Over the last five years, women’s football has achieved almost everything its fans dreamt of for decades: full stadiums, valuable sponsorship deals and star players turning into household names. Yet, this growth has been unequally spread across leagues and clubs. And sustaining the current pace of growth will be no easy feat. Indeed, the attendance numbers in the WSL and NWSL have even decreased in 2025 compared to the previous season. So how can women’s football ensure that the current boom turns into sustainable growth?

According to Jennifer Haskel, who leads the Sports Business Group’s Knowledge & Insights function at Deloitte, the next phase of women’s football will depend on long-term, strategic investment. “In the phase of growth that women’s football is in, long-term investment is crucial”, she says. “Long-term investment can help create a virtuous circle around women’s sports. When investment comes in, it enables better governance and a better product on the pitch that allows the salaries to increase.” To capitalize on this investment, however, clubs need a strategy on how to grow their attendances. The first step for this: knowing your fanbase.

Clubs need to know their audience for further growth

One of the key insights from Deloitte’s work in the sector is that women’s football fans are a different audience than men’s football crowds. “Match day behavior is very distinct”, Haskel explains. “Women’s football fans aren’t necessarily as tribal as men’s football fans. It’s not necessarily the same people that are coming for every single game.”

That presents both a challenge and an opportunity. To keep stadiums full, clubs need a fan base that’s several times larger than the ground’s capacity, ensuring new visitors every week. “Clubs need to create a match day environment in which people show up and then want to return”, Haskel says. “But you also have to be visible enough to have new fans enter every game.”

The implications are clear: women’s football isn’t just men’s football with different players – it’s a different product entirely. Understanding why fans attend and what they expect is central to growth. The family-friendly reputation of the women’s game remains a strength, but Haskel points out it’s not the only demographic worth targeting. “There’s also a lot of 20-somethings who want to go with their friends, have more of a social environment”, she states. “On average, women’s football fans are younger and earn more than men’s football fans – they’re an attractive group from an economic perspective.”

This audience also spends differently. “There’s data to prove that on matchdays, women’s football fans will spend more money in merchandise shops than traditional men’s sports fans”, Haskel notes. The catch? Clubs must actually have the right merchandise on offer. The success of Togethxr’s “Everyone Watches Women’s Sport” slogan, generating millions in revenue through merch, shows the appetite is there.

Different audience, different ways of consuming football

Haskel’s research shows that for most women’s football clubs, commercial revenue still drives the bulk of income. But broadcast rights are becoming a genuine growth pillar. “The NWSL and WSL’s recent broadcast deals show the potential for growth”, says Haskel. “Across global women’s sport, the broadcast percentage is continuing to grow.”

The sport’s digital-first audience gives it a structural advantage. “Women’s sports fans tend to be more digitally native, and younger”, she explains. “Given the amount of competitions and the global nature of the leagues, women’s football has an advantage in the way in which they can distribute content across different channels and platforms.”

The lesson for clubs is clear: visibility drives value. Whether through streaming platforms, social media storytelling, or short-form content, the more the women’s game connects with its audiences, the more sustainable its growth will become.

Dedicating resources exclusively to women’s football

For further growth, women’s football clubs need to strike a delicate balance between learning from men’s football and setting up their own model for success. Time has shown over and over again that with a different sport and different audiences, adopting the same business model simply won’t work. This is why “dedicated” is one of Haskel’s favorite words: “We’ll see more leagues and more teams take a dedicated approach that allows people to eat, sleep, breathe women’s football.”

Similar advantages of the dedicated approach can be observed when it comes to leagues. The English WSL and WSL 2 are now controlled by Women’s Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL), an independent company, and not the FA. The German Frauen-Bundesliga is currently considering a similar move and DFB president Bernd Neuendorf has pledged to invest 100 million euros exclusively into women’s football. 

Yet, different models are possible. Union Berlin, for example, has chosen to instead largely merge women’s football and men’s football. The women’s team is promoted like men’s one, the same social media experts set up posts for both and the same nutritionists advice players on what to eat. Using these synergies can be very helpful, if, like in Union’s example, women’s football is truly equal and not an afterthought. 

Chasing the break-even is difficult – it’s about the foundations

When it comes to profitability, Haskel urges realism. “We need a long-term view of investment within women’s sports right now”, she says. “It isn’t about investment just to cover losses, but investment that allows us to build foundational structures.”

Investment must create systems – youth development, marketing, governance, analytics – that allow the sport to stand on its own. “If you only invest to cover losses, then the break-even point might be a really, really long time”, Haskel warns. “But if you put the foundations in place now and have dedicated resources that allow you to grow, this timespan will be shorter. Organizations that are further up the professionalization curve will be able to break even quicker.

She also challenges the assumption that women’s clubs must quickly become profitable. “The narrative of women’s sports being unprofitable is unfair”, she says. “A lot of men’s sports organizations don’t actually make a profit either. To expect women’s teams to break even right away is a challenging narrative when men’s teams don’t consistently do that.”

Lessons for further growth in women’s football

The new key word for growth in women’s football may no longer be visibility, but sustainability. The interest in women’s football has arrived – the next challenge is making it last. 

For this, clubs need to understand their fan demographic and build foundations now to go beyond a short-term vision of growth. Clubs like Eintracht Frankfurt have announced their goal to make their women’s football department profitable as soon as possible. An applaudable goal, but if the right structures aren’t in place, this approach might fall short. 

Text: Helene Altgelt