Idea for improving women's football (or sports in general)

[Annie11111]

I have an idea on how to improve the women's game.

Quote from The Guardian :

''When Spain won the men's World Cup in South Africa last year the team came home with a trophy and $30m, from a total prize fund of $420m.

But there is just $7.6m in total up for grabs for the women at Germany 2011, and the winning side in Frankfurt will have to share little more than $1m between the entire team.''

I'm guessing FIFA's logic is that men bring in 98% of the money through tickets, sponsors, advertising, TV rights, merchandise etc. so they deserve 98% of the prizes.

What I propose is running both WC's at the same time and split the prize money equally, just like the Grand Slam tournaments do it in tennis (where men also bring in most of the money and get most of the attention). So both men and women get roughly 200 mill each. Some of the money from WC prizes goes to the players and staff and some to the national federations who can then invest it back into women's football.

Oh and another thing : sell TV/advert rights and all that good stuff as if it was for a single competition, then the broadcasters have no choice but to buy and show the women's matches as well.

Hmm I'm not sure that would work. The logistics alone would be a problem but also I think people would not be as willing to watch the women's football if the men's was on at the same time. As it stands, I know quite a few people who watch the women's world cup because there's no other football on.

A lot of people actually enjoy women's football because there aren't so many primadonnas diving and complaining all the time -- it's good sport.

One idea might be to start smaller with the clubs and have them promote their women's teams more -- more advertising, free ticket promotions, things like that. I think you need to catch people's interest more in the first place.

And invest more in sports for girls -- the more girls who play team sports in school etc, the bigger the audience for women's sports.

I think the idea of running the tournaments at same time just might work - using same resources etc.

Think very difficult to force commercial organisations to do anything.

I was astounded, this summer, to realise that the Tour de France is only for men - you know sometimes you can just accept something, unthinkingly. I think it is a disgrace. There is a campaign to allow women, etc. this year it has got as far as a short race on the Champs Élysées. Imagine the level of resistance there must be to women being in race, or having separate race, short time after men. Would be easy and cost almost nothing. But no, they won't. Will happen in time.

Great work being done by professional clubs at youth level for girls. Very inspiring.

lots I agree about the Tour de France, it is disgraceful