Spurs will continue to look at scheduling in a bid to grow fanbase – Skinner | OneFootball

Tottenham Hotspur head coach Rehanne Skinner says that the club want to build a core support of fans living close to their traditional home and that careful scheduling of matches will help them achieve that goal.

Spurs return to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium tomorrow for the first time since the opening day of the season when they end the 2021/2022 campaign against Leicester City.

The North Londoners have recorded some impressive crowds at their usual home of The Hive this season and tomorrow’s fixture back in the London Borough of Haringay will allow the club to sell their women’s team further to a greater number of fans.

When speaking to FAWSL Full-Time ahead of the match, Spurs boss Skinner said that the club want to play more games at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to build a connection with the local fanbase and that they must continue to look carefully at the scheduling of matches of the men’s and women’s teams.

“It’s something that we are all aspiring to (playing in Tottenham Hotspur Stadium more regularly),” Skinner said. “We want to make sure that the base of the Spurs fans is in the heart of where the stadium is. Being a bit closer to that a bit more frequently would definitely help us to bridge that gap.

“Obviously, scheduling and broadcast is the issue across the men’s and the women’s teams so you are trying to piece together a lot of logistical challenges with that but whenever there has been an opportunity to do that, the club have looked to do it this year. We’ve done more games (at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium) than previously and we want to keep moving that forward.”

Speaking further about the growth of Spurs’ fanbase, Skinner hailed the collective effort and commitment of the whole club to drive the women’s team forward whilst adding that days like Sunday at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium are huge for selling the team to new fans.

She said “It’s massive (playing at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium), it’s something that we have talked about a lot. In pre-season, we all made a commitment to wanting to improve that and that comes across in every department in the club to grow the game and grow the fanbase. We’ve got to do the football stuff and get the results, the club have got to promote it, the club’s got to market it effectively, we’ve got to have games in the stadium, we’ve got to do all of the things to make it attractive for people to come to and for men’s fans to transition to watching the women’s team as ‘one club’.

“We have to look at kick-off times next year because that will help us to continue to grow our fanbase but we have been absolutely delighted with the support from the fans this year, it has definitely grown game-on-game. There have been a couple of games at The Hive where we have broken our attendance record which has been a massive achievement this year and we want to continue that next season.”

Tottenham Hotspur’s final game of the season against Leicester City kicks-off at 12pm on Sunday afternoon. Tickets remain on-sale and can be purchased by clicking here.