Women's football: funding boost

Sport England - 4 August 2015

Women’s football is riding high with a best-ever showing for England at the World Cup and a historic FA Cup final – and a cash injection will help ensure the momentum keeps going.

At half-time during Saturday’s Women’s FA Cup final – the first to be played at Wembley Stadium – celebrations were held to mark £3.7 million of funding to get thousands more women and girls playing the beautiful game.

The Female Development Programme has already seen more than 42,000 new players get into the sport since launching in 2013, exceeding the target it was set of 40,000.

Now the programme, which brings together Sport England, the Football Association, the Premier League and the Football League Trust, has been set the target of attracting another 21,000 to football over the next year.

That will be achieved by 87 Premier League and Football League clubs running sessions for 30 weeks of the year with the help of the FA and Sport England-funded cash boost.

It is based on the Premier League 4 Sport model, which creates satellite sporting hubs using the expertise and facilities of the clubs.

The women’s game is enjoying a boost after England’s World Cup showing, and the euphoria of that achievement has been mirrored by the growing trend of female participation at grassroots level.

Saturday’s final, which saw Chelsea beat Notts County 1-0, sat nicely tucked in the middle of a captivating couple of weeks for female sport, with the Women’s Ashes getting into full swing after three One Day Internationals and the Women’s Golf Open, which was won on Sunday by Inbee Park.

And down on the grassroots pitch, National Lottery investment is dovetailing with the success of the England Lionesses as the number of people taking part rises to the highest figures since 2006, according to our latest Active People Survey (APS) results.

Continuing the climb

The APS results released in June showed that 14,000 more women now play football at least once a week compared to 2013 – continuing the climb towards the Football Association’s aim of women’s football becoming the second most popular team sport in the country by 2018 behind only the men’s game.

Rachel Pavlou, the FA’s National Women's Football Development Manager, says that while a lot of work remains to reach that ambition written into their 2012 Gamechanger strategy, it remains a “very realistic target.”

“I have been working in women's football since 1998 and cannot believe how much the sport has changed – it’s unrecognisable,” she said.

“We had 259 entries into this year’s FA Cup, have 96 teams in the FA Women’s Premier League – and 18 in the Women’s Super League – as well as 35,000 qualified female coaches. The growth of the sport over the last decade has been unbelievable.”

Sport England’s involvement started as early as 2000 with the successful Active Sports programme, which enabled The FA to fund Lead Officers for Women's Football in all County FAs, a legacy that still continues today.

Footballers Karen Carney and Eni Aluko were the first players to benefit from the Active Sports talent camps – and Eni will be in the blue of Chelsea today while Karen will be in stands as one of the victorious Lionesses watching the game. Notts County and England defender, Laura Bassett, will also be sporting the black and white of County.

In addition to our award-winning This Girl Can campaign, which seeks to get women and girls moving regardless of shape, size and ability, we’re investing £30 million during the current funding cycle to encourage more people to lace up their boots and play the beautiful game.

Nearly a third of that money has been invested so far in the FA Tesco Skills and FA Women and Girls programmes.

Since its 2007 launch, almost half of the 3.8 million participants of the FA Tesco Skills programme, which is open to boys and girls of all abilities and from any background, have been female.

Brand power

One of the most recent clubs to have benefitted from our grants is Brighouse Town Ladies Football Club.

The West Yorkshire club received £6,143 of National Lottery funding in 2014 for its Brighouse Town Ladies Development Project. Team manager, Chairman and Secretary, Rob Mitchell, explains how investment in simple yet vital equipment such as goalposts can help broaden opportunities for the wider community.

“We used to have one main pitch that both the men and women played their matches on and one training pitch that wasn’t suitable for matches,” he said.

“One of the main things the money has gone towards is buying portable goalposts, which now means we can play games on both pitches. It’s not just us who have benefitted but also Sunday League and junior teams.”

Rob explains how funding has gone a long way to increase participation on the pitch as well as behind the scenes.

“We’ve nearly doubled our intake of women over the last couple of years, and we’ve added a second team as well as an U15 team,” Rob Mitchell, Team Manager and Chairman, Brighouse Town Ladies FC said.

“It’s not just girls who are benefiting from the funding. It’s created opportunities within the club and opened doors to male and female volunteers, coaches, officials."

Numbers on the sidelines watching and supporting the team are also gathering momentum as more and more spectators and parents go along to watch the games involve themselves in the club.

“The knock-on effect, and especially now after the England team’s success, is that we’re also attracting more sponsors," he added. "Brands want to sponsor and get behind the women’s game, which can only aid exposure and be a good thing long-term.”

More than 100 years since the first women’s football match was played in North London, the women’s game has quite rightly been thrust into the spotlight after a successful London Olympics for Team GB followed up by the England Lionesses’ bronze medal-winning World Cup finish this summer.

With the Women’s FA Cup Final spearheading a cluster of competitions in the female sporting world this summer, increased interest and female participation suggests women’s sport is on the up.