The Growing Game

Women’s football is the fastest-growing sport in the world. In the UK there has been a major increase in the investments being made in the sport. The interest of fans and spectators has risen astronomically in the last few years, and those playing the game are seeing heights like never before. According to Football Association (FA) data in 2020, 3.4m women and girls in England now play football. That figure is a striking milestone because it has doubled in only three years.​ It is not just in England that the game is becoming more popular, in 2015, some 9,286 women were playing football in Scotland, and with the figure now at 17,230, there has been a sharp rise over the last 5 years​.

Niamh Russell, an SFA development officer for women’s football in the West of Scotland said: “Within my role specifically we’ve now got over 200 clubs within the west which has been a massive increase over the last couple of years. In terms of the number of girls playing, there has been a massive increase in the younger generation as well which has been really good to see, now we’ve got U7s, U8s, and U9’s within our small sided games and that’s been really good to see. Also, within the last couple of years in terms of the number of registered club players for this year, it’s up at 1,825 now, so yeah, it’s been a real increase.” It is clear that in recent years the number of young girls taking up the sport has increased massively; this could be due to the developments being made by the governing bodies to make the sport more inclusive or just due to the fact more women’s football is being broadcasted and reported on in mainstream media than ever before, Amy Muir, a Footballer for Hibernian said: “There are just a lot more opportunities like local to girls now because I think when I started there was only maybe one girl’s club near me, But I ended up going down the route of boy’s club first, I think if I did that then I would only really have one option to go and play with a girls club and yeah I would say when I look at it now there’s probably setups in clubs at almost every town now, so I would say there are just better opportunities and there’s also a pathway for girls now so they can see that there’s a strong senior women’s league now and they’ve got a pathway right through to that so they could hopefully one day make a living out of it, so I would say it’s a lot more accessible for young girls now.”

One of the recent success stories in women’s football is the Scotland Women’s National Team (SWNT), the girls made it to the world cup in France 2019 and put women’s football on the main stage in Scotland with TV coverage like never seen before and record-breaking attendances in the build-up to the tournament. Amy Mur said: “I would say particularly in Scotland there seems to be a kind of shift, in terms of support and interest in the game coming off the back of the world cup in 2019 where the Scotland women went away there I would say there was a lot of media attention around that, they obviously played at Hamden for the first time before they went to that tournament, that was quite big so I would say there was great improvement then, and obviously that has had a knock-on effect on the league I’m in now, the top tier of women’s football has now got more or less three full-time professional teams which haven’t really been seen before so yeah I think it is growing year on year now.” The Scottish top tier has one fully professional team, Glasgow Rangers. It also has three semi-pro teams Celtic, Hibernian, and Glasgow City. Until the last few years, only Glasgow City had a professional status in the women’s game in Scotland, so the sport is defiantly moving in the right direction. The women’s national team has inspired many young girls to take up the sport in the aftermath of the World Cup, Niamh said: “I think we speak about role models all the time within what we do and that visibility of what role models are, I think that is really important so that young girls can see that there is an aspiring path to be a professional footballer and play for Scotland which I think is really important, so again, we did a lot of work surrounding the world cup in France, back in 2019, and from the numbers we’ve seen there’s been an increase probably off the back of that and the national team definitely plays a part in that as well.”

The Scottish leagues don’t have to look far to see where they want to be in the next number of years, the English Women’s Superleague has grown massively in the last number of years. With major investments being made, big television broadcast deals being made with Sky and BT Sports and backing from the FA all contribute to the league being able to attract the best players in the world, increase the turnout at matches and bring the game to a wider audience. These are all the sort of things that the SFA will be hoping they can help implement into the Scottish game to help it grow and to help keep the talented players in Scotland. Amy Muir said: “I do follow the WSL in England and recently there has been lots more games, just league matches, and stuff on Sky and BT and that’s purely because their league is now getting more coverage, lots more investment, and it is fully professional so the players are making a living out of it and their playing football as their career so that whole league is now in that position whereas if you look at our league that’s just beginning so once that starts to progress and we see more teams become professional then it’s probably a bigger incentive for a BT or a Sky to come in.” Having a major TV partnership could transform the Scottish game and it is likely that we will see more televised games very soon, Niamh said: “I do think that seeing them on the TV young girls will then aspire to be on TV as well within that. So yeah, I would definitely hope that because of the professionalism the standard of the game is hopefully becoming more technical which I think is really good to see, we have a better standard of player, we have a better standard of coach now within that as well along with SWF’s criteria which I would imagine the SPFL will look at as well, so yeah, lots of different things because of the league structure we would hope to see lots more televised games.”

At the start of the 2022/23 season, women’s football is taking a massive leap in Scotland. The Scottish FA will take over operations of the top 2 leagues from SWF, this will bring forward more opportunities for the women’s game in Scotland and hopefully be a big step forward in the plans for professionalism within the game. Niamh said: “At the SFA we launched our strategy ‘accelerate our game’ back at the beginning of this year, which I think is really important, it gives us those strategic pillars that we can go and work with. One of the main pillars within that strategy itself was how we wanted to professionalize the elite game and being able to do that, we want to have stable elite competitions by having the SPFL coming in and taking control of SWPL one and two, then allowing SWF to take focus on the youth system and really enhance that for the regional or performance game, but I really do think that having these steps and having us within the SPFL allows us to do that.” With the new format coming to the Scottish leagues the level of competition will be greater, the visibility of the game will be increased, and we will hopefully see many more teams becoming fully professional. Amy Muir said: “A lot of clubs would probably be almost forced to follow suit in terms of what Celtic and Rangers have done and Glasgow city obviously on a different patch of their own because they don’t have a men’s club but the way of going down the professional root and the massive investment that Celtic and Rangers have got I think it’s only going to really make other clubs make a move and prove themselves because they’ll just fall away in the end, so I would see the league just getting continually stronger and stronger because these teams that are professional will end up just pulling away to the top of the league and if there’s no other investment into the clubs below the league will become very split and very top half v bottom half.”

The sport still has a lot to do to reach the heights it is aiming to in the next few years. Amy Muir said: “a big thing is getting spectators into stadiums because again that gives us coverage and it obviously gives a financial boost for clubs, that the biggest thing that’s lacking is the difference in support for the people that come to watch women’s football compared to men’s football.”. The lack of TV coverage is also one of the biggest challenges that face the growth of the Scottish game, Amy said: “you look at Sky Sports and BT who have more involvement down south and their coverage bring in a wider audience, I think the investment coming in from them would help a lot, more coverage would lead to more backing financially because at the end of the day that’s probably what’s lacking. The investment is not there but you obviously get money from sponsorships you get money from TV deals and that will only come when you know things are put out there and the media take more interest so yeah I would say the media has probably got the biggest role to play”