Last year, former England player Karen Carney was tasked with heading a UK government-backed review of the current landscape of football aptly called The Future of Women’s Football. She conducted research and compiled a list of recommendations for improving the women’s game in the UK which were accepted by the government in December and include, among other things, full professionalisation of the two top divisions, full unionisation for the Women’s Super League and Championship, as well as women’s football potentially getting a dedicated Saturday 3pm broadcast slot.
These are the steps being taken in British women’s football at the moment.
Just a day after England loss to Spain in the World Cup final, Carney was invited to the Sky Sports studio to talk about the future of women’s football. Against the backdrop of the incredible performance by the Lionesses, as well as the massive hit that was the World Cup at large, she was talking about the prospects of the game and giving informed opinions about what needs to be done to an audience of sullen men, Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville.
Talking about investment in the game, Carney makes it clear that the current model is “built on sand”, that what we’re seeing is the very top thriving but we need to build a solid foundation in order to grow sustainably. Carragher proposed that the reason that clubs are not investing is because “women’s football is a ‘loss-maker’”, to which Carney quickly cuts him off and replies “men’s football is. Men’s football doesn’t make profit.” She points out how the clubs are okay with handling that loss, as the overall gains are larger. It’s an investment.
Let’s all just look at the definition of investment, so that we’re all on the same page.
“a thing that is worth buying because it may be profitable or useful in the future”
“an act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result”
Class dismissed, let’s get to it.
I’m excited about the future of women’s football, and as we’ve just turned the page on a new year I thought that I would sit down and list out what we can come to expect from the upcoming 12 months.
In this first part of the projections, we will look at the monetary investments in women’s football, and the business aspect of the upcoming year. There’s a lot of restructuring happening in the European competitions, new broadcast deals to be signed and football clubs to buy. The second part will look at some of the transitions ahead, as well as the growth of the game as it relates to a lot of topics off the pitch.
There’s money to be made in women’s sports
Women’s elite sport as a billion dollar industry by the end of 2024!! Deloitte have projected that women’s elite sport will be generating around US$1.28 billion, £1.02 billion, in revenue in the next year - with football and basketball being the most valuable sports, and North America and Europe the biggest geographical markets. The forecast is based on match day, broadcast and commercial, the last of which currently makes up the biggest piece (US$696 million, 55 per cent) of revenue.
What does it mean? Money makes the world go around. More money into women’s sports will translate into opportunities, resources and respect. And, all that anyone who has a lot of money thinks about is how to make more of it and this forecast is literally saying that women’s sports is good business! Women’s sports is the fastest growing sports market so it’s a great opportunity to get on the train. Getting a team in the NWSL used to cost US$2 million à la Angel City FC, nowadays Bay FC have to cough up an expansion fee of $56 million to get in on the fun.
What’s the impact? I think those of us who have followed women’s football for some time are frustrated because not even the laws of capitalism have worked on the companies - there are so many people who are willing to pay for women’s football products, and we still have to publicly beg Nike for them to release a Mary Earps England shirt? An upside to that whole saga was seeing the community coming together, and people making their own shirts instead, like Deptford Ravens and Foudy’s, and I think that is the kind of energy that we want carried over into 2024. Not the overlooked-by-capitalism part, but the community coming-together around a common cause.
As players and fans continue to make noise and talk about it, more companies are catching on and the numbers speak for themselves. Women are the driving force of consumption, accounting for 85 per cent of all purchases and the driver behind between 70-80 per cent of all consumer spending, meaning that their buying power needs to be tapped into and catered to by brands, according to Katy Bowman, director at Barclays.Angel City’s Sydney Leroux with a beautiful goal towards the end of last NWSL season … source:tumblr There’s a new broadcasting deal to be negotiated for the Women’s Super League at the end of this season. The current deal with BBC and Sky Sports, signed back in 2021, is worth around £7 million -£8m (US$8.5m-$9.7m) per season. It’s as of yet unclear whether Sky Sports have a concrete plan to keep the rights, and UK pay-TV broadcaster TNT Sports is reportedly interested in preparing a bid. It makes sense, considering that the WSL is one of the fastest-expanding and most attractive leagues in the women’s game.
