When the new Women’s Super League season begins next Friday, it will be heading into uncharted territory.
The top two divisions of the women’s game in England are no longer run by the Football Association. In August, they were handed over to a new independent company that had been informally known as ‘NewCo’ and has since been renamed the Women’s Professional League Limited (WPLL).
The WPLL has been set up in a similar way to the Premier League, with all 23 clubs who make up the Women’s Super League (WSL) and Women’s Championship being a shareholder of the new company. It has been supported by a £20million interest-free loan from the Premier League itself, repayable once the company posts revenues of £100m.
The WPLL’s key principles are, in its own grammatically-confusing words, “dedication to women’s football, build the foundation for growth, develop a progressive company culture, collaboration with stakeholders”.
What this means in practical terms is unclear.
What we do know is the WSL’s media rights deal expired at the end of last season, as did the League Cup’s sponsorship by Continental Tyres. Media rights have been rolled over for another year, whilst the League Cup is currently without a sponsor, with WPLL chief executive Nikki Doucet (pictured above, on the left) admitting in an interview with UK newspaper The Guardian last month that attracting investment is harder than she expected.
It was always going to be tough for the WPLL with such a tight timeline. Having only formally taken charge a month before the start of the season, there was little opportunity to make any real changes to the league. Instead, 2024-25 will feel almost like a ‘holding’ year as the WPLL considers what it will do moving forward, and understandably there is a desire among fans to know what that vision of the future will be.
Speaking to journalists at the WSL’s media day on Monday, Doucet was vague when asked what supporters will get from the domestic top flight over the next nine months. “I hope the fans can expect exciting football and that the players are supported in the right way,” she said. “That they can be the best footballers and the best versions of themselves that they possibly can be.
“I don’t think any women’s football anywhere in the world has been able to articulate a distinctive brand of football, or bring it to life in a way that has the right tone and language. We’re all figuring that out still.
“But we can’t be afraid to fail. We have to be able to try new things. We have a really big fanbase that has never watched men’s football. Our fanbase is complex, because we have people who have been in it for so long, who are the innovators of our game, to people who have never watched it before and are coming in for the first time.
“We all know that there’s something special about the women’s game that we don’t want to see lost. I think that’s part of the fear that I hear sometimes from some of our core fans. But I think we can test and learn and see what works and doesn’t work. We’re not going to get it all right but I think we need to be able to test and learn.”
The desire to try new things is laudable, but the WPLL is not introducing the country to a new concept. It is taking over the running of one of the most successful and established women’s sports leagues in the world.
Plenty of improvement is possible, but Doucet’s assessment of that fanbase has raised eyebrows in the past, including when she told UK broadcaster Sky News that she sees going to a women’s match as “kind of like Glastonbury” and when she compared a large section of women’s football supporters to fans of Taylor Swift.
In Monday’s meeting with journalists, she brought up Swift again, suggesting “maybe we want to share friendship bracelets at games”, a reference to Swift’s fans who make and share bracelets before her shows.
Nothing Doucet says is factually wrong. There is a significant subsection of women’s football fans who share demographic similarities with the average Taylor Swift fan in that they are young women. But the way that particular group is discussed feels infantilising, and it is hard to recognise these jargon-filled marketing cliches in the crowds who actually attend WSL matches.
Doucet said on Monday that she is focused on “obsessing the consumer” — a business idea about centring the customer — but women’s football has a very diverse fanbase, and Doucet seems quite focused on one section of it.
Take her assessment that “we’re more of a community versus tribalism”. Even a cursory 10 minutes on social media would show that to be untrue. Women’s football fans are not setting up versions of the men’s game’s firms to fight rival supporters (yet) but you won’t see many followers of Arsenal and Chelsea holding hands.
Does it matter? Maybe not. Doucet’s role is to attract investors, but clubs will continue to be the key point of engagement for football supporters — no one will be a fan of the WPLL.
But she is the WSL’s and Women’s Championship’s public-facing figurehead who is tasked with moulding the future of the women’s game in England. Rule changes, sponsorship deals and media rights are just a handful of the things the WPLL will have control over — and all will impact fans.
The Premier League have signed a “cooperative agreement” which will see it share best-practice with the WPLL. “They are putting on arguably the best football competition in the world, so what can we learn from that?” said Doucet. Yet it is worth also learning from the Premier League that established fans can become disconnected if they are consistently low on the list of priorities.
Clearly, that is not slowing down the Premier League when it comes to making money but that “something special” which Doucet recognises in women’s football comes from being a sport that is not solely about making money. Seeing fans as real people rather than product personas is a crucial part of maintaining that.
The jury is still out on whether that is something the WPLL understands.
Now, let me get back to making my friendship bracelets before the season begins…
(Top photo: Doucet with Arsenal’s Stina Blackstenius; Naomi Baker/The FA via Getty Images)
