Was Audience Ever the Problem? Inside Aurora's Plan for Women's Football

Some of the most interesting conversations at the World Football Summit did not happen on stage.

Sitting at one of the meeting points inside the event in Madrid, I spoke with former professional footballer Gus Hurdle and John Brennan, co founders of Aurora Sport Holdings.

We started by exchanging our own views on the women's game, its growth and where it still needs to develop. From there, we got into the interview.

What followed was a conversation about investment, data, player performance and Aurora's ambitions within women's football.

But one idea stuck with me afterwards.

What if audience was never really the problem in women's football? What if the bigger problem was the infrastructure around it?

From a Conversation to Aurora

Hurdle and Brennan came into Aurora from very different backgrounds.

After professional football, Hurdle moved into media, working across the industry including with EA and Red Bull. Something that stood out during our conversation was how he viewed his playing career as preparation for what came afterwards rather than a completely separate chapter.

Brennan brought around three decades of experience across television and film, alongside experience building and exiting businesses.

The pair first met around 15 years ago while working on a production. Brennan described an understanding between them from the beginning about what each person brought to the table.

Aurora itself came much later.

Part of Brennan's interest in women's football developed through his experience as a Chelsea supporter. Finding it increasingly difficult to watch the men's team at Stamford Bridge led him towards watching the women's team instead.

It was an eye opener.

The environment felt more accessible and more family orientated. Brennan began researching the women's game more seriously. The further he looked into it, the more interested he became.

Eventually, those conversations reached Hurdle.

The question shifted from what was happening in women's football to what they could potentially build within it.

The Aurora Model

Aurora's ambition centres around three areas.

The first is acquiring women's football clubs and helping to professionalise them.

The second is developing a performance platform built specifically around the women's game.

The third is creating a wider commercial platform capable of giving those clubs greater collective weight and reach.

Aurora has been developing the proposition for around 18 months and, according to our conversation in Madrid, has been speaking with clubs both inside and outside Europe.

Brennan has since publicly described Aurora's ambition as building a four club women's football group across Europe, connecting performance data, commercial intelligence and content across the clubs.

That wider infrastructure is arguably where the model becomes most interesting.

Rather than looking at individual women's clubs simply as assets to acquire, Aurora wants to build systems around them.

And one principle kept coming up during our conversation.

Build for women first.

What Does Building for Women First Actually Mean?

Football is football.

That was acknowledged during our discussion.

But that does not necessarily mean every system surrounding the game should be identical.

Aurora is developing a performance platform bringing together four areas including fitness, data, coaching and injuries. The intention is to monitor those areas over time and give clubs a more complete understanding of player performance.

One of those modules is already at an advanced stage of development, with technology being used around coaching methods, tactics and ideas.

What interested me was the thinking behind it.

Rather than taking something originally designed around male footballers and adapting it afterwards, Aurora wants to begin with the female athlete.

How players move, train and respond physically can require different considerations.

That sounds straightforward.

Building it is considerably harder.

The Data Problem

One of the biggest challenges Aurora has encountered is access to data.

If you want to create infrastructure specifically around female athletes, you need enough female specific information to build it properly.

Our conversation moved into areas including ACL injuries, footwear and playing surfaces.

The discussion around surfaces was particularly interesting.

Artificial pitches can provide smaller clubs with greater access to facilities and extend the window in which football can be played.

But different surfaces also have different implications for the body.

At the highest levels of men's football, significant attention is given to playing environments, recovery and protecting valuable athletes.

Further down the women's football pyramid, access can dictate where players train and play.

That creates a wider question.

If the industry wants women's football to become increasingly professional, should the infrastructure surrounding the players not professionalise at the same speed?

For me, this is where the conversation moved beyond Aurora.

Growing the women's game cannot only mean bigger sponsorship deals, larger attendances and better broadcasting.

The infrastructure underneath the product matters too.

Maybe Audience Was Never the Problem

This became the most thought provoking part of our conversation.

We discussed the history of women's football and, in particular, the enormous crowds the game has attracted at different points long before today's commercial boom.

One example raised was the unofficial Women's World Cup held in Mexico in 1971, where the final at the Estadio Azteca attracted a huge crowd.

There are historic examples in England too of women's matches attracting extraordinary attendances more than a century ago.

That history changes the way you look at today's growth.

Women's football is sometimes discussed as though the industry has finally discovered that people might want to watch it.

But perhaps that is the wrong way of looking at it.

Maybe the audience did not suddenly appear.

Maybe the structures around the game simply failed to develop at the same rate.

Facilities. Investment. Data. Commercial expertise. Player support. Dedicated technology.

Infrastructure.

That was the point from our conversation that stayed with me.

The Commercial Opportunity

This is also why Aurora's proposition is worth watching from a football business perspective.

Women's football is attracting increasing attention from sponsors, investors and established football organisations.

But Brennan's argument is that the opportunity is not simply in backing the growth that already exists.

It is in building what is still missing.

He has subsequently described women's football publicly as a commercial opportunity rather than a charity case, pointing towards gaps in infrastructure, data and content as areas that can be built around.

That reflected much of what we discussed in Madrid.

Aurora has assembled experience from across football, including people with backgrounds in the WSL, sponsorship and partnerships.

Its performance platform is intended initially for Aurora clubs before potentially expanding further across the women's game and into other sports.

Of course, ambition and execution are different things.

Technology still has to work in real football environments. Clubs have to be acquired and operated sustainably. Commercial platforms have to produce commercial results.

Aurora still has plenty to prove.

But the underlying idea is an interesting one.

Build the Infrastructure the Game Deserves

I left the conversation thinking less about whether women's football will continue growing and more about what has to be built around it if that growth is going to last.

Giving the women's game the same attention and weight as the men's game does not necessarily mean copying the infrastructure of men's football.

In some areas, it may mean building something specifically for women from the beginning.

That is what Aurora is attempting to do.

And perhaps the biggest lesson from the conversation was also the simplest.

Women's football may not need to keep proving that an audience exists.

The challenge now is building the infrastructure worthy of it.