Despite their unbeaten run ending on Wednesday night with a defeat against Manchester City, Chelsea are at the pinnacle of women’s football globally.
The team is stocked with international stars including world-record signing Naomi Girma. Yet for fans and players alike, the facilities at kick-off are anything but world class.
After Chelsea won the League Cup final against Manchester City last weekend, both sides’ players and managers called out the poor condition of the pitch at Derby County’s Pride Park. Midfielder Erin Cuthbert said “the surface was not fit for a final”.
Anger at poor pitch conditions for women’s games worldwide has risen in the past week. Real Madrid and Arsenal players were on Tuesday left slipping and injured on the cut-up pitch at the Alfredo Di Stéfano stadium, where Real’s reserve team plays. Former Arsenal striker Ian Wright denounced the conditions on Instagram, saying “this is a fucking disgrace, the pitches these girls have to play on”.
This has focused attention on the second-class infrastructure that the women’s game has to deal with.
Chelsea’s dedicated “Blue Army” typically has to make its way to Kingsmeadow, a non-league ground an hour-long commute from the club’s main Stamford Bridge stadium in west London.
At a recent match, the nearly 5,000-capacity venue was filled with a mixed crowd, rallied by Chelsea women’s renowned hype man Basil Goode. It is an intimate experience, where fans can be just feet away from the players, and enjoy a beer during the game — something that is prohibited for supporters in men’s football.
The 2022 Women’s Euros was a breakthrough moment for women’s football, leading to a surge in attendance at club matches, increased TV money and a wave of new commercial deals for teams and players. But, as the tournament rolls around again later this year, the women’s game in England is still hampered by poor infrastructure, low visibility and an excessive reliance on men’s clubs.
Lucrative deals and accolades mask a wider precariousness, said Maggie Murphy, a sports consultant and former chief executive of Lewes FC. “Whilst we’re seeing that growth I think that the fragility that is inherent in women’s sport and women’s football still is a cause for concern.”
The challenge is to take the game to the next level. Nikki Doucet, chief executive of the Women’s Professional League (WPLL), the first independent organisation to run professional women’s football in England, said the sport was still a “start-up”.
Speaking at the FT Business of Football Summit, Doucet emphasised that there were “massive untapped revenue opportunities” with record match attendances of 1mn in England last season and a growing global audience.
Deloitte’s Football Money League 2025 reported 35 per cent revenue growth for the 15 top-performing women’s clubs across the UK and Europe. And last October, the WPLL secured a £65mn domestic broadcast deal with Sky Sports and the BBC, renewing Women’s Super League games for a further five years.
Doucet urged more club owners to recognise their women’s teams as an “undervalued asset”.
All the 12 clubs in the WSL this season are affiliated with a Premier League men’s club. Experts say there is a short-term need for women’s sides to rely on their men’s clubs in terms of taking advantage of existing stadiums, partnerships and popularity. But there are concerns over the long-term future of the game without an independent women’s football model.
“Accelerated growth won’t be reached unless the women’s game is considered in a different way, as an emerging business line,” said Tal Hewitt, sports and media strategy lead at management consultant EY.
The game was both “helped and hampered” by the men’s clubs, said Christina Philippou, a sport finance expert at the University of Portsmouth, pointing to the risk of being “not necessarily a priority”.
Women’s teams do not yet have their own purpose-built stadiums — the first of which looks to be completed for Brighton Women’s in the 2027-28 season.
Attendance at women’s matches can be depressed by their location, often far away from the club’s main stadium. Brighton fans must travel more than 21 miles from the men’s home ground to watch the women’s team.
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According to a Financial Times analysis of WSL clubs, women’s sides will play an average of three of their 11 home games in the main stadiums this season, with only two sides playing full-time at their main stadiums.
Chelsea, like many top sides, has been increasing the number of women’s games staged at the main stadium, which has a capacity of just over 40,000. But the cost of putting on WSL matches in larger venues can outweigh income from games, especially when ticket prices for women’s games are typically very low, with the Blues Kingsmeadow games starting at £11 for standing tickets and £70 for a season ticket.
“It comes down to what you are willing to do to capitalise on the potential of the women’s section of your club,” said Murphy.
The women’s game is further restricted by not fully understanding its audience, which is key to refining stadium experiences and ticketing strategies. Murphy said that due to a lack of data, clubs struggled to track the “hidden revenue” generated by women’s teams, for example on match days and via merchandise.
A growing online community flock to the WSL’s YouTube account, the most followed women’s football league globally with 225k subscribers. But parity in broadcast coverage is far from being achieved — the Women’s Sports Trust (WST) found that just 6 per cent of sports programming was dedicated to Women’s Sport in primetime TV broadcast slots in 2024.
“It’s a cluttered calendar . . . fighting for attention is a consistent challenge,” said WST’s chief executive Tammy Parlour. But she stressed that this was “a really important time” for the sport. “We are actually building the future of the game for women and girls.”
