PUBlic Service Announcement - Women's Football: Coming To A Pub Near You? (Hopefully...)

Good afternoon,

This year, in the Netherlands, the UEFA Women's Championships (a.k.a the Women's Euros) will take place with all matches being shown on Channel 4. As it stands, the England team are positioned fourth in the FIFA World rankings, and the third highest team in Europe behind Germany and France.

Currently, women's football (or, you know, football), is officially (probably) the fastest growing sport in the United Kingdom. At their last major tournament, the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, the England team narrowly missed out on the final but went on to win third place; beating Germany 1-0 in extra time. This is the highest placing of any England Senior team since the men won the World Cup in 1966. What's more, people are watching women's football: the UK audience for the Women’s World Cup more than doubled from 5.1 million in 2011 to 12.4 million in 2015, and 1.9 million tuned into to watch one of the England Euro qualifying matches last year.

What we're getting at here is this: the England women's team is great and people want to watch them. Specifically, we want to watch them. And not just from the comfort of our own homes – we want to watch them in a pub (we'll have a double gin & tonic and a large glass of sauvignon blanc, please). And you can bet that if we want to watch the England matches, there'll be plenty of other like-minded people. But can we find any pubs that are advertising that they're showing the matches? Alas, no. So what we're asking is this: please will you embrace women's football and show the matches in your pubs? It doesn't have to be all of them, we'd be happy with a handful. Just let us know which ones so we can tell our friends. England's first match is against Scotland on Wednesday, 19th July and, just so you know, the only other match that night is Buckie Thistle v Dundee United…

For your reference, the England fixtures are as such:

Wednesday 19 July      England v Scotland        19.45

Sunday 23 July              England v Spain            19.45

Thursday 27 July          England v Portugal        19.45

More info can be found here

Looking forward to hearing from you!