Women’s sports are growing in popularity. For Calgary Wild FC, it’s unlocking a new kind of fanbase
Playing in the inaugural season of the Northern Super League, Calgary Wild FC — Alberta’s only pro women’s soccer team — says it’s attracting a new kind of audience to the sport.
“Going into it with the research we had done, we were expecting 50 per cent men, 50 per cent women. We were expecting some overlap with traditional sports fans,” said the team’s founder and chair Deanna Zumwalt, speaking with This is Calgary’s Jenny Howe.
But Wild FC’s fanbase is defying those expectations, with women making up roughly 70 per cent of it, according to Zumwalt.
This is CalgaryCalgary Wild FC’s first season is in full swing, but is anyone watching?
Calgary has a new professional women’s soccer team and a new women’s sports bar with a catchy name. We’ll hear if seats at McMahon Stadium and Goal Diggers pub are filling up.
“Our real strong demographic is women… 35 to 40 to 55 years of age that are coming to the game. And 25 per cent of our fans have really not consumed, I would say, a sport product and don’t follow any other team in the city,” she explained.
“I think we’ve got something really special here that… other sports brands should maybe take a look at, because we are tapping into a group of people that have never really traditionally followed sport,” she said.
Not just fans, Zumwalt said, but “true” fans: “they’re out there buying the merch, they’re out there wearing it, they’re out… celebrating the team, they’re interfacing with the players.”
In the club’s first season so far, Zumwalt said Wild FC games at McMahon Stadium have averaged a crowd of just over 4,000, but the aim is to eventually average 10,000.
A recent cross-Canada survey from Torque Strategies found that 60 per cent of Canadians believe perceptions of women’s sport have improved over the past three years.
It also found that 41 per cent of the country sees women’s sports as a national investment.
“Some people initially saw us as a social cause. We like to think we’re a business with a purpose – which we are – but we are a business,” she said.
“And so we need to know who our fan is so that we make sure we deliver a great experience at the game and we make sure that we understand what they want, so we keep them coming out and we can keep this team sustainable in the future.”
And while corporate sponsorships are still lagging behind the fan response, Zumwalt is hopeful the Wild FC “product” will earn more business support as potential partners see the turnout it can generate and the feeling it evokes in fans.
Calgary Wild FC host their inaugural home opener which results in a 0-0 tie against Ottawa Rapid FC.
“[The] season opener was super special,” she said. “Just the energy and the stands…it was about 8,500 that were at that game and truly, just people celebrating. I think… a true moment in history to just have the first kind of professional women’s sport in our city.”
“It was unbelievable for young girls that want to be on that pitch someday to, I would say, ladies that are probably closer to my age who wished they could have done it.”
The growing business of women’s sport is also inspiring another local business to step out of its comfort zone and join in on the hype.
Touted as the city’s “first female-forward sports lounge,” Goal Diggers Pub is located inside the Blues Can on 16th Avenue N.W.
The decades-old Calgary business is known for its blues music, but after moving locations, it set up a sports bar inside the establishment, inspired by The Sports Bra in the U.S. that centres women’s sports.
Greg Smith, owner of the Blues Can said, so far, they’ve “had some great nights and days in here with various games.”
“Right now, our biggest challenges are we’re not sports people. We have been music people all of our lives,” he said.
While the new venture isn’t gaining as much traction as Smith thought it would since opening in May, he said he wants to keep at it, knowing it can take years to get something like this off the ground — just as Wild FC anticipates building over time.
“I’ve never been a person to follow the path of everyone else. I try to identify opportunities that interest me and then pursue them regardless of whether everybody’s doing it,” he said.
“Right is right even if no one is doing it. Wrong is wrong even if everybody’s doing it. So we just take the path less travelled.”
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