{"id":35225,"date":"2025-08-15T11:38:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T10:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/?p=35225"},"modified":"2025-08-15T12:32:34","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T11:32:34","slug":"has-womens-football-found-its-breakthrough-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/insights\/has-womens-football-found-its-breakthrough-moment","title":{"rendered":"Has women\u2019s football found its breakthrough moment?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article was originally published in the <\/a>Brand Finance Football 50 2025<\/a> report<\/p>\n\n\n

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Carlota Arevalo
Analyst,
Brand Finance<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The UEFA Women\u2019s Euros 2025 broke attendance, viewership, and streaming records, but the story of the sport\u2019s power to engage fans is still unfolding. New fan research data from Brand Finance indicates that women\u2019s football may prove more effective than men\u2019s football in the arena of converting familiarity into actual engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half of European football fans respondents say they are familiar with the UEFA Women\u2019s Euros and 55% say they are familiar with the FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup, compared to just 19% who are familiar with the Barclays Women\u2019s Super League. Similarly, other local domestic women leagues like Spain\u2019s Liga F (26%) and Germany\u2019s Frauen-Bundesliga (25%) also trail far behind international tournaments in terms of familiarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the gap in recognition, the Women\u2019s Super League stands out for the way it converts familiarity into actual engagement \u2013 folks who know about the league are more likely to tune into a match. Of the 19% of European football fans who responded that they are familiar with the Women\u2019s Super League, 82% of the men and 87% of the women say they watched a match on TV within the past year. That\u2019s a higher relative engagement rate than the Premier League. Of the 59% of European football fans who say they\u2019re familiar with the Premier League, 82% of men and 83% of women report that they\u2019ve watched a match in the past year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The numbers suggest that those who are familiar with the Women\u2019s Super League are more likely to become active fans. This indicates that the Women\u2019s Super League has a higher engagement ratio than the Premier League, but at a lower scale, given the Premier League\u2019s much higher familiarity among European football fans.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Women\u2019s Super League draws its strongest relative familiarity from the 25 to 34 age bracket, with 30% of men and 33% of women European football fans in this age group claim familiarity with the league, indicating the potential to develop a long-term fan base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, older fans drive conversations about the Women\u2019s Super League: 27% of male European fans between 45-54 years old and a remarkable 37% of European women fans between 55-64 years old said they\u2019ve spoken about the league with friends or family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By contrast, discussion of the Premier League is dominated by men under 45, where 30% of European football fans between 25-34 and 32% of European fans between 35-44 report it\u2019s something they talk about with friends\/family. On the other hand, European women fans over 45 also contribute heavily to its conversation, at relatively higher rates than younger female fans in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engagement with the UEFA Women\u2019s Euros is also robust and deeply loyal. Our research shows that those who follow the Women\u2019s Euros are more likely to spend money to show their support, with 67% responding that they purchased official merchandise from their favourite club team in the past year. 63% of UEFA Women\u2019s Euros followers believe that major sports brands should invest more in women\u2019s sport, and 54% believe that women\u2019s football can become nearly as popular as the men\u2019s game - half of them say they\u2019re more engaged now than they were five years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That optimism reflects the reality - this summer\u2019s UEFA Women\u2019s European Championship set new records. In Switzerland, 657,000 fans attended 31 matches while the TV viewership was also the highest ever \u2013 12.2 million in the UK alone watched the finals across all platforms, according to the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lionesses\u2019 dramatic penalty shootout victory over Spain has started a national conversation, not only about the team\u2019s excellence but about the future of women\u2019s football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With growing familiarity, engagement and positive perceptions, the sport is gaining momentum while already establishing itself as a powerful draw for fans who purchase merchandise, attend matches, and tell their friends and family about their favourite players and teams.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Brand<\/div>
Brand Finance Football 50 2025<\/h5>
Read our new report on the most valuable and strongest football club brands<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in the Brand Finance Football 50 2025 report The UEFA Women\u2019s Euros 2025 broke attendance, viewership, and streaming records, but the story of the sport\u2019s power to engage fans is still unfolding. New fan research data from Brand Finance indicates that women\u2019s football may prove more effective than men\u2019s football […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":915,"featured_media":35248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,136,138],"tags":[11,56,453,455,456],"class_list":["post-35225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights","category-industry-analysis","category-sports-branding","tag-featured","tag-football","tag-soccer","tag-womens-football","tag-womens-sport"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/915"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35225"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35759,"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35225\/revisions\/35759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandfinance.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}