Whilst fans packing into stadiums has pushed the Women's Super League attendance record close to 40,000, the average Women's Super League attendance is around 1000. The highest average across an entire season was 3072, set in the 2019/20 season, which will have been influenced by the games in bigger stadiums.
Despite some of the big stand out attendances at fixtures in club stadiums, average Women's Super League attendance tells us a lot more about the regular match going fan than these big one-off fixtures do, and there is quite a varied picture across the league.
Unsurprisingly, the biggest clubs in the league get the highest average attendances. Chelsea are by and away the most popular club when it comes to regular attendees with an average of 3000 turning out at Kingsmeadow during the season. Arsenal and Manchester City are also very popular with around 1500 and 2000 respectively attending games. When these three sides play each other, average attendances swell to around 4000.
Smaller clubs in the WSL do not tend to do quite as well on the gate. Most of the teams outside of the top three attract between 500 and 1000, although clubs are always working to try and encourage new fans. Moves by clubs like Reading and Leicester City to hold their games in bigger, more familiar stadiums have been done in order to try and attract more regular fans.
It certainly seemed like numbers were affected by COVID-19 during the 2021-22 season, with attendances not quite bouncing back to their 2019-20 heights. However with the boost to women's football of England winning Euro 2022, the 2022-23 WSL season is likely to be the best attended yet.
