LONDON — Emily Fox had goosebumps. Arsenal were facing Chelsea at Emirates Stadium on Dec. 10, 2023 and the United States defender was one of 59,042 people in the stands. It was a record crowd for a Women’s Super League (WSL) match and the second time in the season that Arsenal had set a new benchmark for attendances. Two months later, they’d break the record again, this time against Manchester United with 60,160.
“Going to that game, I didn’t really know what to expect,” Fox, who signed for the Gunners from NWSL‘s North Carolina Courage a month later, told ESPN. “When I was there and I saw the sold-out crowd, people chanting players’ names like they do in men’s football, it was the exact same. And not just the crowd, the atmosphere, the style of football, it was amazing.
“When I was deciding to come here, it just kind of gave me goosebumps and made me really excited not only for Arsenal and this club, but for women’s football and the growth that it’s had. I think with Arsenal in particular [what excites me is] what they’ve done in terms of growing the game, getting fans and creating a community for women’s football at Arsenal.”
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Fox isn’t alone in being drawn in by what’s been brewing in this part of north London. Defender Laia Codina, a 2023 World Cup winner with Spain and a summer signing from Barcelona, has spoken about the atmosphere at the Emirates being different from anything she’s experienced before.
Arsenal Women split their home fixtures between the 4,500-seater Meadow Park, which they share with National League side Boreham Wood, and the 60,704-capacity Emirates. This season, they’ve played six WSL games at the home of the men’s team — the most they’ve managed at the venue in a single season — and have averaged a crowd of 52,029, which would put them eighth among men’s Premier League clubs. Indeed, the top six highest attendances in the WSL have all been Arsenal home games.
Women’s football in England has seen a remarkable surge in popularity since the national team’s triumph at Euro 2022 and no club has surfed this wave of popularity in the manner or scale as Arsenal.
Founded in 1987, Arsenal have been one of the traditional powerhouses in the women’s game. They’ve won the most trophies of any women’s side in Europe and hold the distinction of being the only English side to have won the Champions League. The Gunners’ crowning glory came in the 2006-07 season, where they won an unprecedented quadruple and went unbeaten the whole campaign. However, that remarkable rate of success has decreased in recent years as Chelsea and Manchester City have used their vast resources to overtake them, and the Gunners have won only two pieces of silverware in the last five years.
The rise in profile hasn’t taken place overnight; it’s been a process and years of work behind the scenes has gone into putting them in this position. The record attendances are only a part of it as they attempt to reshape the narrative of women’s football in the country.
Building the foundations
“One-club mentality.” It’s a phrase repeatedly referenced by club officials when ESPN asked about the rise of the women’s team over the past couple of years. But it’s just as much an ethos.
The club makes no distinction in how they run any of their men’s, women’s, or academy teams. It starts at the top, with sporting director Edu Gaspar taking full responsibility for everything. Indeed, sources told ESPN that Edu has played a key part in helping to share knowledge on and off the field across teams.
Each internal department — including marketing, commercial and communications — caters to the men’s and women’s teams. In the 2020-21 season, there were grumblings from sections of the fanbase about the team and questioned if the one-club mentality was just a slogan. It was Arsenal’s second successive trophyless campaign — they finished third in the WSL, lost the FA Cup final 3-0 to Chelsea and were knocked out in the group stage of the League Cup.
“It was just having to maybe change processes. And there was never a ‘no.’ I never got a ‘no’ the whole time. It was more just ‘okay, we might just need to make baby steps before we look at this.'”
The 2017 Spring Series — a one-off summer competition between WSL seasons — illustrates Arsenal’s intention to do right by their women’s team from the early years. Engaging the locals in Boreham Wood was a focus area for Avery and ahead of the opening game against Notts County, she organised a family fun day at Meadow Park where there would be a meet-and-greet with players outside the ground. But, two days before the game, Notts County dissolved its women’s team due to financial issues.
The easy option would have been to cancel the event, but the club kept it and made it an open training session. Avery remembers Arsenal captain Kim Little and England international Jordan Nobbs, both of whom were nursing injuries at the time, hobbling around and meeting children at the event. “I think there’s some people that have been there for such a long time [and they] have championed this work that through 1% here, 1% there, it has just added up over time,” she said.
From initiating a conversation with the customer relations team to ensuring there was in-house coverage of games, to implementing feedback systems for match-going fans, Avery laid the first bricks in a structure that would become a monolith.
“One thing I would say is that it’s [the women’s team] always been at the heart of the football club,” Avery said. “It’s kind of just needed people being bold enough to push it and make decisions that maybe other clubs around the WSL weren’t doing at that time.”
