- There is a significant gap between the WSL’s top teams and the chasing pack
- Baroness Sue Campbell believes this gap can be closed by introducing cost controls
- Listen to the latest episode of the Mail Sport podcast It all starts!
Women’s football must ultimately implement cost controls to ensure fairer competition, as Baroness Sue Campbell admitted some clubs are ‘nervous’ about investing more.
The Football Association is set to hand over the two top divisions – the Women’s Super League and the Championship – to a new company (NewCo) before the 2024-2025 season.
A working group of ten top executives from both top and second-tier clubs have worked with the FA to shape the future of women’s football.
More than £3 million was spent by clubs around the world during this summer’s transfer window, but that figure is still dwarfed by the £61 billion spent on transfers in men’s football.
Campbell, the FA’s head of women’s football, admitted there is a gap between the top clubs in the WSL and the rest that can only be closed by cutting spending.
Baroness Sue Campbell (pictured) believes cost control should be introduced in women’s football
Women’s Super League clubs spent more than £3 million during the last summer transfer window
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“There definitely has to be a fair play approach,” Campbell said.
“What we’ve been talking about with this group of CEOs is how do you make this play a more investable proposition?
‘Chief executives of some Super League clubs are nervous about investing more because they can’t see when it will stop.
“So if you invest continuously and every time you invest, they go again, and then they go again, and then they go again. What makes it investable for me? Cost control therefore becomes very important, because it means that I know what I am investing in and can now see it as an investable proposition.
‘We have to grow that in people’s minds, they have to understand it. We honestly believe that even this season there will be other clubs that will continue because some of those CEOs in that room have it and they have already gone back and started to change things, you can feel it. happens.
‘It’s starting to happen very naturally. So I think you’ll 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 have been very good at sitting at the table and saying, “we recognize that a league of four is not going to be marketable to broadcasters and is not going to be commercially attractive.”
‘So we need a competition that is really lively, everyone understands that. The next big divide between the Championship and the National League is something I am working on with colleagues to look at a different way of structuring the National League. But that’s a little further down the road, to try and give us the easiest stepping stone to the championship. But there is still a lot of work to be done.’
WSL chairman Dawn Airey (above) believes the division can become a billion-dollar league
Dawn Airey, president of the WSL, said the rapid growth of women’s football has given confidence that the top flight can become a billion-dollar competition.
“One of the stated goals we have is to make this league the first billion-pound women’s league in the world, meaning league revenue and club revenue, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t do that,” Airey said .
“That’s our goal, at every level, to get more finance into this business.
“It’s a very fragile ecosystem at every level and that’s one thing I’ve learned about women’s football.”