Women’s football: “There have to be role models”

Posted on Aug 4, 2022 by FEED Staff

After a long career in football, including captaining the New Zealand national team, Rebecca ‘Bex’ Smith is working to bring the women’s game to the world 

XTREME: How did you go from playing, to being part of bringing the game to the wider world?

Bex Smith: I was born in Los Angeles to Kiwi parents from Christchurch. We grew up in both countries, then I went to college on the East Coast at Duke. Playing soccer in college, I got picked up by the New Zealand national team for World Cup qualifiers in 2003. I had never really wanted to be a professional footballer, but enjoyed that opportunity. They made me captain of the team in my debut match, which was crazy.

I was going to quit the sport, but Australia left the Oceania Football Confederation, which meant New Zealand had a direct qualification into the World Cup and Olympics. I thought, I’m technically captain of a national team that could make a World Cup, and perhaps an Olympics. It felt really crazy not to try it. 

I played for FFC Frankfurt, which was the best team in Europe. I didn’t know that at the time, because there were no agents or anything like that for women players. I was Googling anything I could find, sending out emails and asking for a try-out. 

From there, I went to Sweden, then played in Newcastle and Australia, then went back to Germany. But I had to retire because my knee was really bad. I couldn’t even run any more to be fair. So, when I was looking at what to do next, I got approached by Fifa to come and run women’s tournaments.

XTREME: What was it like at Fifa? 

Bex Smith: I was there for four and a half years, organising the women’s football – the under-17, under-20 and Women’s World Cup. In the last year, I did more strategic planning. What kind of competitions do we need? What does an international match calendar look like? How do we use the tools at Fifa to grow the women’s game globally? 

But I got tired of governance and politics and was looking to try something new. Fifa didn’t have the same values as me. I think it was a lot more to do with politics, power and money. With the resources and brand name – I mean, who is bigger than Fifa? – they could do so much more. By the end, I saw way too much politics and other things that I couldn’t put my name to. I’m just not a politician.

Having said that, the Women’s World Cup in France in 2019 is still the biggest moment in our game – that summer was incredible. There are still really good parts of it, and I wish they would double down on those great parts. I hope they do the right thing and actually put their money where their mouth is when it comes to women’s football.

xtreme: What are the barriers to building up women’s football?

Bex Smith: One of the biggest in terms of growth and investment was a lack of it being a great brand. The story of the players wasn’t out there.

All of the messaging around women’s football was that you should get involved because it’s good for girls and gender equality and so on. Which is a great thing; but the game is also about incredible athletes with phenomenal stories. And the sport itself is worth watching – tough quality, good pace, high technique and tactics. The product was good and the players are incredible. But there was a need to get the right storytelling. 

My sister is a cinematographer-director in LA. She began a production company and we started doing projects with top female footballers about a year and a half ahead of the 2019 Women’s World Cup. Working with players like Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, we looked at doing a proper series with some cool content. That’s how I met Tom Thirlwall, the CEO at COPA90. I got introduced through Abby. 

Tom had brought on Abby in an advisory role to help COPA90 get more into women’s football. It had always been a digital-first football media company, telling stories and celebrating football culture from a very fan-centric point of view. It didn’t have any rights, but it started a football channel that focused on the fans and their stories. 

xtreme: What exactly did you like about COPA90?

Bex Smith: COPA90 was really celebratory. It was very much about diversity and inclusion. About how football can bring communities together, rather than the normal rhetoric around Manchester City versus Manchester United and blue against red. That’s conflict. COPA90 took a totally different view. It was more about how fans have similarities. And that’s what I really loved – the values of the company.

They brought me in and said, “We need you to integrate the women’s game into what we do. Whatever resources you need, we’ll help you.” So, I started working with the strategy team to try to figure out: What’s our proposition? What’s our tone of voice? How do we see the women’s game? And we came up with a cool strategy for how to rebrand women’s football. 

