Australia loves a big sporting event. We'll show to up any big international tournament when we're hosting so I don't think you'll see a massive swing of girls to football because if it. Especially when mainstream media will forget about it in a month's time.

In WA there's some talk of a swing back to basketball for girls players. Boys however are leaving AFL in WA in droves to play basketball and I know it's been noticed by the WAFC. But that's another topic....

Football has always been a big sport with kids and has coexisted with basketball. I think its more likely to stem the flow from football to aussie rules more so than take away from basketball.

Potentially only concerning given sponsorship dollars. I wouldn't be concerned about football "stealing" talent. The success of the Men’s team from 2006 forward and the establishment of the A League hasn’t affected the men’s side of the equation. It’s just created more competition amongst the national leagues for exposure and cash.

Sponsorship dollars are one of the biggest issues facing women's basketball in Australia right now, so even if that was potentially the only issue it would still be a major one.

Loving the Matildas' impact lately though. Good on them.

Last night's game was the most-watched program on aussie tv this year

yeah basketball world isn't going to be impacted by the Matilda's success, it's the AFL world. They'll do whatever it takes to suppress this fanfare once the World Cup is over, they're already scrambling internally with all the CTE stuff coming into the public light more and more.

Big events like this come and go. Soccer participation has been high for a a long time, but the AFLW season coming up will get a lot more attention than the W-League and the overall impact of the world cup probably won't last too long.

Soccer-mania has taken over before, maybe not to this extent but remember some previous men's world cups.

Women's sport will never be a tier one sport over the long term, or a league season taking several months.

What about women's tennis -

Williams era, Barty etc.

I have to say, the media hype has been on whole new level with the Matildas, or should I say, Sam Kerr. Look, congrats to them, the World Cup has been a big success, and its nice to see women get this level of attention in mainstream sport, but the media has really pumped this up to the level now that it's perhaps over the top. And I think they know it too. A Sam Kerr story gets written now because they know it will generate comments and not all of them supportive.

I have to endure listening to 96fm at work all day, and today the Matildas got mentioned about 8 times throughout the day. That's about as much as the Eagles would if they were in the AFL grand final that week. So, there is a bit of hype going on here.

Related, I'm not a fan of netball, but I feel so sorry for the Diamonds. Winning their world cup (unfortunate timing) with virtually no mention of them at all. It seems netball has taken a hit with the public, despite it being a strong program still? I'm assuming it being played in another country affects this, but you'd think if there was so much focus on women's sport now, the Diamonds would surely have been more amongst it.

Anyway, I don't think womens basketball needs to be too concerned. The soccer world cup is focussed hype right now and it will stop being talked about the minute it's all over.

Barty etc exist in the same category as the world cup. Most people follow tennis for a fortnight a year and barely know what's going on for the other 50 weeks. Maybe they'd check headlines or tune in to watch Barty play a French open final, but it's not something attracting consistent big numbers over any length of time, like so many men's sports.

Tennis is a tier 1 sport clearly

I disagree because I think a "tier one" sport requite support all year round.

There is no place in the world where substantial numbers of people watch tennis for substantial portions of the year.

I guess you could argue it's a global tier one sport without being a tier one sport in any particular place (because of the existence of global evehts like Wimbledon etc). I think that just makes it a tier two sport

I disagree because I think a "tier one" sport requite support all year round.

There is no place in the world where substantial numbers of people watch tennis for substantial portions of the year.

I guess you could argue it's a global tier one sport without being a tier one sport in any particular place (because of the existence of global evehts like Wimbledon etc). I think that just makes it a tier two sport

I should qualify that by saying, places I'm aware of. Maybe there are small places where tennis is huge, like bball is huge in Lithuania.

Football, like basketball is a world sport, tennis likewise. Net ball is a very minor sport on the world calendar, it gets media coverage because win win. A lot girls are playing football now that even ten years ago weren't. The Matilda’s were excellent last start, it’s a lot tougher now against the French, good luck to them.

