In February 2024, the New York Times published a two-part series on the results of a survey of men who are fans of women’s soccer. The survey addressed how and why men became fans of women’s soccer, the relationship between their fandom of men and women’s sport, and how they perceived and participated in fan communities. The survey was motivated by the sense that men’s fandom had been overlooked and underestimated, in part due to the predominant narrative of female professional athletes as empowering for girls and women.

Are there more men who profess fandom of women’s sport now than in the past? The truth is hard, if not impossible, to ascertain, as women’s sport leagues don’t regularly publish data on the composition of their audiences. However, there are hints from polls and academic studies that men’s interest in or consumption of women’s sport may be growing and is sometimes higher than that of women.

For instance, a 2019 survey of adults in 21 countries found that 51 percent of men reported watching any of the 2015 Women’s FIFA World Cup, yet 79 percent reported an intention to watch in 2019. And a study of social media engagement with the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) over the same 7-day period in 2020 and 2021 found that while 21 percent of posts about the NWSL draft in 2020 came from men, this had increased to 57 percent in 2021.

As sociologists who have studied women’s sports, we came to study the question of men’s fandom almost by accident. In 2023, we re-interviewed 35 American adult fans of women’s professional soccer who had first been interviewed in 2019 following that year’s Women’s World Cup. While we asked about the culture and composition of the women’s soccer fan base as they experienced it, participants in 2023 often answered by noting that they saw more boys and men in the stands at women’s games than in 2019. We began to ask more questions about this, probing for why fans thought this trend was taking place and what they thought it meant, both for men and for women’s sport. These questions were particularly important given that some men’s perspectives on women’s sport have often been marked by hostility or indifference, in part as a way to assert men’s superiority over women.

In our recently published study, we found that in 2019, men who attended women’s games were understood to be accompanying girls and women who were the “real” women’s soccer fans. These “fathers of daughters” supported their female family members but had only limited interest in women’s soccer. As Nicolette explained, “I guess then some men would go either as a group of friends like women and men or just women. I don’t know if men would go out of their own volition if they just went by themselves or went with another guy.”

In 2023, in contrast, fans perceived that boys’ and men’s interest in women’s soccer had grown independent from their relationships with girls and women. Fans like Jana expressed pleasant surprise about this development. Jana, for instance, had offered tickets to a local women’s pro game to several of her men work colleagues and was pleasantly surprised when they were highly interested. As she said,

I got a bunch of tickets and I invited them to come to games and so a couple of them came and they really liked it. And I was surprised cause…I mean here’s a guy who’s an [NBA] straight male season ticket holder. And he was really excited to follow the women’s team. So, I thought, you know, that is like off the norm from what I have experienced.

We also found a widespread perception among existing women’s soccer fans that the masculinities embraced and performed by many men had changed. Previously, some men were believed to resist women’s sport as a threat to their power and privilege, despite the fact that earlier research found that adult men without children were perceived with skepticism by women fans. However, fans in 2023 felt that they saw younger men adopt more “inclusive” approaches to masculinity that rejected the idea of male physical and social superiority and celebrated women’s athletic excellence.

Finally, we found a persistent perception that the presence of more boys and men at women’s games enhanced the legitimacy of women’s soccer in the world of professional sport. While greater cultural acceptance as “real” sport may certainly be desirable, fans felt a deep sense of ambivalence around the idea that men’s fandom was needed to accomplish this, notably as this suggested that men were understood to be more authentic, knowledgeable, and engaged fans of sport than women. For example, when asked about the importance of men’s greater presence over time, Abigail argued, “I think that is something that matters so much for understanding how this is permeated out and is this being taken seriously. Not that men are the arbiter of what’s serious in sports. I think it’s just a reflection of where we are in terms of the sporting mainstream.”

Amid the ongoing rise of women’s sport in the U.S., patterns remain to be identified and understood in terms of men’s presence, but also their perspectives and experiences as fans in women’s sport communities. As in-person and mediated audiences for women’s sport grow, men are and undoubtedly will be a substantial proportion of viewers. Thus, they have an important role to play in the future of women’s sport. Women athletes continue to face challenges that include gender pay disparities, limited mainstream media attention, and pervasive sexual harassment via social media. Whether athletes or fans, women cannot alone be responsible for addressing these issues. All fans who are invested in women’s sport can work to make these inequalities visible and unacceptable and can communicate enthusiasm about women’s sport to the next generation. But men especially can provide a model of men’s support for women athletes to their own and others’ sons (as well as to their other male relatives and friends), cultivating the intergenerational transmission of respect, admiration, and equality for all athletes.

Author Biographical Notes:

Rachel Allison, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University. Her research interests include gender, sport, social inequalities, and family.

Radosław Kossakowski, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Gdańsk. His research interests include sport (especially soccer), masculinities studies, and qualitative methodology.

You can read a full version of the study discussed in this article in the journal, Men and Masculinities.