Women’s football is going from strength to strength, with ever-growing audiences, player salaries and transfer fees.
12.2 million people were watching the 2025 EURO final at its peak, the 2025/26 WSL opening round drew 95,213 spectators – up 16.4% from the previous year, and the first full year of WSL recorded £17.4 million in revenue. All this success is drawing more investment and support, 80% of brand decision-makers say that they are likely to invest in women’s sport sponsorship over the next three years.
The numbers show that it’s not just “record crowds” headlines, but the audience growth for women’s football is turning into real commercial value. The top 15 women’s clubs in Europe, 8 of which are in the UK, are averaging more than £10million in revenue, with commercial income making up 72% of that.
Investing in the players themselves is central to shoring up this commercial value. Player salaries are the first step in this, as Lucy Bronze reflects in a recent LinkedIn post: “I used to spend more time serving pizza than I did on the pitch” while she played at Everton, and her first professional contract at Liverpool paid just £6,000 for the year. In 2025, we’ve seen record-breaking women’s football contracts and transfer fees, which, although not as eye-watering as men’s salaries, reflect the huge changes within the game.
Healthier players, better game
Lucy Bronze’s experience of six ACL repairs underscores another key frontier: how targeted investment is starting to reshape the medical and performance landscape of women’s football. We’ve been working within football for a few years now at The Well HQ, and there is a clear shift towards creating a structure around female players that allows them to perform, and not just treat them as small men.
What football is starting to understand is that supporting female athletes properly isn’t just a nice thing to do… It’s what drives results and strengthens the foundations for all that commercial activity.
When clubs invest in education around female physiology, menstrual health, and life-stage specific training, they’re unlocking performance potential that translates directly into the kind of football that’s drawing huge audiences.
The commercial momentum is real, and we are seeing that investment begin to solidify the foundations of women’s football, the players themselves, their health and performance. These performance systems need to keep evolving, and FAST, to keep up with the commercial success of the game.
We couldn’t have put it better than Lucy Bronze: “The question isn’t whether women’s football is worth investing in, because that argument is over. The question is whether you want to be part of what comes next.”
The next stage in the development of women’s sport MUST focus on strengthening the performance system itself. After years of commitment and persistence from athletes, and the clear commercial success of the game, the structures around them now need to evolve in step to ensure they are properly supported at all levels of sport.
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