W-Sport has just launched in France to cover the WSL, Frauen Bundesliga, Serie A Femminile, and Damallsvenskan, in French.
DAZN has been the main broadcaster and has covered the UEFA Women’s Champions League for free on youtube for the past few seasons. They’ve also started acquiring the rights for various leagues and are showing Liga F, NWSL, and Division 1. In some locations they’ve already moved over to the paid model (Spain, France and the UK) but everywhere else (except for the MENA region and China) it has remained free for this season and the transition to the paid model is likely to go ahead next season.What does it mean? Good broadcasting deals are incredibly important for the obvious outreach as pe can’t get attached to something they can’t see, as well as money reasons, but a good deal also has an effect on kick-off times. Getting a primetime slot means more eyes on the match (currently there’s a lot of 11am on a Sunday or 6pm on a Saturday.) There have been talks about the possibility of lifting the 3pm Saturday broadcast blackout for next season, which would mean more and better possibilities for broadcasters.
For the past 30 years, despite the increase of female athletes, women’s sports only received 4% of the total sports coverage. However, looking to social media and streaming platforms, this number has risen to 15% (but remains at about 5% for terrestrial TV.) With the increase in accessibility, so many more people are getting into sports - young women are the fastest growing sports audience!
The investment in players and the way that marketing of players is approached is changing. As more brands are recognising the cultural power of female athletes, we’re more likely to see the faces of Alex Morgan, Sam Kerr, and Ada Hegerberg in the Nike shops. Around tournaments like the Euros 2022 and the World Cup 2023, the Lionesses were everywhere (even though brands were still quite late on the ball, only really blasting out about it in the month leading up to the tournament…) Can we get more female footballers onto lucrative contracts, out with tournament season? Can we get footballers marketed in different ways, outside the box of what a female athlete “should” look like (white, thin, pretty, harmless)?
Creative Agency Dark Horses is spot on talking about the seven deadly marketing sins of women’s sport, and it’s exactly this kind of energy we need in 2024. This is required reading for everyone to reflect on, whether you’re in marketing or not! I’m just going to quote a section right here to wet your appetite:
“In trying to purify women’s sport we’re inadvertently reinforcing an outdated belief that women are more civilised, more principled, or more moral than men. Whilst seemingly flattering on the surface, these stereotypes have their origins in a deep misogynism, and the fact that they drift into modern sporting narratives is concerning.
Women should not be held to a higher standard of behaviour than men. There should be no moral inventory that they are required to live up to. Whilst sponsors and rights-holders might be drawn to a more family-friendly, cleaner version of the game, it negatively affects the sporting drama for fans. Wholesome is vanilla. It’s not exciting. Dangerously, it’s boring.”
Another way that clubs are showing their investment in their women’s team is by dedicating more resources to them - Manchester City is a prime example of this, with the club having recently presented a plan to Manchester city council for a purpose-built training facility dedicated to their women’s team. This is something that is talked about a bit, and hopefully we will get to see more than one club committing to building facilities for their women’s team in 2024.
As we are seeing an exciting development in the attention players are getting from brands and fans, players are making sure to take matters into their own hands! Christen Press and Tobin Heath have a youtube channel, and they’re part of running a clothing brand, as well as a membership. Tottenham’s goalkeeper Barbora Votíková has a huge following on her slightly chaotic and highly entertaining youtube channel in her native Czech language (no Czech required.) Alisha Lehmann’s instagram following spiked 75% in the year leading up to last summer’s World Cup, when she had amassed an impressive 13,4 million followers, making her the most popular Swiss athlete and outranking tennis legend Roger Federer. According to Nielsen Sport, one instagram post from her is worth over US$300 000 in media value. The footballer also sells her own calendars featuring pictures of herself.It’s becoming increasingly trendy to get invested in a football club, whether that’s emotionally or financially. The notion of unlikely football owners span from Hollywood A-listers and former athletes to the average football fan, which is an interesting development going against the general picture of football clubs only being for conglomerates and balding billionaires amassing them like piles of toys (especially considering the fact, despite what Jamie Carragher is on about, it’s not lucrative or good business per se to own a football club.)
