Women’s football will thrive by embracing its differences
There can be few more exciting things in the hashtag#SportsBiz than having the opportunity to grow a sport with a huge addressable market, underleveraged potential, and cultural momentum finally behind it.
Women’s football in England is at that stage.
But the decisions the game makes now could shape the sport for decades to come, with every move looked back on as either being decisive or divisive in delivering what the sport needed.
But what are those choices and how should they be considered?
Women Only?
The biggest question women’s football needs to ask itself is whether it wants to create real separation from the men’s game or run the risk of always being viewed as a secondary partner.
Being attached to the resources and know-how of major football organisations and clubs can bring huge benefits be it: access to stadia, training facilities and performance resources; shared strategic, financial and operational management expertise on and off-pitch; marketing and communication synergies from association with well-established global brands with large captive audiences. However, there is a macro threat to growth which is that women’s football and teams become viewed and operated as sub-business units. Valuable but not prioritised. Spent on but not invested in. Thought of but with little consideration. Thus, true potential is never realised.
And there have already been concerning stories at the top and bottom of the game, with some women’s teams being dismayed at the conditions they had to train in compared to the men, and the appropriate duty of care not given to young girls let go by clubs after stints in the academies. So, the precedents are in place.
For women, professionalism can’t be seen as a one-off turnkey moment. It must be a perpetual state of investment and return. And the greatest returns will be achieved when focus is dedicated to the differences. That means kit and training equipment designed from a female first player perspective, it means strength and conditioning customised to the female physiology, it means structuring training around menstrual cycles. But this won’t happen when women’s teams are still having to be subservient to the interests of the men’s teams.
More worrying would be what happens to women’s teams if EPL or EFL clubs overstretch themselves chasing success to the point of existential destruction. In these cases, women’s team’s risk being viewed as an operational cost easily cut to prop up the survival of the men’s team. So, women’s football needs as much protection from the men’s game as it does support. Which plays into ownership.
The current ownership structure of the men’s game also puts the fate of women’s football square in the hands of rich men. There are currently no majority female owners of any top-tier professional football clubs in the UK. And as most WSL teams are born from established men’s teams, by turn there are no female owners of professional women’s teams either. Representation of women at board level is similarly sparse. Yet, if the game is to thrive it needs more women at the very top investing in the game, running the game and pushing the game forward. That requires new types of ownership (be it PE, VC, private or institutional wealth) which guarantees the needs of women’s football are put first, as has been seen in the NWSL with Angel City FC. That won’t happen in the current structure.
The Football Association has taken responsibility for that structure and operation of the game up to this point (Although the WSL will transition into an independent company from 2023 to 2026 with the FA a shareholder, an interim solution until the longer-term future of the game is decided). And while the WSL clubs predominantly want to decouple from the governing body to reap the commercial benefits of independence (just as the Premier League did), this seems like a sure-fire way to ensure market forces will eventually create destructive separation between the elite of the WSL and the leagues below, especially without any change to the model of ownership and competition.
The commercial model of the men’s game while having been successful and still experiencing reasonable CAGR is ripe for strategic innovation. However, the legacy challenges in the way of doing so make any major changes to realise exponential growth almost impossible. The women’s game, however, has a chance to start fresh and pioneer what many in the sportsbiz see as a panacea, the chance to build a new business model for football clubs which better aligns with the customer-obsessed, data-led giants of tech, media and retail. However, this won’t happen while the business of women’s football is adjoined to the men’s.
More important than all of this, however, is that the values of the women’s game should be sacrosanct, should they not? Equality and women’s rights to the fore. How can that be achieved with so many men’s teams being owned by regimes who deliberately enforce substantial discrimination against women. And this isn’t just Gulf states. Women’s rights being stripped away in America can’t be overlooked, with US-based EPL owners donating to the Republican Party, who are now looking to bring in a national ban on abortion.
Surely, that’s jarring.
