Japanese WE League partners with La Liga to gain know-how in an effort to build a global presence

History calls it a fairytale—the day that Japan bested Team USA in the 2011 FIFA World Cup women’s final. With a score of 2-2 at the end of official match time, fans at (then) Waldstadion Stadium and indeed around the world watched the dramatic penalty shoot out unfold, finishing with 3-1 as Japan emerged victorious over the favorite to win.

It’s a day remembered as an emotional time for the country. Japan’s women’s team sat on top of the world, the country became the first in Asia to win a World Cup—and it provided much-needed solace in the wake of a devastating earthquake and tsunami that claimed 20,000 lives.

During the 10th anniversary of the massive win the women’s game in Japan professionalized with the launch of Women’s Empowerment League.

On the climb back to the top

Now a year on from that, WE League is outward in its strategy to once again climb to the top. It is number 13 in the latest FIFA rankings . The league has entered a Memorandum of Understanding with La Liga, joining an existing partnership agreement with the Spanish league as well as Nadeshiko League, Japan’s 33-year old women’s semi-professional set up.

The agreements purpose, initially set for two years, is to promote football globally. Areas of emphasis include: organizational structures, marketing, and grassroots programs, collaboration through friendly matches, as well as coaching programs, and cooperation towards the development and growth of women’s managerial and leadership programs, and gender equity works, according to the official announcement.

“Spain has top teams in both the women’s and the men’s game—from which we can learn quite a lot,” says Miyuki Kobayashi, board member and head of WE League's division of empowerment.

Kobayashi points to the 2022 UEFA championships. FC Barcelona Femení reached the final on 21 May, sparring against Olympique Lyonnais, ultimately losing to the French powerhouse 3-1.

She also highlights the recent phenomenon FC Barcelona Femení experienced in April when the club broke its own attendance record at Camp Nou Stadium in a matter of weeks. During the Champions League semi-final against Germany’s Wolfsburg on 30 April, the match drew a crowd of 91,648.

On 30 March when the club faced off against fellow Primera División club Real Madrid Femenino, also at Camp Nou, that was lauded as a massive record-breaker, with attendance of 91,553, shattering the world record after 23 years during the 1999 Women’s World Cup final at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California, which hosted 90,185 in-stadium fans.

There is also Atlético De Madrid Femenino, which 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. With a finely-tuned communications plan, digital strategy and marketing plan promoting their best players around Madrid, the club achieved its goals.

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 numbers.

WE League finds there is much knowledge gaining—and sharing—with La Liga, given how expansive the organization is, not just within its own structure, but in the many markets it now operates in. Among them: China, India and Qatar.

“We want to have girls in attendance that are the same age as our players.”

One of the goals is to understand La Liga’s marketing strategy to attract people to the stadium for the women’s game, says Kobayashi.

“The issue we have right now is we have a target of attracting 5,000 people to the stadium, and right now we have between 1,200 to 1,300,” says Kobayashi. “[Among the profile of our fans] we want to have girls in attendance that are the same age as our players. We want to know how to draw this attention to them.”

One aspect of this is key learnings on social media. Kobayashi says WE League wants to understand the profile of its fans, and potential fans.

“We have Twitter—and they have TikTok,” she says, adding: “Young people don’t really watch TV anymore. They focus on social media.”

Cross-collaborative in-person meetings have begun with talks centered on marketing. The plan, Kobayashi says, is to invite executives from women’s marketing in La Liga to do a sort of knowledge upload on some of their strategies and then conduct online seminars for WE League’s 11 clubs.

The aim is also to info-gather on organizational structure.

“Most of the WE League clubs have very small management teams—some executives have multiple roles,” explains Kobayashi. “Because there is a shortage of personnel, what we can do is very limited - we cannot do everything. So perhaps what we want to know is what to prioritize to execute effectively—to learn what the essential roles are to run the clubs.”

Carving out agreements with women's leagues around the world

Kobayashi underscores that La Liga is WE League's first agreement, thanks to Nadeshiko League. But, she points to the fact that La Liga is the men’s league. Kobayashi says WE League is also now seeking to carve out agreements with women’s leagues around the world.

