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Even before the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup had ended, fans of Australian football were feverishly discussing how the domestic game could capitalise on the unprecedented attention and excitement that the tournament had sparked.
Loading...With tens of millions of fans flocking to televisions to watch the Matildas' historic run to the semi-finals, selling out jersey stocks as well as stadiums, focus turned almost immediately to the A-League Women (ALW), the first domestic club competition to return just two months after the tournament's conclusion.
You only get one post-World Cup club season, so expectations were high on the Australian Professional Leagues (APL) to make the most of the Matildas' World Cup moment and raise the profile, popularity, and professionalism of the Australian women's game, both on and off the pitch.
So, now that the 2023-24 season is over, we can look back and ask: how did they do?
The wins
Central Coast Mariners return
The first major announcement made by the APL with regard to the "World Cup season" was the return of the Central Coast Mariners to the women's league, taking the competition up to 12 teams for the first time.
Having participated in the first two seasons of the ALW, the Mariners were forced to fold its women's program back in 2010 due to financial difficulties. However, thanks to new ownership and a renewed vision to grow the women's game in the region, the women's team returned in time for the 2023-24 campaign.
With debut ALW head coach Emily Husband at the helm, the Mariners' first season back in the league was an almighty success. They finished fifth on the ladder and, following a stunning penalty shoot-out win over Melbourne Victory, qualified for the first-ever two-legged semi-finals.
While they lost 2-1 on aggregate to eventual champions Sydney FC, their performances over the course of the season, with a brand new squad of largely young or peripheral players, immediately captured the hearts of old and new Mariners fans, resulting in one of the highest total home crowds across the entire ALW.
Record-breaking fans
In fact, the Mariners' crowds contributed to what ended up being a record-breaking season in terms of attendance in the ALW, with the regular season plus finals series seeing over 300,000 people pass through the gates. That number made it the highest-attended women's sports league in Australian history, surpassing the Super Netball and AFLW, with over double the cumulative crowds of last season.
Clubs across the competition smashed their own home attendance records, with the season's opening game between Sydney FC and the Western Sydney Wanderers in round 1 — which was deliberately designed as a stand-alone round before the men's league even kicked off — becoming the most-attended ALW game ever at 11,471 people.
In that case, the organic popularity that the World Cup generated was further enhanced by the scheduling and accessibility of the match, the affordable price of tickets, capitalising on the narrative of a traditional club rivalry, and a marketing campaign that had Sydney FC striker and Matildas penalty shoot-out hero Cortnee Vine as the main drawcard.
That interest was spread across the league, with memberships increasing over 600 per cent as fans flocked to support their local women's teams, in addition to the introduction of the Liberty A-League Pass for fans under the age of 16, which also hit a record high.
Broadcast boost
These numbers were reflected in the broadcast space, too. The grand final alone attracted 279,000 people — the biggest single-game audience in the league's history — with broadcast viewership hours increasing over 130 per cent compared to last season.
While the league had no games shown on terrestrial television until the finals series, every game was available live and free for the first time on streaming platforms 10Play as well as Paramount+. Each game had at least one commentator, often two, with the league even hosting it's first-ever round where all match commentators were women.
That broadcast offering was also boosted with the revamping of magazine wrap-up show DubZone, which included a panel of experts and commentators to look back across the weekend and analyse all the action (though that show was axed due to financial issues... which we'll come to shortly).
"Where Matildas are made"
Following the Matildas' exodus to Europe in 2020, the ALW had to figure out a new identity for itself. No longer one of the top five competitive leagues in the world that had the ability to attract the game's best players, clubs had to shift their narratives to focusing more on development, with the tagline "where Matildas are made" becoming the biggest marketing tool for the 2023-24 season.
While the APL made efforts to secure the services of actual Matildas like Cortnee Vine, Alex Chidiac, Kyah Simon, Chloe Logarzo, Emily Gielnik and Lydia Williams, and successfully used these players as the faces of the league, their established profiles were used to draw new fans into the stories of the next generation of national team players, with all but one Young Matilda (U-20) involved with an ALW club this season.
Few players exemplified that excitement better than Melbourne City midfielder, Daniela Galic. The 17-year-old lit up the competition for the premiers and was a deserved winner of the league's Young Player of the Year award, while championship winners Sydney FC retained their title with the youngest average squad in the league at just 21 years old, with both clubs platforming dozens of young or lesser-known players and showing that the future of Australian football is bright.
Extending the season to a full 22-round, home-and-away calendar with an expanded finals format, in addition to reducing the number of double-headers with men's games, more bespoke and targeted advertising of the women's teams through digital platforms, matches played at smaller suburban grounds more consistently, and the friendlier kick-off times that avoided the early afternoon summer heat all contributed to this rising tide of fandom.
The losses
Clubs on the brink
Despite these improvements, though, the A-League Women still fell short in a number of ways.
By season's end, two of the competition's foundation clubs, Newcastle Jets and Canberra United, were teetering on the edge of collapse after struggling with their own respective financial issues off the field.
While Newcastle have managed to secure a new owner and Canberra were temporarily spared by a government donation, these clubs' financial frailties have highlighted the precarious nature of professional club football in Australia and drawn into question the ongoing sustainability of the competitions that they're part of.
Although the World Cup generated unprecedented interest and support for the women's game from the public, that enthusiasm does not seem to have translated into any major, long-term dollars-and-cents investment from new sponsors or corporate partners into the clubs or players that are the engine of the game in between tournaments.