Of course, lots of these problems could be alleviated by creating greater separation from the men’s game. And now is the time to consider just that, as opposed to sleepwalking, and in some cases walking with eyes wide open, into the exact same problems.
So, let’s consider what separation could potentially look like.
Competition Model
Everyone wants to both nurture the grassroots while seeing the top of the game become a commercial juggernaut. But how can this best be achieved? And through what model of competition?
The current approach mimics the men’s format. A major league at the top with international growth ambitions, and a league structure with promotion and relegation baked in, which runs down to county football. But this model is full of historical challenges, with the EPL/EFL comparison demonstrating how unstable it can be once unfettered market forces take hold. Shouldn’t a radical new approach be considered now before it’s too late? Shouldn’t sustainability be the guiding principle of all women’s football? What if something could be created that took the best of the varying models of competition across the world? A model which engineered sustainable growth in now while the scale is still small but the potential huge.
In this case, the US sports franchise model might actually be of most inspiration to women’s football in the UK. Why not scrap relegation and promotion at the elite level and create a closed league of 20 professional teams? A Women’s Super League as it were!
Structure these teams to represent the major regions across the UK (including Wales & Scotland) as opposed to simply mimicking the hotspots for men’s football. Build the franchises from an audience-first perspective, where population is the driving factor, and seek to cover the country as best possible geographically so everyone feels close enough to connect with the game at the elite level.
By turn, look to change the operating model, whereby any women’s team must be run independently of the men’s teams. Existing clubs can still own women’s teams but as different business entities with their own governance rules and P&Ls. Demerge them. And open up and encourage ownership to new outside female-led investment if some clubs want to sell and/or others want to build franchises.
Of course, that then leaves the question of what happens to the teams below the WSL with smaller populations but with significant heritage like Doncaster Belles or with strong values like Lewes LFC.
Well, what if their mantra was fundamentally different yet still professional? What if instead of rampant commercialisation, their objective was community connectivity. So, take another 40 cities and town spread across the country, and run them as part of a franchise model but with two leagues of 20, between which there was relegation and promotion but not to the WSL or the leagues below. This could still be run by the FA, with a role dedicated to nurturing the lower leagues.
So, two concurrent franchise models. One at the top dedicated to rampant commercialisation and globalisation mapped against major cities. And one below mapped to 40 smaller cities and towns dedicated to community but with relegation and promotion factored in to create difference. A real mixed model taking elements from both the UK and US models of competition.
By turn, this could lead to two distinct league structures with different values, different operating models, differing commercial structures and the chance to build different brand identities. But with greater protection to the long-term sustainability of the game. A radical proposal no doubt but one that would prevent the top and bottom of the game working against each other.
And the innovation shouldn’t stop there. When it comes to cup games, do what the men can’t. Intercontinental club cup competitions between the elite of Europe, the US and the ROW should be considered. Defaulting to the UEFA model of club competition feels like a missed opportunity for the women’s game. Of course, the FA Cup can still remain as an open competition to all clubs ensuring fans love of giant killing still has a regular place in the calendar.
Once a franchise model is established then the business and commercial model of the leagues and clubs can be better determined. But the two driving factors should be equality and sustainability. So everything from transfer budget restrictions to salary caps, to league-wide revenue share should be considered. The destructive elements of the men’s game should be engineered out. By turn, the women’s game can prevent the pooling of success amongst the richest clubs and increase the competition within the league ad infinitum.
Commercial Model
The commercial model of the women’s game should be considered from the perspective of what would work best for the next 50 years, not what worked for men over the last 50.
Maybe now is the time for women’s football to build itself as a media, tech & retail first platform with the long-term aim of monetising every fan, something the men’s game hasn’t even got close to managing. In fact, the women’s game should be asking itself what are all the things the men’s game want to do but can’t because of legacy challenges, and how we can adopt them?