There are plans to create a similar partnership agreement with England’s Barclay’s FA Women’s Super League that could be finalized this summer. And WE League chairwoman Kikuko Okajima had begun talks with the National Women’s Soccer League in the US. But, discussions halted when Lisa Baird, then commissioner, resigned in October 2021 in the wake of sexual coercion allegations against North Carolina Courage coach Paul Riley. Kobayashi notes that WE League hopes that talks will resume now that new commissioner Jessica Berman is in place.

Still, La Liga sets the benchmark in the key areas highlighted - and more.

Learning how to attract major sponsors is also a critical aspect of the partnership. WE League will closely examine some of La Liga’s brand partners on the women side to learn how to approach potential partners and create something similar in how they activate together.

One example is a deal FC Barcelona Femení struck with Stanley Black & Decker in 2018, an American manufacturer of industrial tools and household hardware and provider of security products. Stanley became the club’s first main jersey sponsor. The deal was signed through the FC Barcelona Americas office. 

A clear need to boost sponsorship dollars

Kobayashi emphasizes a clear need to boost sponsorship dollars. The league is subsidized by the Japan Football Association for the next five years and also generates revenue through sponsorships. “If WE League loses those subsidies, we will be in trouble,” explains Kobayashi. So finding more partnerships is critical.

With that, given the league’s focus on women’s empowerment and gender equity, it seeks partners interested in social change with values that align alongside WE League’s own. The league also seeks partners that may not be involved in sports marketing, but have a clear interest in gender equality or women’s empowerment, Kobayashi also says.

Under a directive called WE Action, the league has created a movement where teams and sponsor partners “promote a society which allows everyone with a diversity of dreams and ways of living to individually shine through women’s football and other sports.”

It’s combining football business with social business. Examples of current sponsors include car manufacturer Daihatsu, DAZN, an over-the-top sports subscription video streaming service and Asahi Kasei Corporation, a Japanese chemical company.

WE League’s ideals, put in motion, are a unique attribute to the industry overall.

”We have had meetings with some of the employees of our sponsor partners, players and club officials to talk about gender issues,” says Kobayashi.

Gender issues within management roles is prominent both within the league office and its clubs. Kobayashi details a leadership program WE League began in 2021, which stipulates that each club must have at least one woman in a management role across the league. Currently, men dominate the executive roles.

“We are requesting to implement women leaders,” says Kobayashi.

But the response has been that while the ask is evident, women in the country are reluctant to take on leadership roles.

Women leaders: changing the mindset

“One of the problems in Japanese society is that men are perceived as the dominant ones and women are brought up to accept this as a way of life,” says Kobayashi. “Women are not brought up to have a leadership mindset—they are used to supporting men. We have to change their mindset.”

Kobayashi says WE League has not yet broached this topic with La Liga but fully intends to do so, in recognition of this as a global issue.

It’s evident that these matters are on La Liga’s collective minds as well.

Patricia Rodríguez, general manager at Granada CF was recently quoted in a La Liga newsletter as saying: “It is true that the presence of women in middle management positions has increased, but I think we still have some way to go to get more women into decision-making positions…I believe that the keys are specialized industry training programs that favor access to positions through meritocracy, the presence of role models who show that women can make it in the industry and increased participation in networking events, in which the presence of women is generally less common.”

Within WE League, Kobayashi says the goal is to train Japanese women to be confident and to be leaders. This ideal goes well-beyond football, reaching into Japanese culture now and for future generations.

Where football is concerned, women players comprise only 6 per cent at present, says Kobayashi. The men’s side tends to be more Europe-centric, while women’s football speaks more to Japanese style of play. Current chatter says the women’s game in the country is too slow. Kobayashi concedes to a lack of atmosphere—all of which WE League aims to change.

But, somewhere deep in the hearts of Japanese people is a remembrance of past glory on the global stage.

“In football, we have to improve to be number one again,” says Kobayashi. “We want to have a presence in the world again.”