Clubs in women's football need to move top executives closer to CEO’s

A new report, "Enabling Women’s Football to Disrupt the Industry by N3XT Sports" underscores that football organizations are prioritizing strong organizational structures with clear emphasis on the individuals who are responsible for women’s football.

FIFA has specified that “individuals achieve higher revenue when they work directly under the CEO (almost $0.5 million) than those with two levels in the reporting structure (less than $0.2 million)" .

What is critical to understand is that the power of autonomy to make decisions will play a key role for the future of women’s football.

Arianna Criscione, Director of Women's Football at N3XT Sports, says this aspect of the findings surprised her —and is one she welcomes.

“When women’s football is directly connected to the CEO of an organization or the president or however that organization titles it, there’s more revenue that occurs,” she says.

“That is interesting to learn—and can easily be changed. Hopefully we can help push the dial—help more revenue come in just by making sure that women’s football has a direct conversation with those CEOs and presidents. If that person has a direct relationship with those decision makers it makes a huge difference for the sport.”

Good strategy directly correlates to strong revenue generation. Criscione makes clear that a strategic plan is specific to each club—there's no cookie-cutter approach. “A good plan really depends on the club, the ownership, and it also depends on the value system and what those are,” says Criscione. “The strategy has to align with those specific things.”

The starting point? It goes back to having direct conversations with the CEO or president and ensuring the structure is in place, she says. That structure must contain these elements: economic, marketing, business & development to be successful.

What's affecting the game, what's still needed

Last October N3XT Sports put together two roundtables to discuss women’s football, what’s affecting the game, critical issues and what’s still needed as the sport continues its upward climb into greater consciousness globally. 

The end goal was to produce this report. Experts from around the world, such as Bianca Rech, Sporting Director of Women’s Football at FC Bayern Munich, Courtney Ksiazek, Senior Director of Partnership Marketing at Angel City FC and Pedro Malabia, Director of Women’s Football at LaLiga, offered their thoughts, often illustrating by example, on what has become overtly apparent: women's football can indeed generate strong revenue. 

For Criscione, what excited her most about the process and the findings is an acknowledgement of the growth and the creative changes that are happening. “Creativity is going to raise the game,” she says. 

Sponsorship, finance and marketing were key areas highlighted in the discussions. Criscione says she is 100 percent certain of the growth in all three. “I think the proof is in the pudding when you see FIFA unbundle women’s sponsorship rights right before Christmas,” she says.

Criscione is referring to a new partnership structure that will allow brands to create sponsorship deals focused solely on women’s properties. 

“We’ve never actually been able to see the relationship, how much women’s football has generated from the Women’s World Cup, because it’s always been connected to the men’s World Cup,” Criscione also says.

"And now because they’ve unbundled it, Visa has jumped on and invested $20 million in sponsorship. That’s huge. Twenty million dollars is a lot of money, even in mens’ football. They see the value and they do see their ROI—they’ve been in the game for quite awhile, that’s also going to see a domino effect.”

Support decision-making

Details in the report discuss sponsorship as a key differentiator. Addressing teams and leagues specifically, N3XT Sports says they must take the time to consider how they want to be perceived by their fans, and what kinds of innovation they can create to be able to build value for their sponsors.

N3XT Sports highlighted the team at England’s Brighton & Hove Albion WFC, which has put a lot of thinking behind their approach to commercialize and better understand their target audience. This helps to support the decision-making on their marketing and communications programs, according to the report. 

The report also emphasizes that securing sponsors is paramount to boosting the financial position of leagues, clubs and national associations. The biggest example is in the UK, through the GBP 20 million investment made by Barclays to sponsor the top tier of women’s football in England over three years.

Visa has also put a stake in the ground by signing a seven-year sponsorship deal with UEFA for all of its women’s competitions.

Time will tell how this creativity will play out. Within the report, Criscione points to an interesting example with LaLiga, which implemented a unique strategy to bring in investment and create value for their clubs. While LaLiga doesn’t oversee the women’s football league—the Royal Spanish Football Federation does—they wanted to aid in the development of the women’s game. Their specific goal was to demonstrate their product as valuable to fans, broadcasters and, indeed, brands. 

