was broadcast by the BBC, i.e. probably the best women's game available on a channel everyone can get. The audience for it was less than 1 million vs. say 1.5 million for decent athletic events, 4 million for Grand Prix and 10+ million for FA Cup football.

"I've been wondering - if women ruled the world, would football quietly go away?"

In answer to the OP, yes and no.

Would it die out as a sport? No, as others have said, the popularity of football predates modern media - England v Scotland games used to get attendances of 150,000+ in the 1930s and you used to get attendance of 200,000+ in Brazil in the 1940s. Even today (just ahem checking FIFA's site) about a quarter of a billion people from 200 countries around the world play football regularly. There are plenty of practical reasons why it is so popular, including low cost, limited equipment requirements, ability to play virtually anywhere, being part of a team etc - if anyone fancies reading it, there's a great book called "Brazil: A History of Football" which shows how football takes off in new countries.

Would it die out in terms of wealth and media coverage? Possibly. Ultimately, the wealth in the game is driven by the value of the media and commercial rights, which in turn are reliant on a large and/ or loyal audience. If it's large enough, there'll be enough advertising dollars to justify free to air television coverage and newspaper column inches. If it's loyal enough, there'll be enough to justify paid subscription models (a la Sky). Football currently has both so makes a lot of money, which is channelled into the game, and to the players. If there were fewer media consumers of football (which presumably there would be if there were women) then there would be a reduction in money flowing into the game... um, presuming of course the point of the OP being that men are forbidden from watching football.

Corrie is on telly how many times a week....?

Class the repeats and omnibloodybus editions with that too.

The slot for a program to be shown isn't owned by that program, and what is deemed to be our national sport can supercede it at times. Obviously the boffins in charge of advertising think there is more push to the book covering champions league.

Football has working class roots and most of high earning footballers have working class roots. This thread has made an assumption that football has relieved men of political interest, I dispute that completely.

The killing of the unions by Thatcher did that, and I don't believe she was an avid football fan.

Did anyone suggest that using sport as a political tool is modern Dadaz? I didn't see that. I also didn't see anyone arguing that opera is culturally more beneficial. And yes, you're quite right, the majority of people wouldn't attend opera if you paid them to watch it, but they're happy to vote for the X factor, so the X factor is obviously much better than Verdi.

Why should Corrie get put back 3 times a season? Why is your assumption that this is right and proper?