Does NSW's 'Female Football Week' do more harm than good for progression of the game?

Football New South Wales (FNSW) has just commenced the 2015 Female Football Week, which will promote and support females and their opportunities within football and the special roles they play.

Meanwhile, the Australian Sports Commission has just released the Women in Sport Broadcasting Analysis, which reported that despite 24 hour channels such as Fox Sports, women’s sport coverage has actually gone backwards with TV News dropping three percent, and print news coverage dropping by the same level to a total of seven percent of dedicated sport coverage between 2012 and 2014.

Football  in NSW has seen a 4.3% increase in female player numbers and a consequential increase in both coaches, referees and volunteers, which as the organisation puts it, spearheads the ‘continual push for women in the world game’. This comes even though the governing body, Football Federation Australia (FFA), continue to treat women’s football as a second class sport.

The 2011 Women’s World Cup was at the time, the most tweeted event in the history of Twitter and yet still there is no courageous sporting or sponsorship executives out there brave enough to appreciate the popularity of the women’s game and get behind it.

The truth is that the FFA, the Australian media and potential sponsors have this misconception that women’s football is un-important and as a result, need to manufacture a ‘Female Football Week’. Maybe if the game was governed and managed more appropriately as it is in other nations, a special week would not be required.

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The people making the decisions in Australian sport such as Football Federation Australia do not do a very good job of marketing their product and this becomes a vicious cycle, poor marketing leads to poor media coverage, which leads to lack of sponsorship, which leads to poor media coverage and thus the cycle starts again.

With the recent axing of the W-league by the ABC it seems that things will only get worse unless the powers that be at Football Federation Australia realise that the 4.3% increase in female players are potential supporters of the women’s national team – and as a consequence do deserve  a slice of the media coverage pie and consequential sponsorship dollar.