Elite Football Women: "We need to get the audience average up"

When SVT Sport made a round-up last autumn, 13 out of 14 Damallsvenska clubs stated that audience revenue had very little impact on their finances.

The positive exception was Hammarby, which last season had an average attendance of over 2000 people at its home games – compared to runner-up Rosengård with a home average of 956.

"We are far behind what we should be given the quality and the experience it is to go to women's football in Sweden. We need to get the audience average up a lot more to do the girls justice, says Tomas Hoszek at the league organization Elitfotboll Dam.

"Have to work on many different fronts"

For a year now, EFD has been running a project together with a consulting company, which in the long term will help the clubs to raise audience interest.

"It's starting to have an effect in the compounds that are involved in the project. It's not just about getting more people to the games, but you have to work on a lot of different fronts.

As an example, Tomas Hoszek mentions collaborations with supporter associations, having facilities with the possibility of additional sales and creating a fanzone where audiences can meet their idols after the match.

In Europe, we see new attendance records all the time, has Sweden fallen behind?

"We haven't actually fallen behind. Looking at various reports that FIFA and UEFA publish, we are comparable to Germany, Spain and France in audience averages. When you see these attendance records being broken in Europe, these are single games, not other league games.