On Aug. 7, I got a notification that read, “One and a half million Danes watched the Euro 2017 final.” Scanning the news story, I learned that the previous night’s game had been the most watched football match since the final of the 2014 World Cup, and that no other sports event featuring Danish athletes had garnered more viewers for five years. Aired simultaneously on both major nationwide television networks, the match attracted an audience of 1,469,000 viewers — an impressive turnout, not least in a country of under six million people, hundreds of thousands of whom were spending their summer holidays abroad. With that caveat in mind, the writer estimated that 82 percent of the afternoon’s TV viewers had been watching as Denmark lost 4-2 to The Netherlands.

There is nothing new about major sports events attracting large TV audiences, but there was still something undeniably impressive about this broadcast. The match that attracted such a crowd was the final game of the Union of European Football Association’s 2017 Women’s Euro — a competition that featured stars like Lieke Martens, Jodie Taylor and Pernille Harder rather than Paul Pogba, Cristiano Ronaldo and Marco Reus. While finals of the men’s European and World Championships always attract millions of TV viewers, women’s football has historically struggled to gain consistent media attention, let alone reaching more ambitious goals like equal representation, equal recognition or equal pay.

The history of pundits, writers and officials going out of their way to belittle women’s football, to objectify female players and to frame them as second-rate and/or hysterical is too vast and too depressing for me to trace, but this summer’s championship gives me reason to hope that audiences and administrators alike are finally ready to take women’s football seriously. When women’s football matches draw as many viewers as male ones do, and when tickets for the Aug. 6 final sell out 20 minutes after they go on sale, it no longer seems naïve to think that the time for women’s football has arrived.

To celebrate the rise of women’s football as a mass-consumed sport is not to suggest that we should stop pointing out the major challenges that women’s football, and professional sports generally, still faces today. Sexism, racism and homophobia remain visibly embedded in sports and its respective stars. A writer out to frame team sports or individual athletes as deplorables risks being overwhelmed with usable material. But if examining sports repeatedly reveals both its personal and structural flaws, it also gives us stories of teams and individuals transcending those flaws. If controversial footballer Nicholas Anelka’s quenelle celebration shows us the ugly side of sports, equally controversial footballer Zlatan Ibrahimović’s 2015 tribute to the World Food Program in a goal celebration shows political football at its most heartwarming.

At the intersection of sports and politics lie stories worth telling. Sports often reflect or challenge social conventions. It lets us think about issues of gender, race, class and many more by showing us systems of power at work and being upended. But not all sports writing has to link the tale it tells to a political cause. Perhaps most importantly, sports is about incredible stories, both triumphs and defeats. As a topic to write about, sports finds its unending appeal in the greatness of its narratives. Zinedine Zidane’s volley versus Bayer Leverkusen. Kerri Strug’s gold-winning vault with an ankle injury. Paula Radcliffe’s unbeatable marathon record. Martina Navratilova’s Wimbledon win over Chris Evert. And, of course, Zidane’s chipped penalty and overtime headbutt in his last ever match.

Why, then, is sports worth writing and reading about? Because of the raw emotion in its greatest stories. Because of the larger debates that sports reflects and distils. Because we could all benefit from hearing more about how the struggles and triumphs of our favorite athletes mirror their struggles and triumphs as people. Ultimately, sports writing is overwhelmingly more about stories of perseverance, struggle, and unlikely triumph rather than about winners and losers.