January 17, 2025
In a stunning decision, two of the country’s major soccer clubs were made to play before an all-female crowd
December 16 as an act of punishment. And the game drew 46,000 screaming fans, showing substantial interest in the game on the part of female fans.
Many stadiums now have sections reserved exclusively for woman and girls, but they number only a few thousand seats (3,000 at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium), while the game this month showed far more interest. The game was played in Esfahan in Naqsh-e Jahan Stadium Iran’s second largest with 75,000 seats between Esfahan’s Sepahan and Tehran’s Persepolis.
Sepahan won 2-1. The average attendance at a Pro League match last year was 10,800, so the female-only match was a major ticket-seller and not exactly punishment for the two teams. The decision on the all-female crowd was made by the Iranian Football Federation after an unpleasant incident last May when the two teams played in Tehran.
A male Sepahan cheerleader chanted insults against Persepolis’s female fans confined to one special section of the stadium. The federation then fined both clubs and ordered that the next two games between them be held exclusively before female fans. The first game was the one played in December and the second one will come next season.
The women fans were ecstatic. Many made the trip from Tehran. Fans from both sides were decked out in the vivid colors of their team and proved they can make just as much noise as the male fans. The Football Federation voted before this season began to allow women into soccer stadiums, but only into sections blocked off from the rest of the stadium and barring male fans. Families, in other words, cannot sit together.
Moms and their daughters go to one section and dads and their sons to another section. It was assumed the clergy would rise in fury, as they have in the past, at the unholy idea of allowing women into soccer matches where the male fans are famous for the foul language they scream all through a match. But the clergy were silent, suggesting that the opening of stadiums had been cleared in advance with the clerical leadership.
The main reason prompting the change in policy was the growing movement abroad to kick Iran out of the quadrennial World Cup for violating FIFA rules banning discrimination against fans. Several months into the new season, the issue of female attendees appears now to be a closed issue although it isn’t clear if every Pro League stadium now has sections for women.
After the December 16 match, Sepahan stood second in the league standings and Persepolis the champion last year stood fourth.