Rangers head coach Jo Potter urged the country’s clubs to ‘come together’ in order to grow the Scottish Women’s Premier League after just over 4,000 fans attended their Scottish Cup final win over Hearts at Hampden Park.
Goals in each half from Rachel McLauchlan and Lizzie Arnot ensured her side took home their second domestic trophy of the season. However, another disappointing attendance for a major trophy final at Hampden proved there’s still work to be done when it comes to growing the women’s game in Scotland.
“We need to keep pushing,” said the Rangers boss. “At one point it was every other post in England. You’ll always have people that are going to say ‘I don’t want to see this’, but on the flip side of that, the more people you’re reaching, the more times we can just advertise it all the time – then there’s only one way it is going to go.”
A historic deal with Sky Sports and the SWPL was reached September 2022 and was hoped to be game-changing for Scottish Women’s Football. However, just a handful of Scottish women’s games have been broadcast since. The women’s national team have also played their games exclusively at the Mount Florida based stadium for the last two and a half years, while the Scottish Women’s Cup semi-finals and Sunday’s final were moved to the home of Scottish football earlier this year.
However, outside of the 15,320 crowd that attended Scotland’s defeat to the Lionesses in the UEFA Nations League, attendances at Hampden have been low in numbers. Hearts’ 3-0 victory over Spartans in the Scottish Cup semi-final last month was watched by under 1,000 at the national stadium.