After a long career in football, including captaining the New Zealand national team, Rebecca ‘Bex’ Smith is working to bring the women’s game to the world 

XTREME: How did you go from playing, to being part of bringing the game to the wider world?

Bex Smith: I was born in Los Angeles to Kiwi parents from Christchurch. We grew up in both countries, then I went to college on the East Coast at Duke. Playing soccer in college, I got picked up by the New Zealand national team for World Cup qualifiers in 2003. I had never really wanted to be a professional footballer, but enjoyed that opportunity. They made me captain of the team in my debut match, which was crazy.

I was going to quit the sport, but Australia left the Oceania Football Confederation, which meant New Zealand had a direct qualification into the World Cup and Olympics. I thought, I’m technically captain of a national team that could make a World Cup, and perhaps an Olympics. It felt really crazy not to try it. 

I played for FFC Frankfurt, which was the best team in Europe. I didn’t know that at the time, because there were no agents or anything like that for women players. I was Googling anything I could find, sending out emails and asking for a try-out. 

From there, I went to Sweden, then played in Newcastle and Australia, then went back to Germany. But I had to retire because my knee was really bad. I couldn’t even run any more to be fair. So, when I was looking at what to do next, I got approached by Fifa to come and run women’s tournaments.

XTREME: What was it like at Fifa? 

Bex Smith: I was there for four and a half years, organising the women’s football – the under-17, under-20 and Women’s World Cup. In the last year, I did more strategic planning. What kind of competitions do we need? What does an international match calendar look like? How do we use the tools at Fifa to grow the women’s game globally? 

But I got tired of governance and politics and was looking to try something new. Fifa didn’t have the same values as me. I think it was a lot more to do with politics, power and money. With the resources and brand name – I mean, who is bigger than Fifa? – they could do so much more. By the end, I saw way too much politics and other things that I couldn’t put my name to. I’m just not a politician.

Having said that, the Women’s World Cup in France in 2019 is still the biggest moment in our game – that summer was incredible. There are still really good parts of it, and I wish they would double down on those great parts. I hope they do the right thing and actually put their money where their mouth is when it comes to women’s football.

xtreme: What are the barriers to building up women’s football?

Bex Smith: One of the biggest in terms of growth and investment was a lack of it being a great brand. The story of the players wasn’t out there.

All of the messaging around women’s football was that you should get involved because it’s good for girls and gender equality and so on. Which is a great thing; but the game is also about incredible athletes with phenomenal stories. And the sport itself is worth watching – tough quality, good pace, high technique and tactics. The product was good and the players are incredible. But there was a need to get the right storytelling. 

My sister is a cinematographer-director in LA. She began a production company and we started doing projects with top female footballers about a year and a half ahead of the 2019 Women’s World Cup. Working with players like Abby Wambach, Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, we looked at doing a proper series with some cool content. That’s how I met Tom Thirlwall, the CEO at COPA90. I got introduced through Abby. 

Tom had brought on Abby in an advisory role to help COPA90 get more into women’s football. It had always been a digital-first football media company, telling stories and celebrating football culture from a very fan-centric point of view. It didn’t have any rights, but it started a football channel that focused on the fans and their stories. 

xtreme: What exactly did you like about COPA90?

Bex Smith: COPA90 was really celebratory. It was very much about diversity and inclusion. About how football can bring communities together, rather than the normal rhetoric around Manchester City versus Manchester United and blue against red. That’s conflict. COPA90 took a totally different view. It was more about how fans have similarities. And that’s what I really loved – the values of the company.

They brought me in and said, “We need you to integrate the women’s game into what we do. Whatever resources you need, we’ll help you.” So, I started working with the strategy team to try to figure out: What’s our proposition? What’s our tone of voice? How do we see the women’s game? And we came up with a cool strategy for how to rebrand women’s football. 

xtreme: What specific steps did they take to rebrand the game?

