Women’s football is like a startup: It is growing rapidly, but it is not yet a business

As a little girl, Olivia Smith already knew she loved sports. But she didn't know which sport she loved most. Ultimately, Smith decided against Taekwondo and chose soccer.

The decision has paid off for the young woman from the Canadian province of Ontario. Since this week, she can call herself the most expensive female footballer in the world. She has moved from Liverpool to Arsenal, with a transfer fee reported by English media to be around 1.1 million Swiss francs.

This is a record in women's football. Smith replaces Naomi Girma, for whom Chelsea paid around 900,000 Swiss francs in January. Now that amount has been surpassed again. This illustrates the pace at which women's football is developing economically.

It is currently experiencing, in Stefan Legge's words, "extremely dynamic" growth. Legge, an economist at the University of St. Gallen, is a business economist and macroeconomist who focuses on economic issues and has written a book on football and finance.

Transfer fees reflect this growth. It wasn't so long ago that women's football saw almost no transfers. In 2018, for example, according to FIFA, only 480,000 Swiss francs were paid to female footballers worldwide. By 2024, the sum had already risen to 12.5 million Swiss francs.

Club revenues have also risen rapidly recently. In the German Bundesliga, revenues have almost doubled in just two years. According to Deloitte, the fifteen top-performing European clubs generated CHF 109 million in 2023/24—an increase of 35 percent over the previous year.

FC Barcelona and Arsenal FC are at the top with revenues of 17 million each, although the big money is made elsewhere, in the USA, where Kansas City Current and Angel City FC are based, with annual revenues of around 28 million each.

The financial strength of the American teams is based on the historical development of women's soccer in the United States. It was already supported there with legally enshrined investments at a time when women in European countries had to be happy that they were even allowed to play soccer.

American women's soccer continues to benefit from this advantage to this day. The national team is a five-time Olympic champion and a four-time world champion. The highlight was the 1999 World Cup, the final of which was watched by an estimated 40 million people in the USA. The Americans' triumph paved the way for the founding of the first professional women's league a year later.

Today, it's called the National Women's Soccer League. By 2026, it will grow to sixteen teams, and it's already at an all-time high. Between 2013 and 2024, stadium attendance quintupled from less than half a million to over two million. The new television contract is worth a quarter of a billion euros—a fortyfold increase. Forbes now estimates the market value of clubs like Kansas City and Angel City at around 220 million Swiss francs.

The English Women's Super League has established itself as the second force. Thanks to the successes of the English national team —European champions in 2022 and the 2023 World Cup final—it is attempting to close the gap with the American league. The fact that the women play under the same club name as the men helps in this. The recognition and attention significantly accelerate growth, as do the existing rivalries between the clubs and the contacts with sponsors and TV owners.

Furthermore, the female players have become role models, committed to equal rights, overcoming gender stereotypes, and eliminating violence. All of these factors explain the exponential increase in revenue.

Last season alone, total matchday revenue increased from €8 million to €14 million – through ticket sales, merchandising, catering, and stadium capacity. England's rise to power is creating a transatlantic rivalry with the United States. The effects of this competition are already visible – for example, in the rapidly rising transfer fees.

Women's football is booming, simply in its own sphere. The men's game is still light years behind; Real Madrid alone recently generated over a billion Swiss francs. As a reminder, Arsenal's Champions League winners earned 17 million Swiss francs. And while women's football saw transfers totaling 12.5 million Swiss francs last year, the men's game saw around 7 billion Swiss francs.

But comparisons between men's and women's football are a tricky one, and the same applies off the pitch as on: the benefits are limited. Economic expert Legge says the comparison is flawed because women's football is where men's football was 30 or 40 years ago. More importantly, he notes, is the realization that women's football has reached an interesting point because it is poised to become a promising business.

Today, says Legge, this is only the case at the top, in the USA, Barcelona, or London, for example. FIFA recently published a report highlighting the situation at the majority of women's football clubs. It shows that the majority of the 669 clubs examined in 86 leagues are loss-making, with this particularly true for the larger, more professional clubs. The report compares women's football to a startup that requires significant initial investment to later generate profits.

Stefan Legge says one prerequisite for this is "to take the momentum of the European Championship and carry it into the European leagues." Getting people interested in women's football not only during the hot summer of the European Championship, but also in the cold October, during league play, is the big challenge, according to Legge, because it brings attention – and attention brings money, from sponsors, spectators, and television stations.

It is unknown how much Olivia Smith, the record-breaking Canadian player, will earn at Arsenal in the future. According to industry experts, the salary of top players in England and Spain is between 150,000 and 400,000 Swiss francs. However, according to the FIFA report, female footballers are compensated on average with just under 8,000 Swiss francs – per year, mind you.

An article from the « NZZ am Sonntag »