He turned around and laughed and made an observation along the lines of- you can force people to do a lot of diversity stuff, but you can’t force them to buy tickets to entertainment.
Isn’t that exactly right.
The Government can force their agencies to fill half their boards with women, the Labour Party can try to force itself to get to 50 percent women MPs, and public broadcasters can force their hosts to mihi in te reo.
But no one can force you to buy tickets to a women’s game of football if you don’t want to go.
Matt's words came back to me this morning as I listened to Grant Robertson and a media outlet basically trying to shame us into buying tickets.
Grant Robertson said New Zealanders need to "pick up their game" around ticket sales. The media outlet paraphrased him by saying New Zealanders needed to do better.
The tone there is that we are obligated to do something that we are refusing to do. But that’s not how sport works.
We are not obligated to buy the tickets. It's entertainment. And if we don’t want to watch women’s football, we don’t need to.
The origin of this frustration seems to be that the tickets are selling much faster in Australia than they're selling over here. We've bought less than half of the 900,000 available tickets to matches in New Zealand.
There's probably simple explanation for that- our women’s football team is ranked 22nd in the world, the Australians are 12th. We care a lot less because we know our team hasn’t even got a shot at the finals.
Now we might just be leaving it to the last minute. And once the hype is in full swing, we might yet buy all the tickets available. We'll have to wait to see.
But know this- if Kiwis do buy those tickets it’s because they want to go. Not because they’re being diversity-shamed into going.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
6 comments:
Yes we are not north korea, as much as grant robertson and co would love to have that sort of control. I used to watch woman's rugby, but then they started becoming political, so it put me off.
You can lead a horse to water.
You can even drag a horse to water but the one thing you cannot do is force it to drink.
The horse, like humans will drink if it is thirsty for the water.
Most New Zealanders do not thirst for the extremist, divisive views of minorities like the vocal minorities that this Labour regime and our corporates like Spark subscribe to.
Megan Rapinoe is a (professional) shining light in the USA womans footbal team and well done to her, she is a winner of 2 world cups.
She is also a staunch advocate for transgender 'women' being able to compete in womans sports like the FIFA Womans World cup.
On that stance alone, being near her retirement she forgets that if that was the case today then she would almost always have been (when starting her career) beaten for her spot by a biologically stronger human.
When sport and sporting bodies become advocates of social politics then the sport becomes less a competition and more an exercise in socio-political engineering.
It appears that this FIFA Womans World cup has become itself an advocate of that socio-political engineering.
When a sport is not fun to watch or under performs to expectation people will not pay to see it. New Zealand does not have a strong national following of football let alone womans football so combine the two and this is showing up in the ticket sales.
New Zealanders are all advocates of fairness in play. We love competition, skill and winners and losers being humble.
Sadly in todays world we have sport, politics and business all showing us they care for none of those simple things and more for minority collectives 'feelings' which leaves the majority on the side lines, uninterested and unwilling to buy a ticket.
Perhaps if soccer had not announced the z-grade soccer tournament was going to promote blatant racism at every venue they might find selling tickets easier.
They did. Now they can suffer the consequences.
Quite right Anna Mouse.
Your last paragraph sums it up, but you forgot to mention MONEY.
Money is the main driver in mast sport, All Blacks is a classic.
Women don't support women's football. Why would they expect men to do so?
I love football, and I love rugby.
I love top level competition in both those codes showcasing the BEST the sports can be....
The Womans Football World Cup wont deliver the BEST the sport can be.
It cant hold a candle to the Mens Football World Cup (quarter finals on as some of the group games are rubbish since FIFA expanded to 32 teams or whatever it is now)
And it cant hold a candle to the Champions League knockout rounds or top 6 clashes in the EPL...
So in my eyes it is on a par with a NZ club game - so only of interest to the absolute football die hard... no coin to FIFA form me!
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