4.1 The business of women’s professional football: a club’s perspective

The Women’s Super League (WSL) was formed in 2010. It is the highest level of women’s football in England. In 2018 the league became fully professional, and The Football Association awarded places in the league to clubs who could meet several criteria, such as operating an academy for younger players.

In 2019 Barclays Bank became the title sponsor of the WSL and committed £30m to supporting women’s football. In March 2021 Sky TV and the BBC announced what was described as a ‘landmark’ and ‘game-changing’ broadcasting contract to televise WSL games.

Figure _unit1.5.1 Figure 11 The impressive training facilities at Brighton and Hove Albion FC.

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Figure 11 The impressive training facilities at Brighton and Hove Albion FC.

In a period of exciting and rapid growth you will discover how Brighton and Hove Albion, a WSL club since 2018, is managing the process of operating a sustainable professional women’s team.

Activity _unit1.5.2 Activity 7 Exploring women’s professional football

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As you watch the video listen to Polly Bancroft, General Manager for Women’s and Girl’s football at Brighton and Hove Albion FC, and identify four business challenges the club are facing.

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Transcript: Brighton and Hove Albion FC

[MUSIC PLAYING]

POLLY BANCROFT

I’m Polly Bancroft, the general manager for women and girls football at Brighton & Hove Albion. As the general manager at Brighton & Hove Albion, I’ve got a strategic remit for the women and girls programme, which oversees the operations. So it’s making sure that we meet the license criteria for the Women’s Super League. I also engage with senior staff in marketing, communications, commercial, legal, finance, again, to just make sure that the operation side of the women and girls programme is sufficient. We have six female teams here at the club, so it’s overseeing all of those as well.

The team here at Brighton became professional in 2019 and since then, I suppose, there’s always going to be a bit of friction between the speed of growth and a sustainable budget. We’re really lucky here at Brighton that we’re supported by a chairman and a board that are really enthusiastic about the women’s game. We’re sat here in an 8 and 1/2 million pound facility that’s dedicated to the women and girls’ game, but I think that speed of growth both within the league and internationally, in terms of women’s football, and comparing that to trying to be sustainable is always going to have a bit of friction.

The women’s first team play their matches at Crawley Town. Before the pandemic, we had an average of 1,300 spectators. Post-pandemic and the most current season, we’ve got an average of 2,000. So we’ve actually seen an increase of about 47% which has been great. We do know, however, that is a challenge both to understand who our target audience is and how we increase attendances as well.

We were given some insight from the FA on who they could be, so we’re just testing that out. We’ve also done quite a bit of work to try and draw across fans of the men’s first team to come and watch the women’s first team, but clearly there is still a gap between the 30 odd thousand that watch the men’s first team and the 2,000 that watch the women. So that’s still a key area of focus for us and not easy when you’re playing 20 miles north of the main club stadia. So yeah, I suppose raising the profile and trying to get the message out there to new fans is something of a challenge and we’ll continue to focus on.

The social and digital marketing is huge. I think it’s not only the club that have a platform, but the players have their own platforms too so widening that reach and in terms of the number of people that you can engage with. But yeah, it’s a key tool for us in addition to the more traditional forms, such as the website. We’ve got very good local partners in the media both on the TV and the radio that we’re able to tap into so that helps. But yeah, digital, you can just be a lot more creative with it. We’ve seen content on TikTok. We started to use Facebook as well, of course, as Twitter and Instagram.

The commercial structure at Brighton & Hove Albion is mirrored from the men’s to the women’s, so we’re very similar in terms of the shirt sponsorship and I suppose the global partners within the club. But we’ve started to see companies approach the club who are interested in just the women’s. So we haven’t quite got there yet, but I think certainly because of the recent broadcast deal and more interest in the women’s game, the phone is ringing rather than us being on the phone. So that’s really positive and we’ll wait and see what the chairman decides that he wants to do with that one.

The last three or four years, we’ve started casting the net a bit further with our recruitment. So we actually have an international player from South Korea as well as from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland, as well as some of the home counties. So we’re going a lot further with our recruitment. That’s also replicated in our women’s under-21s team where we have players from Belgium. We have players with Swiss nationality as well. So I think that’s really a marker of the professionalisation of the women’s game and that’s filtering through to our younger teams as well.

I think the development of the women’s game in the next five years, I think we’ll see a change in ownership of the league. So currently, the Women’s Super League sits under the FA’s ownership and governance, but I think we’ll see a transition away to maybe a third party delivering that. I think we’re in the first year of a three-year broadcast deal, so the next broadcast deal will be even more interesting hopefully both in terms of finance, and also eyeballs, and visibility. So I think those are the two main pieces really for the women’s game moving forwards.

{MUSIC PLAYING]

End transcript: Brighton and Hove Albion FC

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Video _unit1.5.1 Brighton and Hove Albion FC

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Discussion

As Brighton develop their women’s team the business challenges they have are:

1. Growing attendances at the women’s games and trying to do so through knowing who their potential spectators are.
2. Ensuring they are financially sustainable such that their costs do not exceed their revenues.
3. Raising the profile of the women’s team and using digital and social media to do so.
4. Attracting commercial sponsors specifically to the women’s team and not just mirroring the men’s team.

As Polly mentioned growing women’s professional football presents a business challenge between accelerating the speed of growth while maintaining financial stability and sustainability.

If you’re interested in learning about a women’s football club doing things differently, including being majority owned by women, take a look at the video in the following link: Angel City FC’s story [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .