On the TV mega-series, ‘This Is Us’, a couple made decisions by ‘worse-casing this’. They’d imagine the most disastrous outcome possible, usually their daughter becoming a drug addled pregnant stripper, and work backwards from there.
So, let’s worse case the headline: England rugby team facing Fiji in front of 15,000 empty seats. The culprit, apparently? Women’s rugby.
After a summer in which the Women’s Rugby World Cup sold out, delivered thrilling matches, and created genuine new audiences, we’re now told it might have been too successful. Fans, the argument goes, are rugby fatigued. The women’s game has supposedly cannibalized interest in the men’s fixtures.
Really? Let’s worse case that.
If that narrative sticks, women’s sport becomes an easy scapegoat for a system struggling with its own economics. Rights holders start to whisper about whether women’s competitions can ‘afford’ prime calendar slots. Broadcasters retreat and sponsors decide their progressive experiment felt good but has run its course. Meanwhile men’s game pricing and formats go forward with blind faith that fans will keep coming.
Here’s the irony: women’s sport has been doing everything right; built new communities, new digital consumption habits, and a more modern relationship with fans. It has worked damn hard to earn attention, to make content social-first, and to show up where there was demand. It was forced to think differently and it did. Brilliantly.
FYI – see also the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup.
Assuming that fans will always come and pay whatever price is set is dangerous, fragile and misguided. Yes, there are cost of living pressures, over-commercialization, and fixture congestion, but the audience hasn’t disappeared, it has just got more discerning. Fans want value, variety and something real. Tradition and heritage alone is insufficient.
Blaming women’s rugby for the men’s attendance drop is missing the point by a very long margin. Women’s sport hasn’t drained demand; it’s shown what sport looks like when you innovate to compete.
Women’s sport isn’t a threat to be managed but a playbook worth stealing. The future isn’t about dividing the pie by gender; it’s about cooking up something big and compelling enough to feed a wider fan base.
The worst case isn’t 15,000 empty seats. It’s learning nothing from why they’re empty.
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