The Women’s Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL), the company formed last year to oversee the top two tiers of women’s soccer in England, recently unveiled a rebrand as the next step in the growth journey of the women’s game.

WPLL has become Women’s Super League Football (WSL Football), with the second-tier Championship becoming the Women’s Super League 2 (WSL2) from the 2025-26 season, bringing the top domestic leagues under one umbrella.

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The rebrand, complete with a new logo, iconography, and brand palette, was developed with creative agency Anomaly, which “signalled the start of a new era and a dynamic new look for the women’s game.”

“We’re at the start of the next phase of the growth of women’s professional football,” Ruth Hooper, WSL Football’s chief marketing officer, tells Sportcal (GlobalData Sport).

“For the first time, the women’s professional game has got a dedicated team focused on the growth of the game and how we improve the quality and impact.

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“As we’re building out our plans, brand, as with any organization, is a foundation for growth. It was one of the first things we started to look at to signify the start of the new era. But for our job to be done, we must fuel demand and grow fandom.

“We must also create demand amongst commercial partners and broadcasters that want to work with us and make sure that we create a brand that raises visibility of our two leagues and drives value, but also continues to build cultural relevancy, a premium feel, and be distinctive.”

The rebrand is the first major change WSL Football has made since it assumed control of the top two tiers from the Football Association (FA) in August 2024.

Hooper says the independent body’s mission is to “create the most distinctive, competitive and entertaining women’s football competition in the world.”

WSL Football has responsibility for the 12-team WSL and WSL 2 and is fully operationally independent of the FA (although the body does retain a special share in the organization, giving it rights to a portion of eventual revenue).

The entity is supported by the men’s top-tier Premier League, through a cooperation and funding deal that includes an interest-free loan of £20 million ($25.7 million).

The new governance structure comprises an independent board, with the clubs serving as shareholders, akin to the Premier League model. The FA also has a seat on the board, as does the Premier League, for the duration of the loan term.

As well as Hooper, the WSL Football senior leadership team, an all-female group, includes chief executive Nikki Doucet, chair Dawn Airey, chief operating officer Holly Murdoch, chief football officer Mirelle Van Rijbroek, and chief revenue officer Zarah Al Kudcy.

The change in governance was one of the biggest developments for the future of women’s soccer in the UK.

“The significance was about being able to build a team that was dedicated to the growth of the game,” Hooper explains. “Every decision that we make is about how we grow women’s professional football, elevate the quality, and raise minimum standards on the pitch.

“What makes our governance structure unique, compared to other leagues around the world, is that we have two – like the Premier League and EFL – but if we can continue to elevate and drive investment at the top of the pyramid, that’s going to help us bring investment into the entire pyramid so the whole of the women’s game will grow, and that’s why we must retain those very close relationships with the FA because we’re all in it together.”

With autonomy over the top domestic leagues, WSL Football last week made its most significant move – expanding the WSL to 14 teams. The change will take effect for the 2026-27 season as the organizers seek to solidify the league’s future.

Representatives from clubs in the WSL and WSL 2 voted in favor of a proposal to expand the league and raise minimum standards at a shareholder meeting. WSL 2 will remain at 12 teams but will become a fully professional league.

The expansion will now see two teams relegated and promoted each season, with a playoff introduced to decide the final WSL spot.

Commercial/broadcast strategy

Notably for the WSL, last year’s change in governance coincided with the renewals process for key commercial and domestic broadcast agreements, which allowed the new leadership team to manage this and drive significant value for its assets.

The first commercial agreement under the new regime saw Barclays extend its title sponsorship of the WSL, described as “the biggest deal in women’s domestic football history,” as the bank doubled its financial investment in the league.

The three-year deal is reportedly worth £15 million per season. Barclays is the longest-serving partner of the WSL, having begun its agreement in 2019.

WSL Football also secured Subway as title sponsor of the Women’s League Cup competition in a deal valued at around £1 million, representing an increase from the previous partnership with tire brand Continental.

Despite the important financial gains on the two deals, those tie-ups are “far more than that”, Hooper states, pointing to conversations around “the value in kind that those brands can bring to help supercharge growth within the women’s game.”

As part of its commercial strategy, WSL Football recently appointed Two Circles as its exclusive sponsorship agency through 2028-29.

The London-based firm has a remit to secure sponsorship contracts for the leagues and member teams, with the agency initially working on securing a league-wide principal sleeve partner for all 24 sides [split evenly] across the divisions.

The chosen brand will have its logo feature on the left sleeve of all member clubs, which is claimed to be a first for any men’s or women’s league in Europe.

This will replicate a model in Major League Soccer in which tech giant Apple took sleeve sponsorship rights for all clubs, but the move is unique in European soccer, with clubs typically negotiating their deals. Nevertheless, WSL teams were keen to explore this new opportunity.

“We’ve been working with the clubs – and this started before us becoming a company – on what the right commercial strategy was for all of us, and they lent in because this is about being distinctive and doing things differently to the men’s game,” Hooper explains.  

“We worked hard with the clubs to figure out what the right centralized rights approach was. That’s been the basis of our strategy, and clubs all believe in it, to give up inventory and craft centralized packages that we can go and sell ourselves.

“We’re out in market now with regards to those centralized [sleeve patch] rights, with Two Circles supporting us. There have been some exciting conversations there.”