Tennis is tier one in mainland Europe and followed year round since in addition to the summer calendar people don't realise that there is an indoor circuit during winter.

Places like Australia and Britain and to a lesser extent the US (since they care even less), where the local populace follow it for a month during the lead-in and staging of a Grand Slam and then switch off, has always amused me.

I'm surprised someone on Hoops is, at this point in time, feeling sorry for netballers of all the female athletes out there since we have a situation where the Matildas are being hyped to death by the lamestream media regarding their odds of winning when the reality is they have never won a medal at a major tournament before and probably won't again and the fact that we are on a basketball forum. I think we all know what I'm getting at here.

Meanwhile the Opals collect metal on a regular basis, and have been World Champions in what is the no. 2 global sport, yet the average Australian would have no idea. Please note this is coming from someone who is both a football and basketball fan on how ridiculous this whole scenario is. The only thing more so is empathising with netballers/forgetting our own ballers but that may be down to having too much 96fm beamed into the brain (don't worry WC95, it's all love and your employer sucks for propagating that drivel).

Yeah tennis is huge in Europe

Usually we talk tier of sports from a broadcast rights perspective. Media executives consider the Australian summer of tennis to be tier 1, and that's reflected in the rights and coverage.

I feel attacked PerthWorld! I was making a comparison on the 2 female world cups being played at the exact same time. One is getting saturation coverage and the other is getting nothing. I'm all for fairness especially with women sports, regardless what it is, but I can see when something is hyped to death, and that I don't like so much.

And 96fm sucks - just wanted to whinge about that too lol

This world cup highlights the difference between basketball and football all over the world. While both are world games, football really is THE world game. We had a basketball world cup in our country last year with our team on the podium and nothing like the level of publicity or public interest.

People like basketball all over the world, but football is part of who they are.

Even locally, attending one of the Melbourne Victory quarterly, "Victory in business" lunches you can see a huge amount of support from business that Australian basketball can only dream of. Sure we've got a couple of millionaires, but football has everybody else.

"Media executives consider the Australian summer of tennis to be tier 1, and that's reflected in the rights and coverage."

Which backs up what LV is saying that tennis is considered tier 1 for a short part of the year in Australia.

Essentially I'm pointing out the difference between carnival, event type sports vs full season sports

AFL, NRL, NBA, Premier League, NBL, even big bash now, A-League etc etc are a different part of the sporting landscape compared to Tennis (Grand slams in different countries), F1, World Cups from various sports, Spring racing carnival etc.

I'm suggesting there is unlikely to ever be a woman's sport- here or anywhere else- which is a significant and ongoing part of the sporting conversation like say, AFL or NRL in Australia. Or NFL, MLB and NBA are in the USA. Etc.

Back to the question, I think there may be a small sugar hit to increase girl's soccer participation arising from the Matilda's success. But the ability of that to convert into long term continued gains will depend on the wider success of soccer itself in Australia and the success of ongoing women's leagues rather than just a one-off event.

There obviously is a huge chasm between football and basketball, although the difference is that in a majority of other countries around the world if your national basketball team medals frequently it is recognised as a huge deal.

Not so in Australia where sports such as netball (and others) are played amongst a handful of Commonwealth nations resulting in cheap world championship titles which take away from the successes achieved in a truly global sport.

Now we are at a point in time where one of those wins has been ignored, but only due to a massive hype train and not an actual result. Argh, you can't win with the sheer ignorance prevalent in this country.

I feel attacked PerthWorld! I was making a comparison on the 2 female world cups being played at the exact same time. One is getting saturation coverage and the other is getting nothing. I'm all for fairness especially with women sports, regardless what it is, but I can see when something is hyped to death, and that I don't like so much.

And 96fm sucks - just wanted to whinge about that too lol

the big dampener for football is the concussion issues - risk of damage.

Cracking game, my nerves are still shaking after that penalty shootout. Congratulations to both Matilda's and France.

Dam, my heart..
Great win


England v colombia now

What a moment!

It's funny because Australians usually love a 0-0 so they can then proceed to criticise the sport.