Imagine if all the rights of every women’s football team were pooled and then built to create a unique one-stop media, tech and retail model through which any fan or brand could access every aspect of women’s football 24/7 (and all the surrounding categories of value), personalised to their specific needs. The data of every single women’s football fan collected, owned, pooled, shared and commercialised amongst and by the teams themselves. The synergetic effects of this would be transformative.
This doesn’t mean abandoning relationships with broadcasters and sponsors completely, who are key to growth in the short-term. But building a more flexible mixed model. One more acutely geared to B2C, as opposed to the current B2B2C model. One where everything is built around the fan first and on the principles of first-party data ownership, innovation, and collaboration. One with no major restrictions around who owns which set of fans or a specific set of stories, just the clubs working together to build the total revenue of women’s football.
This then changes what is commercially possible. The game can move from a pure broadcast and sponsorship model to one led by fan data with the opportunity to monetise through subscriptions, micropayments, one-off payments, &/or advertising. One with broader commercial opportunities across live and non-live; media & content; advertising, sponsorship & partnerships; retail, licensing & merchandise; gaming & entertainment; messaging & chat; AR/VR/MR; community and creators; new IP, new products and even new business ventures born from fan insight. One more akin to ITV than MUFC, more like WeChat than the Black Cats. By turn, the women’s game would be free from the current default whereby rights are sold as bolt-on’s or value add. The data would be stronger, the products available to buy broader, the pool of brands able to access the game wider. All round a healthier model.
Protocols can then be implemented around the types of businesses who can associate with women’s football, preventing the influx of crypto, gambling, and even shell companies which have taken over the men’s game. Women’s football could be led by a clear brand strategy dedicated to a progressive viewpoint that guides the commercial strategy and ensures any partners align with its values.
Marketing the Game
Crucial to the growth of the game is how it is marketed. And by marketing, it’s not just about promotion. Aforementioned, we talked about re-formulating the product (competition model), changing the distribution model (B2C first), but pricing and promotion also need attention.
Pricing needs to be dynamic to make the game accessible and to recruit as many potential fans as possible. Growth in general should be broadly aimed at light and non-buyers i.e. those who may have been to one game a year like a major international tournament, or those that are yet to even experience it. Increase their propensity. Focusing on the current base of loyalists by trying to extract more won’t grow the game. New fans are the priority.
In particular, a strategy for recruiting young fans should be high up the list. Fans of men’s football now skew much older, especially in-stadia. That means there are plenty of young fans who simply can’t experience the live game. Women’s football should aim to be the de facto go to for live football for young fans. This should be a priority acquisition audience. And pricing should reflect the ambition to recruit young fans based on their potential LTV not immediate return. Again, much harder to do within a system which combines men’s and women’s football resources.
Growth will come by prioritising reach over revenue in both domestic and international markets. That means avoiding paywalls where possible. Free-to-air should always be first choice. You can’t grow the game by limiting who can see it.
What fans see in terms of the product or through marketing communications and campaigns are just as important.
Experimentation in production should be encouraged. Women’s football should aim to become a test bed for innovation, be it fans fronting programming, commentary choices, co-watching, multi-screening, integration of social feeds, direct links to commerce, and personalisation of the viewing experience. The NFL’s Nickelodeon partnership a great example of what’s possible when different audience needs are considered.
Communications and campaigns should aim to be more singular in their optimism and confidence in what make’s women’s football unique. This can come through greater collaboration in the overall promotion of the game. Imagine the creative possibilities if all the clubs bandied together to consider how they could use all assets more openly, freely and without restrictions on IP and player usage. Promotion becomes less about doing your own thing and more about feeding the growth of the game for everyone’s benefit.
And comparisons with the men be it along the lines of performance, attitudes, or values. should be avoided. Whereas building the star power of major players should be prioritised. Now more than ever is the time for women’s football to be confident in the value of its own standalone product. That should shine through in campaigns.
Women’s football has had to fight incredibly hard to get the attention it deserves, but at this point of inflection the chance to create separation from the men’s game could be the catalyst by which it finally unleashes its true potential.