With women’s soccer experiencing significant growth, WSL Football has a bold ambition to elevate the game to new heights across all areas.

The appeal of the women’s game is rising, and the overarching task is to ultimately drive that value and widen reach.

“A lot of this comes back to creating fandom,” Hooper says. “We’re strategically finding new IP, like the sleeve patch, and doing various other things, like the rebrand, to drive value.

“But ultimately, we must continue to raise that visibility of the women’s game, because the broader our fan base, the more value we have to be able to go to market for future commercial partnerships etc. “That’s really important for us, centrally at a league level, but also in partnership with our clubs.”

Visibility

Reaching a wider audience and generating more eyeballs is still a fundamental goal for the WSL, which has been boosted by the league’s visibility on several major platforms.

As well as key commercial deals, the WSL’s domestic broadcast rights were up for renewal before the 2024-25 season, allowing for WSL Football to negotiate a major media rights deal soon after forming (supported by the Women’s Sport Group).

The result was extended rights agreements with Sky and the BBC in what the league called “the most significant broadcast partnership ever for women’s football in the UK & Ireland.”

Running from the 2025-26 season through 2029-30, the broadcasters have retained their rights to show the WSL in an agreement understood to be worth £65 million over the five seasons. With production costs added, the total deal is likely to exceed £100 million.

For the 2024-25 season, GlobalData Sport estimated that the league’s deal with Sky and the BBC was worth around $10 million. WSL games not broadcast on TV were shown for free on the WSL YouTube channel, with the Google-owned property debuting as the competition’s primary streaming platform.

The Business of Women’s Super League 2024/25 report outlined the transformative nature of the campaign, marked by 14 broadcast deals.

For the WSL management, however, the lucrative domestic media rights agreements represent more.

“It’s far more than the cash,” Hooper stresses. “They [the broadcasters] are true partners on this journey, and we are working together to think about the different ways we can continue to drive visibility of the women’s game.”

For example, within that deal, the WSL has been able to reserve rights around player clips – allowing for players to access clips in-game and post-game to share across their channels and promote the matches while they’re live.

“Next season will be the first time that all of our games will be available to watch somewhere globally,” Hooper adds. “That’s either by our domestic or international broadcast partners or via YouTube, which we’ve seen a huge success in throughout the last season.

“We’ll also uplift our YouTube production, there’ll be a higher quality production next season to where we’ve been in the previous season. We must open up access to the game, and that’s what our broadcast partners really understand and are leaning in, as are our clubs. How we tell the stories of the game and drive visibility is going to be important for us as we continue that growth trajectory.”

As lead broadcast partner paying the larger share, Sky will show 118 of the 132 WSL matches, but that number could increase with the league’s expansion, potentially giving the broadcaster 50 more games each season, with the fixtures growing to 182.

Interest in the domestic game piqued after England’s Lionesses won the UEFA Women’s Euro in 2022, with attendance records broken several times in the WSL season following the tournament. However, attendance figures tailed off last season, with several clubs – including Arsenal, Manchester City and Manchester United – seeing lower average crowds.

For the WSL to draw in more fans and continue to generate interest, the quality of the on-field product plays a major role. The competitive balance in the league has been questioned recently, with Chelsea winning a domestic treble of the league – for a sixth consecutive year (and going unbeaten) – the league cup, and FA Cup to maintain their dominance.

Hooper points to raising minimum standards and more investment as the key to maintaining a competitive balance and appeal, describing the current landscape in the women’s game as “financially fragile.”

Chelsea’s success recently attracted the interest of Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, who bought a 10% stake in the club for £20 million.

The value of women’s sports franchises is steadily increasing, as evidenced by the recent sale of a stake in the New York Liberty, which valued the WNBA team at $450 million – a record figure for a professional women’s sports team.  

Walt Disney chief executive Bob Iger and his wife Willow Bay purchased the Angel City NWSL franchise at a $250 million valuation last year. It remains to be seen if other investors follow in Ohanian’s footsteps and enter the WSL.

Despite continuous challenges and bumps along the journey, WSL Football is positioned to oversee the next phase of development and deliver the innovation needed to expand.

Based on the impact the Lionesses’ Euros win had on the WSL, the country’s defence of their European title this summer in Switzerland could provide another key moment for growth in the sport. The success of the national team significantly influences the popularity of women’s domestic soccer, a phenomenon evident not only in England but throughout Europe.

But even outside of the Lionesses, the WSL will have more players playing in the 2025 Women’s Euro than any other league, and Hooper says they are “more prepared” to capitalise on the upcoming Euros than last time.

With the UK home nations preparing a bid to host the 2035 Women’s World Cup, WSL Football is hoping to arrive at that moment with domestic women’s soccer in a much healthier state.

“We’re on a huge growth trajectory and have been since the Euros win in 2022, and now, as we are strategic planning and looking to the future, we’re seeing that home World Cup in 2035 as a huge opportunity,” Hooper says.

“Over the next 10 years, it’s about how we collectively – ourselves and the FA – continue to supercharge that opportunity to explode fandom of the women’s game and create real value, both commercial and asset value, over the next 10 years. Women’s football will continue to go from strength to strength. I’m excited for what the future holds.”

Read: Analyst Briefing – How the WSL leans on international soccer amid a competitive divide

Deal Focus: WSL expansion to reshape women’s soccer pyramid in England