Women's Euro 2005 a ‘watershed’ for women's football in England and a new era for the game?

ABSTRACT

The UEFA Women's Euro 2005 Championship hosted in England can be seen as a significant event in the development of football for women, being the largest female, international tournament held in the UK up to that date. However, despite record crowds and unprecedented media attention, an increase in participation by women after the event was neither significant, nor sustained in the hosting region or nationally. As identified in Parliamentary committee evidence, grass roots women's football has continued to struggle, despite strategies investing heavily development and the ‘Superleague' to drive increased engagement in the game after 2005. Success in international events in 2012, 2015, and 2017 by England national teams showed spikes in media interest, audiences and progression on the field of play. However, an examination of national participation statistics demonstrates the difficulties of evidencing sport participation event legacy. The event in 2005 clearly contributed to changing public perceptions, stimulating a new strategic focus on women by the Football Association and therefore began the new era for the game, particularly in England. This research may provide some insight for planning for Euro 2021 – when football ‘comes home’ once again.

KEYWORDS:

• Women’s football development events legacy

Acknowledgements

Charlotte Healey, MMU/FA High Performance Centre coach for supplying the 2018 County FA based data. County FA contacts including Club, player and team data from FA Development officers in Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire 2005 and 2009. Previous collaborators on earlier investigations: Kate Hughes (Potter) and Kate Grimes, Georgina Roy. Earlier work supported by Research Development funding from Edge Hill University. Work from 2007 to date supported by MMU Institute for Performance Research and Group for Research into Sport. Any omissions and errors are mine, but the contribution of other colleagues across MMU for encouragement, and the support of other researchers across various events for helpful feedback on improving the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Barbara Bell is former Senior Lecturer in Sport Development at MMU, in the Department of Sport and Exercise Science, with research interests in the impacts of London 2012 on school, club and community sport, the development of sport for women, specifically women's football, social marketing and the promotion of sport participation and programme evaluations in sport development. Barbara has taught at Undergraduate and Post Graduate levels and has published in a number of journals and edited collections across her research interests.

ORCID

Barbara Bell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6436-2041

Notes

1 BBC Sport ‘Women's Euro 2021: FA submits bid to host Women's European Championship’ online at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45329737 (accessed August 29, 2018).

2 UK Sport, ‘Uefa Awards Euro 2021 to England’ online at http://www.uksport.gov.uk/news/2018/12/03/uefa-awards-euro-2021-to-england (accessed December 3, 2018).

3 J. Kingdon, Agendas Alternatives and Public Policies 2nd ed. (Boston: Longman, 2011).

4 Sport England is the Non-Department Public Body responsible for the distribution of DCMS funding to Sport organisations including National Governing Bodies of sport, such as the F.A.

5 B. Bell, ‘Football’s Coming Home: And Its Not for Boys: The Impact of the Euro 2005 Women’s Football Championships in the North West of England’, in Sporting Events and Event Tourism: Impacts, Plans and Opportunities, vol. 91, ed. M. Robertson (Brighton: LSA Publications, 2006), 95–120; B. Bell and P. Blakey, ‘Do Boys and Girls Go out to Play? Women’s Football and Social Marketing. A Case Study of the European Women’s Football Championships’, International Journal of Sports Marketing and Management 7 (2010): 156–72; B. Bell, ‘Levelling the Playing Field? Post-Euro 2005 Development of Women's Football in the North-West of England’, Sport in Society 15, no. 3 (2012): 349–68.

6 Sport England Active People Surveys 2005–2016 – large national surveys of sport participation published annually.

7 Bell, ‘Footballs coming home.’

8 See Bell, ‘Levelling the Playing Field’ on post event legacy in NW region; Bell and Blakey, ‘Do Boys and Girls go out to play?’ and social marketing approaches with legacy events and school-based projects for details of methods used.

9 C. Dunn, ‘Canada 2015: Perceptions and Experiences of the Organisation and Governance of the Women’s World Cup’, Sport in Society 21, no. 5 (2018): 788–99, 789

10 C. Dunn and J. Welford, Football and the Fa Women's Super League: Structure, Governance and Impact (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2014); C. Dunn and J. Welford, ‘Women's Elite Football’, in Routledge Handbook of Football Studies, eds. J. Hughson, K. Moore, R. Spaaji, J. Maguire (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 135–50; Carrie Dunn, ‘Elite Footballers as Role Models: Promoting Young Women’s Football Participation’, Soccer & Society 17, no. 6 (2016): 843–55, https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2015.1100893 (accessed November 1, 2016).; K. Petty and S. Pope, ‘A New Age for Media Coverage of Women’s Sport? An Analysis of English Media Coverage of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup’, Sociology (2018), 10.1177/0038038518797505

11 D. Williamson, The Belles of the Ball, (Devon: R&S Associates, 1991).

12 J. Williams, A Game for Rough Girls? A History of Women’s Football in Britain, (London: Routledge, 2003).

13 Bell and Blakey, ‘Do Boys and Girls Go out to Play?'

14 UEFA, ‘Official Approval for Euro Success’, http://www.uefa.com/competitions/WOCO/news/kind=1/newsId=310875.html (accessed June 27, 2005).

