Exclusive: The huge crowds watching the U.S. women’s soccer team win the World Cup marked a moment of hope for Americans who lament the gross disparity between the support for men’s and women’s sports, but it’s still an uphill struggle for anything close to parity, as Chelsea Gilmour explains.
By Chelsea Gilmour
This year’s Women’s World Cup Final between the U.S. and Japan, which the U.S. team won 5-2, drew a record-breaking American audience for soccer, with an average total viewership of 25.4 million on Fox. And that wasn’t just record-breaking for women’s soccer.
More U.S. viewers tuned into the game than any other men’s or women’s soccer event, including last year’s celebrated men’s match between the U.S. and Portugal during the World Cup in Brazil, broadcast on ESPN, which drew 18.7 million.
U.S. Women’s National Team (Soccer), winners of the 2015 World Cup. (Via Twitter.)
Potential reasons why this year’s women’s cup matches may have attracted so many viewers include the location in Canada (which has similar time zones to the U.S.), the fact that the match aired on Sunday evening for Americans on the East Coast (a popular time to watch sports), and the likelihood that the game will be star-player Abby Wambach’s last World Cup appearance (she has scored more international goals than any player, male or female, in soccer history).
But, perhaps most importantly, the enthusiasm of Americans for a women’s team playing a game that is not considered a major U.S. sports suggests a growing respect for women in sports (as well as a greater appreciation for the game of soccer). The World Cup victory was followed by the team receiving a ticker-tape parade in New York City on Friday with crowds estimated in the tens of thousands and drawing significant coverage on U.S. cable news channels. Commentators noted the large number of young women and girls in the crowd.
On Saturday, the attention of the sports world again focused on an American female athlete, tennis star Serena Williams, who won the Wimbledon championship, marking her fourth consecutive Grand Slam title, known popularly as the “Serena Slam,” named in her honor after she…