Bex Smith: We had to look internally and see how we, as a company, bought into that strategy. It was all well and good putting it out on our platforms, but you need the company to understand and really live by that culture.

I started sitting with the different parts of the business, asking how we ensured that we included women’s football, operationally or systemically. What are the KPIs that are relevant, but also not jarring? We had a 91% male, very young fan base when I started – we don’t want to suddenly say everything has to be 50% women’s football.

We knew we had an opportunity during the World Cup to make an impact and plant our flag, so we set up clubhouses. There was a physical space in Paris, near the Pompidou, with different activations for the entire month, and the last week we moved it to Lyon, where all the matches were.

We had an art exhibition, plus a photography event with Goal Click – a project that sends disposable cameras to players, to document their own stories. Let’s not forget the fashion show, plus  a music night with an awesome DJ named Krystal Roxx. She has her own company, Superfoxx, which promotes other female DJs. We had three of the biggest players – Abby Wambach, Ada Hegerberg and Nadia Nadim – and did big content pieces on them.

We screened all the matches, so people who came to the clubhouse could watch every World Cup game. Alongside FIFA, we did their daily women’s football show. There was just this all-the-time buzz.

We wanted to create a hub where you don’t have to watch the matches, or like women’s football or say you’re a fan. Just come hang out. We wanted to offer as many excuses as possible to get fans involved, while building a community on the ground.

xtreme: How has the uptake of women’s football changed?

Bex Smith: Metrics for the digital space can be quite black and white – what’s your reach? What’s your engagement? We weren’t looking to compare it to men’s football, because you’re not going to get those same numbers. Instead, we created our own metrics.

Our hope was to increase visibility, while changing the perception and accelerating acceptance. So, we asked questions about women’s football. At the end, we actually doubled the brand awareness of COPA90, and doubled the number of people that now say they are women’s football fans – willing to recommend it to other friends, and recommend COPA90 as a place to get women’s football content. It was pretty cool that we shifted the needle in terms of brand awareness and brand perception, not only for our own brand, but also for the sport.

xtreme: Have you noticed that in terms of attitudes around the world, there are very different responses to women’s football?

Bex Smith: It’s a global game. Having spent an extensive time in the UK, when people have a dismissive attitude towards women’s football, I cringe. In the UK, women’s football was banned by the FA for 50 years. That ban was only lifted in 1971. Whereas in America, when I was growing up, you could always play. There were all different levels of club, so the brand of women’s football in the US is in stark contrast to the UK, or South America, where there are very strong social and cultural barriers for women. These barriers exist around the world.

The biggest swing in momentum is in the UK and US. Those are the two markets that we started with and doubled down on, but we’re not ignoring the rest of the world. When players or stories are coming in from South America, from Asia, from Africa, we want to shine a light on all of it.

xtreme: What are some of the big things that can be done to change perceptions of women’s football?

Bex Smith: First, there have to be more role models. There has to be representation wherever you consume content or educate yourself. When I was growing up, in 1999 the US women’s national team won the World Cup. We were at the Rose Bowl for that final match, with 92,000 people watching them win. For me, I never questioned that I could be a pro footballer. It was very normal. Whereas, in the UK in 1971, girls weren’t playing, so they genuinely didn’t think that they could – well, they couldn’t actually.

Second, there has to be the support and infrastructure for girls to make it to that level. You have to invest. It’s a vicious cycle when you say, well, girls don’t want to play football. They don’t want to play because they don’t see anyone else playing. And when they do play, they’re the only girl – and that’s an uncomfortable place. If you’re not willing to invest in this infrastructure to create those environments, then it doesn’t matter what they think, as they can never play.

It really isn’t about football. It’s about what football can bring, and how it breaks down barriers and shifts conversations that so desperately need to take place. We require more support with things that bring people together and build communities.

This article first featured in issue 01 of Xtreme.

Interviews archive

xtreme: What specific steps did they take to rebrand the game?

