Good luck to both Chelsea Women and Man Utd Women who are playing today in the Women's FA Cup Final today with kick off at 2.30pm which is being shown live on BBC 1.
The Euro 2022 Women's final between England & Germany in July 2022 saw a sell out attendance and the FA Cup today at Wembley Stadium is the fourth successive women's fixture to sell out. It was a record attendance for the 2022 FA Cup Final at 49,094 so to see last years attendance broken with 77,390 attending is very positive and a good indicator about the support and interest that is shown for women's sport. Five years ago, the attendance was around 45,000 so it is good to see more people coming to watch. Changing perceptions has certainly helped draw in more people to watch as more teams play matches in their main stadiums rather than at another location.
When the match is played today, it is likely that the world record attendance for a domestic women's club football match will be broken.
With more media coverage means that there is more awareness to the equipment that is used when women play sport. In the past, sport equipment was designed with men in mind and any women wanting to play sport would just have to find what fits. For example, research has shown that there are many physical differences between men and women's feet so support is needed in different positions compared to a mans shoe. This means that not wearing correctly fitted and supportive shoes could allow the feet to move more inside resulting in more lower limb injuries such as ankle injuries and more time away from participating to recover & rehab the injury through soft tissue therapy.
As the interest around women's sport has increased, more companies are now producing sportswear that is suitable for use by women rather than women having to get what they can and then finding out it is not suitable. Adidas found through research that "92% of women find it difficult to focus on their workout when their apparel is uncomfortable." It is good to see that changes are happening now which will hopefully see more women participating in sport in the future.
(There are many other sportswear companies producing women specific sport clothing and the link above is one of many on the internet. I am not affiliated or paid in any way to/by Adidas and am only sharing the link in this blog post as an example of what one company is producing.)
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