LaLiga enlisted Iberdrola, an energy company, to sponsor the women’s league. What resulted was Iberdrola further increasing its investment in women’s football by sponsoring the Spanish women’s national team and the second division of the women’s league until 2025. 

The report also points to brands developing personalized products for female fans. For example, 2021 saw the creation of Ida Boots by Laura Youngson, a Melbourne-based company that offers a line of female-specific football boots with a wider toe box, narrower heel cup and uniquely placed studs. 

Regarding financials, sponsors like Adidas are also committed to giving equal performance bonus payouts to female players, same as the male players for their achievements—as seen during the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Innovative broadcast models 

Digitalization is proving to be a good way for women football clubs to generate revenues overall. This is partly driven by innovative broadcast models that are cropping up. N3XT Sports indicates that hybrid deals, ones that rely on digital and data, have become the typical route dispensing with the traditional broadcast deals where advertising revenue was the goal.

Criscione points to the landmark deal between Europe’s DAZN and YouTube. Together, the partners bring live broadcast coverage of UEFA Women’s Champions League globally in a four-year deal to 2025. 

As the report says: “Free-to-air or pay-per-view models have made sure that the fans of today reach their favorite leagues and clubs comfortably. OTT could prove to be a game-changer that would allow clubs and leagues to earn revenues directly from their fans. It will help them monitor fan behaviors and buying trends to better target their products.”

Over-the-top media service, or OTT as expressed above, which is offered directly on the internet, is huge for women's football for multiple reasons, notes Criscione

“Women’s football is kind of birthed onto OTT in a certain way for the fact that they are not given any broadcast and they are not given space on regular broadcasting that are free to air,” she explains. They have to find a way to show the games that people want to see. Otherwise people wouldn’t make the effort to look for them.

But, there is also the matter of a younger age group that enjoys women’s football who are more digitally savvy. And so stakeholders are putting the product where the fans and audience want to see it. Women's football has created a flourishing community of followers on Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitch and Twitter.

The power of reach

Marketing, of course, is center to elevating women’s football. The report put forth examples that demonstrate the power of reach.

Angel City FC helped to foster a strong sense of community—and the club hasn’t taken to the pitch as of yet. Play begins in Spring 2022. To build excitement, one creative strategy was to launch the “ACFC Fan Fueled Player Fund”.

Essentially, 1 percent of the net ticketing revenue from all of Angel City’s home regular season National Women’s Soccer League games will be divided equally among players on the ACFC roster who support marketing initiatives to drive ticket sales. Players use their own social media channels for the effort.

The club has already sold over 11,000 season tickets, comparable to professional teams in Los Angeles. And Angel City sold out all of its premium seating over the course of three days. What’s more, it’s estimated that each player who participates will receive an additional several thousand dollars at the end of the inaugural season.

“The landscape is at this super interesting tipping point, where we’ve seen a lot of signs here and there,” says Ksiazek. “We’ve certainly led that in our world in the US and continue to elevate the women’s game here. But I think that overall the sport is just seeing this growth period unlike we’ve ever seen before.”

Atlético De Madrid Femenino, back in 2019, focused on a strategy to attract fans to Wanda Metropolitano Stadium to watch one of their biggest matches of the season against FC Barcelona Femení. The club did just that with a finely-tuned communications plan, digital strategy and a marketing plan promoting their best players around Madrid.

Fifty-six percent of the tickets were distributed free of charge to members of the home supporters club, while the remaining 44 percent had to pay a nominal fee. The results: an official attendance at a record-breaking 60,739, de-throning Liverpool FC’s position and numbers.

On the horizon

One of the main takeaways from the research encapsulates this point well: How you value your product will shape how others value it.

The other? There is still much work to be done. Ebru Köksal, Chair of Women in Football, makes the statement: “Women’s football is not CSR, it is a great standalone product. But at the end of the day, if we do not increase the fan base, the viewership figures, then there will always be the argument whether the investment makes sense, as a brand and as an investor.”

Through its report, N3XT Sports demonstrates that with the proper strategy and resources, the women’s game can—and does—attract audiences comparable to the men’s—when a well-structured plan is in place.

“I think we are at a stage of everyone taking notice of those bits of investment which we are seeing positively—with positive return,” says Ksiazek. “But that big mass of investment and visibility is still on the horizon.”