Bex Smith: We had to look internally and see how we, as a company, bought into that strategy. It was all well and good putting it out on our platforms, but you need the company to understand and really live by that culture.

I started sitting with the different parts of the business, asking how we ensured that we included women’s football, operationally or systemically. What are the KPIs that are relevant, but also not jarring? We had a 91% male, very young fan base when I started – we don’t want to suddenly say everything has to be 50% women’s football.

We knew we had an opportunity during the World Cup to make an impact and plant our flag, so we set up clubhouses. There was a physical space in Paris, near the Pompidou, with different activations for the entire month, and the last week we moved it to Lyon, where all the matches were.

We had an art exhibition, plus a photography event with Goal Click – a project that sends disposable cameras to players, to document their own stories. Let’s not forget the fashion show, plus  a music night with an awesome DJ named Krystal Roxx. She has her own company, Superfoxx, which promotes other female DJs. We had three of the biggest players – Abby Wambach, Ada Hegerberg and Nadia Nadim – and did big content pieces on them.

We screened all the matches, so people who came to the clubhouse could watch every World Cup game. Alongside FIFA, we did their daily women’s football show. There was just this all-the-time buzz.

We wanted to create a hub where you don’t have to watch the matches, or like women’s football or say you’re a fan. Just come hang out. We wanted to offer as many excuses as possible to get fans involved, while building a community on the ground.

xtreme: How has the uptake of women’s football changed?

Bex Smith: Metrics for the digital space can be quite black and white – what’s your reach? What’s your engagement? We weren’t looking to compare it to men’s football, because you’re not going to get those same numbers. Instead, we created our own metrics.

Our hope was to increase visibility, while changing the perception and accelerating acceptance. So, we asked questions about women’s football. At the end, we actually doubled the brand awareness of COPA90, and doubled the number of people that now say they are women’s football fans – willing to recommend it to other friends, and recommend COPA90 as a place to get women’s football content. It was pretty cool that we shifted the needle in terms of brand awareness and brand perception, not only for our own brand, but also for the sport.

xtreme: Have you noticed that in terms of attitudes around the world, there are very different responses to women’s football?

Bex Smith: It’s a global game. Having spent an extensive time in the UK, when people have a dismissive attitude towards women’s football, I cringe. In the UK, women’s football was banned by the FA for 50 years. That ban was only lifted in 1971. Whereas in America, when I was growing up, you could always play. There were all different levels of club, so the brand of women’s football in the US is in stark contrast to the UK, or South America, where there are very strong social and cultural barriers for women. These barriers exist around the world.

The biggest swing in momentum is in the UK and US. Those are the two markets that we started with and doubled down on, but we’re not ignoring the rest of the world. When players or stories are coming in from South America, from Asia, from Africa, we want to shine a light on all of it.

xtreme: What are some of the big things that can be done to change perceptions of women’s football?

Bex Smith: First, there have to be more role models. There has to be representation wherever you consume content or educate yourself. When I was growing up, in 1999 the US women’s national team won the World Cup. We were at the Rose Bowl for that final match, with 92,000 people watching them win. For me, I never questioned that I could be a pro footballer. It was very normal. Whereas, in the UK in 1971, girls weren’t playing, so they genuinely didn’t think that they could – well, they couldn’t actually.

Second, there has to be the support and infrastructure for girls to make it to that level. You have to invest. It’s a vicious cycle when you say, well, girls don’t want to play football. They don’t want to play because they don’t see anyone else playing. And when they do play, they’re the only girl – and that’s an uncomfortable place. If you’re not willing to invest in this infrastructure to create those environments, then it doesn’t matter what they think, as they can never play.

It really isn’t about football. It’s about what football can bring, and how it breaks down barriers and shifts conversations that so desperately need to take place. We require more support with things that bring people together and build communities.

This article first featured in issue 01 of Xtreme.

Interviews archive