In a shocking revelation, a comprehensive survey of women’s football has found that about 70 percent of women’s football clubs internationally are operating at a loss.
According to a FIFA data released, just 13 percent of clubs generate revenue over $1 million with more than half of those revenues coming from sponsorship deals.
FIFA surveyed 30 leagues and 282 clubs for the FIFA Benchmarking Report, which seeks to identify how to best grow the women’s game.
The report focuses on governance, finance, fan engagement, players, on-field issues and some of the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. It builds on FIFA’s Global Women’s Football Strategy released in 2018.
“Women’s football is the single biggest growth opportunity for football today. And to meet these conversations, it’s really important that we have data, we have facts, we have analysis on the financial, the commercial context, the governance structures, on all the aspects of the professional football ecosystem,” said Sarai Bareman, FIFA’s chief women’s football officer.
Meanwhile, some of the findings were unsurprising as players on championship teams were paid better than other teams in 73 percent of the leagues surveyed.
The study also found that clubs in Japan and China average more than $1 million in revenue, while the average in England is $996,000.
While based on the 2018-19 season, the report did include some data related Covid-19, which said that the FIFA financial relief plan has aided 70 percent of the leagues and 58 percent of the clubs surveyed.
Bareman said the aim is to conduct the survey annually, so the impact of the pandemic on women’s football could be thoroughly studied.
“Anecdotally, 100%, we’ve seen evidence that there has been further impacts of Covid-19 on both leagues and clubs. And we’re simply seeing that through things such as competitions having to be canceled, to be postponed, in some cases, unfortunately, resources having to be cut back, that there will be impacts. And I think what’s important for us is that next report,” Bareman said.
“I think what’s important to note here is that, for those of us that have been working in the game, we do know these things anecdotally, but now we actually have data and statistics to back up the knowledge that we have, which is very, very important when it comes to having, certainly, discussions around key decisions that need to be made at club and league level,” she added.