15 Williams, A Game for Rough Girls?

16 J. Caudwell, ‘Gender, Feminism and Football Studies’, Soccer & Society 12, no. 3 (2011): 330–44

17 M. Valenti, N. Scelles, and S. Morrow, ‘Women’s Football Studies: An Integrative Review’, Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal 8, no. 5 (2018): 511–28, Dunn and Welford, Football and the Fa Women's Super League.

18 S. Lopez, Women on the Ball (London: Scarlett Press, 1997); J. Williams, ‘The Fastest Growing Sport? Women and Football in England’, in Soccer, Women Sexual Liberation: Kicking Off a New Era, eds. F. Hong and J.A. Mangan (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 112–27; W. Owen, Kicking Against Tradition; A Career in Women’s Football (Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2005).

19 Football Association, ‘Participation Figures’, http://www.thefa.com/Womens/Reference-FAQ/Postings/2003/11/Participation±Figures.htm (accessed November 3, 2004).

20 Strategy Unit/DCMS, Game Plan (London: HMSO, 2002).

21 Bell and Blakey, ‘Do Boys and Girls Go out to Play?'; Bell, ‘Footballs coming home.’

22 Ibid., Bell, ‘Footballs coming home.’

23 K.H. Potter, ‘Using the Power of Major Sporting Event as a Catalyst for Community Regeneration: A Case Study of the 2005 Uefa Women’s Championships’, in Women, Football and Europe: Contemporary Perspectives Vol 2., eds. J. Magee and G. Baldwin (London: Meyer and Meyer Sports).

24 IFI 2005 Conference ‘Women, Football and Europe’, (Preston June 2005).

25 Barbara Bell, ‘Building a Legacy? Euro 2005 and the Impact on Women’s Football in North West England.’ paper presented at the EASM congress 2005 The Power of Sport (Newcastle, England September 7–10, 2005).

26 Bell and Blakey, ‘Do girls and boys go out to play?’

27 Competing as Great Britain in the Olympics 2012 for the first time.

28 Jonathon Grix, and Fiona Carmichael, ‘Why Do Governments Invest in Elite Sport? A Polemic’, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics 4, no. 1 (2012): 73–90.

29 Anne Hindson, Bob Gidlow, and Cath Peebles, ‘The “Trickle-Down” Effect of Top Level Sport: Myth or Reality? A Case Study of the Olympics’, Australian Journal of Leisure and Recreation 4, no. 1 (1994): 10.

30 Bell, ‘Levelling the playing Field.’

31 HOC DCMS Select Committee. The Select Committee is a group of MPs across various parties, meeting to discuss issues related to the work of the DCMS. They received oral and written evidence from across the sport, and many partners to the FA, players and other representations

32 Culture Media and Sport Committee, ‘Women’s Football’, ed. House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Select Committee (London: The Stationary Office Ltd, 2006), 8.

33 DCMS Committee 2006 evidence page 6, para 10 .

34 DCMS Committee 2006 evidence page 4-5, para 7.

35 The FA 2008 Women and Girls Strategy 2008–12 Championing growth and excellence.

36 FA evidence to Select Committee 2006 ev 36 p 1.16.

37 The FA Women & Girls Football Strategy for 2008–2012: Championing Growth and Excellence.

38 Dunn and Welford, ‘Women's Elite Football.’

39 D. Woodhouse, B. Fielding-Lloyd and B. Sequerra, ‘Big Brother’s Little Sister: The Ideological Construction of Women’s Super League’, Sport in Society (2019), 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2018.1548612, Dunn and Welford ‘Women’s elite football’; Petty and Pope ‘A New Age for Media Coverage of Women’s Sport?’

40 FA Game Plan for Growth 2017.

41 Indicated in the FA evidence to HOC Select Committee.

42 Sport England Active People Survey 1 2005/6, 2006.

43 Football Association, http://www.thefa.com/womens-girls-football/about-womens-football (accessed November 11, 2018).

44 Bell, ‘Levelling the playing field.’

45 Personal Communication with FA representative – they confirmed they don’t actually use Sport England Active people survey results for their report and have their own participation rates based on affiliated clubs, players, schools and teams and market research which they declined to share, or expand on.

46 MMU Coaching Development Officer compiled report: Teams, players and Leagues in selected NW Counties.

47 Marie-Luise Klein, ‘Women’s Football Leagues in Europe: Organizational and Economic Perspectives’, in Female Football Players and Fans. Football Research in an Enlarged Europe, eds. S. Pope and G. Pfister (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 77–101.