The coach of one of the best women’s football clubs in Australia, Melbourne City, raised eyebrows with his response to how he would get fans to this Saturday’s A-League Women grand final against Sydney FC. “If it was up to me, I’d let everyone in for free,” Dario Vidosic said on Sunday night at AAMI Park after just 2,000 fans had watched his team secure their place in, and hosting rights to, the showpiece of domestic women’s football. “Just fill the stadium and you know, and let them catch that, sort of, fever.” The context to Vidosic’s comments is that his team have struggled to attract a sizeable fanbase after 10 years in Australia’s so-called sporting capital, despite seemingly limitless resources from the UAE-linked City Football Group. The context to that context? The Matildas, Australia’s national women’s football team, are the country’s hottest sporting ticket, set to sell out 14 straight home matches ahead of the July Olympics in Paris. The other three ALW semi-finals averaged close to 6,000 fans a match. Newcastle Jets – reportedly on death row – drew 6,836 to the first leg against City in Maitland. The Australian Professional Leagues’ accountant might be disappointed that City, rather than Sydney – who have had some of the largest attendances this season – are hosting this weekend’s decider. But the turnout for Saturday is about more than the APL’s bottom line. Whether he meant to or not, Vidosic’s comments strike at the heart of the challenges and opportunities faced by women’s sport. “Fever” is not so much caught as earned through investment, promotion and hard work. “If you want people to value your product, if you want to create a sense of Fomo [fear of missing out] then a price of zero just sends a message that you don’t value it,” says lawyer and former Matilda Moya Dodd. “If you don’t value it, why would anyone else?” The AFLW largely allowed fans in for free in its early seasons. But then its breakout popularity stagnated, and the league reverted to paid ticketing in 2021. The sensational popularity of the Matildas, the record crowd of 86,000 at the MCG to watch the women’s 2020 cricket World Cup final, AFLW’s 53,000 grand final attendance in 2019 and the 40,000 who watched last year’s NRLW decider, prove women’s sport can attract audiences as large as men’s. Larger even: the Matildas’ semi-final against England set a new benchmark for TV audiences. But progress outside signature events and national teams remains inconsistent. This ALW campaign has attracted 300,000 fans. The APL trumpeted it as the most attended season of any women’s sport in Australian history (last year’s Super Netball competition attracted 266,000 fans, and the most recent AFLW season, 284,000). But ALW average crowds are a little over 2,200 a match. Focusing on mere numbers misses the point, according to Dodd. She says women’s sport typically brings in a younger, more digitally connected and more gender-balanced audience. And they come to games, consume content and buy merchandise for different reasons. “They certainly do come to see a great game of sport, but they also come to support what the sport represents to them,” she says. “And it represents social progress, it represents women’s empowerment, it represents gender equality and it represents broader inclusion of people in sport.” Nowhere is that shown more vividly than at a Matildas match. From the demographics to the DJ’s playlist, it’s clear this is a novel sporting experience, with an audience different to those drawn to shout “offside ref” or “ball” at an umpire. Rather than a cheap imitation, Dodd says women’s competitions represent a rich new vein of sport. “We have to kind of ‘un-train’ the market to see this as a low-value thing that you get for free, or if you’re a broadcaster for a very cheap price, or that you can enter for free, or that maybe it’s not that good, it’s too slow … all of those historic burdens of perception that women’s sport has borne,” she says. “But if people actually start to look at it without those judgments … then they realise that it’s very watchable and I think marketers are realising the audiences for women’s sport are actually gold.” Vidosic – free ticket suggestion aside – is a passionate advocate of women’s football. His view of why fans should go to the grand final? “Very simply, the girls can play.”