As a private enterprise, the APL was not eligible for government funding in the way that Football Australia and its member federations have been, leading some to wonder whether the A-Leagues did enough hustling behind the scenes to build relationships and attract investment — particularly investment that's specifically targeted at their women's league — to make the most of the Matildas' moment.
These financial troubles extend much further than these two clubs, with the A-Leagues having to shutter their expensive content arm, KeepUp, into which they poured tens of millions of dollars, as well as firing up to 70 staff as part of a mid-season restructure.
Reports have now emerged that the APL will have to cut back on their financial contribution to clubs next season after failing to hit particular KPIs required in their broadcast agreement with Network Ten, with each club potentially set to receive half the amount of money from the league than they got this season: an austerity measure that will cut across both the men's and women's teams.
Part-time players
Expanding the ALW to a 22-round regular season for the first time ever meant that its players had more games to play, and therefore more weeks in which to get paid. However, the majority of players we saw across this season were still part-time, contracted for just 35 weeks of the year, meaning many still had to work second jobs or study in order to make ends meet.
For a league that's aspiring to keep up with those accelerating competitions elsewhere, full-time professionalism is now an urgent requirement, not just to provide players with job security and an opportunity to focus exclusively on and improve in football, but also to give fans and sponsors more time to connect, invest, and become long-lasting supports of the clubs they represent.
"I feel like we could have done heaps more, to be honest: more investment, more professionalism," Cortnee Vine said after Sydney FC's championship win.
"There are coaches that are still not full-time, [players] are not technically full-time.
"We're competing now with the WSL, the NWSL, and [America] have a new league coming in, the USL, so we're competing with three big leagues, and now we've gone from a 12-week comp to a 30-week comp, we're fighting against them to get players to come here.
"If we're put in that position, you need to pay more because the girls aren't going to come here for less than what they can get back home or overseas ... No one's gonna come unless that's what it is; nothing happens until we invest more."
Shay Hollman, her teenage teammate, agreed.
"It's just about putting money and funding into the game," she said. "We've been breaking records this season with memberships sold, fans of each game, a lot more attendance, but there's still a long way to go.
"Most of our team is still part-time, so we either go to school, uni, or work. So it's not like we can fully focus on football. But that'll definitely be the next step.
"I get a bit more of an insight into it because I've got two brothers in [the A-League], and the main thing would be pay. They're full-time, we're part-time. But it's also the standards, the amount of staff, the facilities, everything like that: they're still pretty different between women's and men's.
"So the goal is for that to improve so we can get on balance with them and then I think the game will grow from there."
Enough said.
Broadcast woes
While the ALW had every game broadcast live and free on streaming platforms this season, the production standard and general treatment of its games still left something to be desired.
Unlike the men's league, which had two games live and free on television every round and included a panel of experts before, during, and after games who interviewed coaches and players, the ALW had to settle for sometimes just a single commentator narrating a stream from a separate studio, a bare-bones camera set-up, and a silent countdown graphic to keep fans company during half-time.
Then there was DubZone, a bright idea for an engaging panel-style wrap-up show that featured special guests, interviews, commentators and pundits all contributing to the conversation around the game, which was unfortunately decommissioned due to aforementioned budget cuts.
There was logic in the APL's decision to move all women's games to streaming platforms: market research showed fans of the women's game were younger and savvier, and that numbers on terrestrial television were trending downward.
However, as the number of television viewers for this season's grand final showed, the terrestrial platform still matters, and is a space where casual fans can access games without the rigmarole of navigating the league's sometimes clunky and confusing online services.
Further, the A-Leagues broadcast partner, Global Advance, went into administration towards the end of the ALW season, forcing the league to scramble and organise an emergency deal with production company NEP to produce the rest of the year's games. There's no knowing whether that arrangement will be extended into next season given the prohibitive costs, or whether turning to a lesser-known provider will go belly-up once again.
Hit-and-miss marquees
Given the relatively tight budgets of ALW teams, any money that's forked out on a marquee player, be they a Matilda or an international, needs to produce bang for their buck.
This season was a mixed bag in terms of those big-name stars on the pitch. A number of Matildas were sidelined for significant periods due to injury, while other internationals largely faded into the background of their teams without contributing much at all, taking up spots that may have been better used developing more local talent.
There were a handful of players from both categories, though, who were proof of what smart scouting and shrewd recruitment can do for a club on and off the field. The Newcastle Jets' late recruitment of Philippines international Sarina Bolden was an inspired signing, with the forward finishing the season as the leading assist-maker and the second-highest goal-scorer despite playing fewer games than most.
Central Coast Mariners striker Wurigumula, of the Chinese national team, was another stand-out, ending her season with eight goals as the club reached the semi-finals for the first time, and arguably took the spotlight from the team's biggest signing of all, Matildas veteran Kyah Simon, who spent the first half of the season injured.
Hannah Keane (Western United), Vesna Milivojevic (Serbia), Mariana Speckmaier (Venezuela), Emina Ekic (Bosnia), Rylee Foster (Canada), Jazmin Wardlow (USA), Vicky Bruce (USA), Millie Farrow (England), and Rebekah Stott (New Zealand) all played crucial roles for their teams this season and showed the importance of clubs striking the right balance between local and overseas talent.
As ever, every ALW season comes with its own lessons. And while the APL certainly got some things right in order to make the most of the Matildas' World Cup legacy, we'll always be left wondering whether they could, or should, have done more.