Okay?

i get the obsession with the AFL, cos it's a competitior.

but AFLW ????

Do mens tennis fans look at womens golf ratings and get all pepped up?

the AFLW is a mickey mouse token comp.  people give it way too much credit.  comparing it to our top football league??  jayzuz. 

Admittedly more Wleague than Aleague on tv because a lot of the girls from South tend to play there in the off season but yeah only on ABC tv to be honest.
I do tend to at least try and attend South Melbourne WNPL games and always go early to catch the girls play when we have double headers.  If South Melbourne was IN the Wleague then I would watch and attend a hell of a lot more... simple.
All Im saying is that womens soccer SHOULD appeal a hell of a lot more, especially with the fact that we have a fairly successful national squad, players playing in the best leagues in Europe AND a World Cup we are hosting coming up .... sadly in Melbourne, Footy dwarfs everything else.

Got to honest tried to watch this but the average skill level is not much different to high school AFL, pretty atrocious. I would expect any athlete on TV needs better skills than myself but am not convinced they do. 

It's bizarre that's for sure.  5 minutes reading the comments when optus sports post anything on facebook about women's football makes you wonder what is wrong with some blokes.

Instead of being proud that women's football is huge, part of our game and our girls are actually pretty good they just get ragged on again and again.  

But you pretty much made the point

Aussie Rules fans like the AFL, and some of them like the AFLW. Football fans like the A League, and some of them like the W League

The amount of marketing does little to aid the decision. To follow a sport you need to understand the rules, have some social / cultural connection to the league, have a team, and it also depends on match importance, etc...etc...etc... Its not like watching Master Chef or listening to a new band 

The A League struggles for fans because the fan base for the Australian leg of our code is small, the league instead of country smaller yet, and the interest in the womens game smaller yet

The AFLW fairs well because of a much much larger established fan base. Not because of the number of ads or column space in newspapers. And you are right, the support drops of drastically when the AFL starts because it has higher caliber among its elitist fans

I dont think its true to say if we had 1/2 or a 1/4 of the marketing the AFL has our code would be fairing better

It goes for 9 games and not all teams play each other lol. Calm down. 

To a degree I agree with you BB however womens sport, especially over the last decade or so, seems to operate a little differently, at least as far as support. I have a daughter and naturally socialise with the parents of her girlfriends. The conversations about womens AFL, especially amongst the mums, is more about womens empowerment, gender equality and having strong role models for young girls to emulate.  Alot of the mums say they hate the AFL and always did growing up but take their little girls to Auskick because, if its good enough for the boys the girls can do it too. When I naturally mention the Matildas and womens soccer I sort of get blank stares and mumbled comments about, "yeah soccer is good too."  This is purely anecdotal and just my personal experience ofcourse, so take it as you will. What I think it shows is that Wleague (just like the rest of football) doesnt do a good enough job of selling the narrative down here in Melbourne at least. 

Seriously, why are we worrying about other sports. Doesn’t matter whether it’s men or women it’s a different game, James Johnson has said as much. 
This obsession with what other sports are doing is crazy. True believers should be doing all they can to ensure football remains front and centre and stuff anyone else.

Thats right. It comes back to the social and cultural significance of sport

The AFLW was designed to give females (sex) a sporting voice. That they can play a "blokes" game too. Having their girls play or watch gives them some sense of empowerment

I was doing some stats / research when the Matildas were smashed by an u15s team and at a quick glance, every track record by the highest Australian female athlete was beaten by a male at the u16s level. Females are biologically weaker. Comparing male sport and female sport is like comparing grey hound racing, and horse racing, and then also comparing that to humans. AFLW has to be taken in the context of the athletes that are delivering it. Its not about the best human ability but the best female ability and this will improve over time and develop its own quirks (note: this is why transgendered people should stay out of sport subdivided by sex. Acting feminine does not make you a female. Nor does it give you the same biological, social and cultural disadvantages that makes female sport in its own category relevant)

Football on the other hand has less cultural and social traction in Victoria. And those who do follow they game might feel closer to the leagues of their other nationality

We all have that one example of a sport that we started watching because it was on TV or heavily promoted. Maybe the odd baseball game, or the superbowl, or even championship darts. But its a personal experience and doesnt translate into real growth, fan base or commercial gain. Its fickle at best. Football's hope for traction in this country is the same problem as we had in the NSL days - how do we turn support for football into support for the local game. A bunch of franchises operating under salary caps and concessions with all good things dished out in excessive quantities taking it in turns in winning wasn't the answer

Aflw is used a a massive funding scam by clubs a d councils pretending they’re helping women’s sport. 