Women investing in women is a 2024 (and beyond) kind of energy. Amongst the NWSL clubs we’ve got everyone from former and current athletes to actresses and former presidential daughters:
Natalie Portman, Serena Williams, Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy investing in Angel City.
Naomi Osaka investing in North Carolina Courage.
Kendall Coyne Schofield and Sarah Spain investing in Chicago Red Stars.Brianna Scurry, Jenna Hager Bush, Chelsea Clinton and Dominique Dawes investing in Washington Spirit. The Spirit’s owner, Michelle Kang, recently acquired London City Lionesses which is an independent club playing in the English Championship. Kang is also the majority owner of Olympique Lyonnais Féminin.
Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny have done a similar job with historic Welsh club Wrexham, dragging them out of the obscurity of the National League to League Two and onto the star studded stages at the Emmys thanks to their documentary. The rise in popularity and investment has had a positive effect on their women’s team as well. The Red Dragons are, at the start of 2024, third in the Welsh top-flight with striker Rosie Hughes the frontrunner for claiming the Golden Boot.
What does it mean? Women bypassing the traditional gatekeepers and investing their money in women’s sport is huge. It shows that it’s not just the men setting the agenda. The influx of American investors in football (or *soccer*) is interesting - in the US the soccer hierarchy looks different, as it’s the women who have the successful background and international notoriety. Americans also know how to monetise sports very well, and something which can come in handy at this point of the development of women’s football.
Big competitions
Another year, another tournament! This time around it’s the Olympics, taking place in Paris and France this summer. It is the first Olympics to achieve numerical gender parity (!) which in itself is shocking but the fact is that football is one of only two sports (!!) in the whole Games (!!!) where there’s not as many places for the women as there are for the men. The other one is wrestling. On the men’s side, 16 U-23 teams qualify for the tournament whereas on the women’s side only 12 senior teams qualify.
What does it mean? The Olympics has historically been really important for women’s football as a stage to showcase their talent and there has been some great and unforgettable moments. Due to the lack of an age-cap and lack of other opportunities, it has served as a catalyst for growth for the women’s game, but the process has stagnated. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sophie Lawson mused on whether it’s even necessary to keep the current format, and whether the game would benefit from a more regionally focused approach.
With the new Nations League format for qualification, that has meant that the path to the Olympics is thornier for European teams and will see a lot of big teams missing out narrowly. It also means missing out on a lot of teams from other confederations where only one or two teams qualify. Sweden’s captain Kosovare Asllani has been vocal about her discontent with the set-up.
Here’s information with dates and locations for the summer’s tournament.
The Champions League is looking riveting so far this season with a few exciting upsets (mainly courtesy of Paris FC) - will we see a new champion this year?
Including the time when it was called the UEFA Women’s Cup, we have had eight different teams win it since its inception in the 2001/02 season. There’s a clear French and German dominion, with a speck of Swedish, English, and lately Spanish teams lodged in there. In the last 10 years, six of those titles were claimed by Lyon, showing the French side’s dominance on the continent, only recently broken up by Barcelona.
Next season will be the last season running with the current format, after which we will see yet another restructure of the competition, which will possibly include the creation of a second-tier international tournament like the men’s Europa League. More on that further down the line.The WSL is undergoing big changes too, as it will no longer be run by the Football Association (FA) but rather a new company called NewCo (a working title) who will take over the running of the WSL and the Championship from the 2024/25 season. Sarah Shephard has written a good all-encompassing article on the Athletic about what these new changes mean for the league going forward.
What does this mean? In short, the new ownership in the two top divisions of English women’s football means that teams are going to have more direct power. The WSL clubs will receive 75 per cent of the combined revenue from the two divisions, whereas the Championship clubs receive 20 per cent. WSL clubs will also have all the voting power on commercial and broadcast matters.
That was everything for part one of these women’s football 2024 projections! Do you have any projection of your own to add? Let us know in the comment section <3