Women’s Football
The FIFA Benchmarking Report
As part of its overall vision to make football truly global and accelerate the growth of women’s football, FIFA recently published a landmark report on the development and professionalisation of the elite women’s football landscape around the world.
We spoke to Sarai Bareman, FIFA Chief Women’s Football Officer, about the origins, lessons learnt and next steps from Setting the Pace, the FIFA Benchmarking Report.
What is the FIFA Benchmarking Report?
The FIFA Benchmarking Report is a document published by FIFA in May 2021 and developed over a nine-month period in collaboration with the Deloitte Sports Business Group. The study provides important insights into several key areas of the elite women’s football landscape at league and club level, including sporting, finance, fan engagement, player and COVID-19 related matters.
The information came from a survey completed by 30 top-tier women’s football leagues from around the world and 282 of their clubs, with the aim of helping to guide key decisions shaping the future development and professionalisation of women’s football.
The document was written with the aim of supporting women’s football stakeholders to better understand this landscape and to maximise its huge potential.
Why was the report produced?
As we have seen, the women’s football landscape is evolving very quickly. We regularly see anecdotal examples and indicators in many different areas and countries demonstrating the growth of women’s football but, for the first time, this report provides concrete facts and data about the current realities and opportunities that exist to professionalise and grow the women’s game in a sustainable way.
Whilst many clubs and leagues continue to navigate the impact of COVID-19 on football, this report provides key insights into the reality of the women’s game, as well as the many opportunities and challenges, both on and off the pitch, for players, clubs and leagues around the world.
It is paramount, as we look to the future of our game and take decisions that will impact generations to come, that we base these decisions on a clear understanding of where we are – with important insights into what is working well in the current context.
That’s the main value that this report adds: it is an important document to support the decision-making process of the stakeholders involved in the game based on factual data.
What were the key learnings obtained from the data?
There are important insights in every section, but in terms of areas for growth, two of the key areas and insights from the survey were the commercial opportunities and the business case that women’s football has.
In particular, what stood out for me are the opportunities that exist around the broadcasting and marketing of women’s football. From the data we saw that, particularly when compared to the men’s game, there’s a relatively small amount of revenue being generated on average by leagues and clubs from the broadcasting of matches, as well as the average investment by leagues and clubs into marketing.
This underlines the huge growth opportunity in terms of revenue generation for the women’s game, broadcasting matches and having more women’s games, and obviously therefore more players, showcased on TV and across the various digital platforms that are available.
Aside from the commercial opportunities, what else came out of the report?
One of the insights from the survey findings that we’ve already discussed at length is that of specialist roles within clubs that really seem to make the difference in terms of sporting performance. There’s a base level of support staff that needs to be around a team, such as the head coach, assistant coaches, etc. However, where we saw the staffing and human resourcing making a difference in terms of sporting performance, it really came down to specialist positions, such as nutritionists and psychologists, and in women’s football – also physiotherapists.
When we’re talking about elite-level football, it’s important to have high-quality resources around the players, especially when it comes to player welfare, well-being and certainly from a medical perspective. We have seen these specialist positions become the norm in the men’s game – it’s an expectation for male players at the elite level that these support systems are available to them. In my view, it should be no different in women’s football. We want our players to be given the best possible chance to perform well on the pitch, and in order for that to happen we have to give them the best possible conditions to succeed.
Moving forward, how will the report help?
The aim of the report is that it is useful, not only to inform FIFA’s decisions on the game, but also for all women’s football stakeholders to help them maximise their business case.
This report is an important starting point and first step, however, it is vital that we now build on this and use the data that leagues and clubs have provided to work with all stakeholders across football to develop the women’s game further.
It is another first step in this exciting journey.
Will we see a second edition of the report?
Yes, that’s our intention. In line with FIFA’s vision and objectives to accelerate and professionalise the women’s game, it’s our ambition to publish this kind of report on a regular basis. I believe an annual report would be optimal, especially to capture the changes that take place season-to-season, to not only help us here at FIFA to achieve our own objectives, but also to inform stakeholders and support them in their decision-making.
Some of the key highlights and insights from the report include:
For leagues in which 80% or more participating clubs have a girls’ youth structure, the average national-team ranking is 13, compared to a ranking of 28 for all other leagues.
Leagues with both a club licensing system and financial controls have a higher proportion of clubs that are profitable or break even (36% compared to 32%) and a higher average club revenue (USD 0.9m compared to USD 0.3m).
In 65% of leagues surveyed, teams with the highest qualified coaches outperformed other teams, underlining the importance of coach education and development in the women’s game.
Clubs with access to the most facilities tend to outperform other clubs in their league: 50% of teams with access to the most facilities were league champions in the last five years, compared with only 23% for all other clubs.
Broadcasting women’s football on traditional and digital platforms represents a significant growth opportunity, with broadcast income currently accounting for an average of 6% of revenue for clubs and 18% of revenue for leagues that were surveyed.
Teams offering a season ticket had higher average league attendances (1,400 compared to 1,000) and earned higher revenue (USD 0.8m compared to USD 0.3m).
Clubs with a written strategy for women’s football tend to have higher average club revenue (USD 0.6m compared to USD 0.3m), more facilities available to the first team and higher match attendances (1,400 compared to 700).
Leagues that negotiate broadcast rights exclusively for the women’s league generate, on average, USD 0.7m revenue from broadcast compared with only USD 0.1m for leagues that do not.
Regarding sponsorship, 72% of clubs reported that they negotiate some of their sponsorship contracts for the women’s team only. On average, these clubs achieved a higher total revenue and sponsorship revenue.
The clubs that generate the highest revenue (in excess of USD 1m) raise over half of it through sponsorship, compared to less than a third for clubs averaging revenue of less than USD 1m.