Aren't we doing the same thing with all the young players in the aleague?

There's a fair bit of truth in that.

Why is it all right to denigrate one women's sport but get worked up about the wleague when the same thing happens?

A-League got about double the attendance last night.

A-League won the attendance last night, but got one quarter of the ratings on Fox.

Aflw match as a small suburban ground in Moorabbin so they had a cap of 3k not much of a victory 

i havent seen anybody here say its okay to denigrate womens sport. (if they do, they are fools)
but people get up in arms because when the w league gets trashed because this is a football site and those clowns are trashing our sport and continuing the decades long trend of blindly hating (or fearing?) football.

I heard on the news it was 9 games each and they will not play every team. Is this correct?

This is very true we look foot in Victoria but the Culture is very much AFL esp in cities like Geelong the worst thing the FFA did was start Victoria with only one side 

Love football**

Honestly hand on heart give zero f**ks about the AFLW and W-League 

Both competitions are crap 

Prize money is crap 

Stakes are crap 

Quality of sports people on the pitch is crap 

The world might be going 'diversity mad but in the end of the day a spade is a spade both are boring to watch and even more boring to follow  

That's fine.  Don't follow them but it's also bizarre that blokes (not you) who profess to 'not give a shit' (like you) constantly find time to denigrate women's football at any opportunity.

Anyone who doesn’t appreciate women playing our game is a tool. What’s not to like about chicks loving football? Davstar is clearly single and lives with his mum. 

Both women's AFL and the football are definitely shite. European women's handball is where women's sport can be really entertaining and it appears to MY view that it suits women's physical stature to a tee. My two bobs worth.

So you don't think W league would do better if they had the marketing of AFLW!!! Ummmmm.
Please remember not all of Australia is like Melbourne. In Sydney AFL is only a minor sport & AFLW is next to nothing, the likes of Sam Kerr & Ellie Carpenter & many of the Matlidas has a much higher profile then any AFLW players, yet the media attention the AFLW gets is astounding.

You keep proving my point

The AFLW, despite heavy marketing, struggles. Some of the Matildas such as Kerr, despite no marketing, are high profile names

If the proof you have is that marketing doesnt do much in getting people to follow sports they dont like, and lack of marketing doesnt prevent social interest or connections, then what point are you trying to make?

Sport isn't a TV show. It is a social and cultural interest. You dont need marketing to tell people who ADP or Cahill were before they came here. People know who they are. You dont need marketing to tell you who Scott Morrison is or who Eminem is. No amount of marketing is going to get me to a Justin Beiber concert

Sport is life. Media coverage such as games, news and results helps with accessibility because its needless to say a game with no coverage or accessibility is frustrating to follow and people wont bother (like with the NSL). But marketing and promotion is simply about generating hype amongst existing fans and controlling the message

The fact the Matildas grew from nothing to household names with very little marketing reinforces this point

You have to give it to the AFL. 4 new teams and full steam ahead.

If only we had vision like they do.

Concerns about talent dilution were brushed aside as well as concerns about some clubs being not fully ready.

they have to move fast as the threats are great

and they have the resources financial and managerial to execute these outcomes

This what happens when you stand still, you let your competitors take advantage of it.

What have the APL been doing since they got their independence? Very little news on the w-league and even the y-league for that matter too especially coming to a World Cup in about 2 years from now its very concerning.

The w-league not only needs to expand but after we seen with the Matildas's issues they need a much longer season too, the current structure isnt feasible for the Matildas future.