Published: 07:00 EDT, September 18, 2023 | Updated: 07:11 EDT, September 18, 2023
Women’s football must finally introduce cost controls to ensure fairer competition as Baroness Sue Campbell admitted some clubs are “nervous” about investing more.
The Football Association will hand over the top two divisions – the Women’s Super League and the Championship – to a new company (NewCo) ahead of the 2024-2025 season.
A working group of ten chief executives from first division and second division clubs have worked with the FA to help shape the future of women’s football.
More than £3 million was spent by clubs around the world in this summer’s transfer window, but that figure is still dwarfed by the £61 billion spent on transfers in the men’s game.
Campbell, the FA’s head of women’s football, admitted there was a gap between the WSL’s top clubs and the rest that could only be closed by cutting spending.
Baroness Sue Campbell (pictured) believes cost controls need to be introduced in women’s football
Women’s Super League clubs spent over £3 million in the last summer transfer window
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“There definitely has to be a fair play approach,” Campbell said.
“We’ve been talking to this group of CEOs about how to make this game more investable.”
“The managing directors of some Super League clubs are slacking off, they are afraid to invest even more because they cannot foresee when it will stop.”
“So if you invest all the time, and every time you invest, they go again, and then they go again, and then they go again.” What makes it investable for me? So cost control becomes really important because it means I know what I’m investing in and I can now see this as a venture worth investing in.
“We have to get this into people’s minds, they have to understand it.” We firmly believe that there will be other clubs that will carry on this season too, because some of these CEOs sitting in this room have understood it and have already gone back and started to change things, you can feel that event.
“It starts to happen naturally.” So I think you’re going to see a real change. But what we don’t want is just a few very rich clubs, and to be fair to the CEOs of those clubs, they don’t want that. They were really good at sitting at the table and saying, “We recognize that a four-a-side league is not going to be sellable to broadcasters and it’s not going to be commercially attractive.”
“So we need a league that’s really vibrant, everyone understands that.” The next big gap between the Championship and the National League is something I’m working on with colleagues to see if there’s another way to do that to structure the National League. But that’s a little further down to try and give us the easiest possible stepping stone to mastery. But there is still a lot to do.”
WSL chairman Dawn Airey (above) believes the division can become a billion-pound league
WSL chairman Dawn Airey said the rapid growth of the women’s game had sparked confidence that the top flight could become a billion-pound league.
“One of our stated goals is to make this the first women’s league in the world to generate a billion pounds, league and club revenue, and there is no reason why we shouldn’t do that,” Airey said.
“That’s our goal, to bring more funding into this business at all levels.”
“It’s a very delicate ecosystem at every level and that’s one thing I’ve learned about women’s football.”
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