Parish urges women's league overhaul to build on Euro 2022

Women

11 Aug 2022

Writing in The Times, Crystal Palace Chairman Steve Parish has said women's football in England needs a rethink to carry the success of England's European Championship win into everyday football. Here he explains that stance, with the piece republished in full.

It has been an incredible week for women’s football. Winning the European Championship was a landmark achievement for England and the infectious joy of the team, the scenes at the press conference and victory parade were a reminder of why we all love the game. Congratulations to the inspirational Sarina Wiegman and her amazing group of players.

Quickly the conversation has turned to the legacy the tournament can create. Ian Wright, an informed and passionate champion of the women’s game, called for more grassroots investment and for the Premier League to take over the running of the Women’s Super League (WSL).

The grassroots argument is an essential one and every school should have a football programme for boys and girls — but the future of the WSL requires careful consideration. As a Chairman and owner who has been involved on the periphery and is about to fully take over our women’s team at Crystal Palace, I see obstacles that we need to overcome to create a truly amazing women’s domestic league.

We have a vibrant international scene and potentially interesting European club competition but the women’s game has in many ways been created from the top downwards. It has worked as a strategy to build interest but the men’s game, by contrast, developed from local club football upwards (there weren’t serious men’s internationals until the 1950s).

From the turn of the last century pretty much every town that could muster a decent crowd formed a club and every club was formed on the basis that they had the chance to get to the top. With a local professional team geographically accessible that supporters could identify with, interest and attendance grew rapidly.

The present debate in the men’s game is how we create changes to revenue distribution and cost control to ensure financial stability and safeguard competitiveness. At the same time, it feels that there is an unsustainable model for the women’s domestic game that limits the number of teams who participate and therefore the opportunities to play professionally.

In March, I settled down to watch some WSL matches. Chelsea were taking on Leicester City, who were promoted from the Championship the previous season. Eleven minutes in, Chelsea were 4-0 up and it was 9-0 at the final whistle.

I should have been surprised, as I know how committed Leicester are to their women’s team, but I wasn’t because in the midst of all the furore over iniquities in the men’s game and the disdain aimed at Project Big Picture and the Super League, we have allowed the very embodiment of both to take root in the women’s game.

The combined goal difference of the top four in the WSL last season was +167 and the only other team in positive territory had a goal difference of +1, leaving the other seven clubs with a combined goal difference of -168. The top four lost only four times to 'the rest' all season.

Getting the Premier League to sell the WSL rights may look like a good idea — and I don’t believe there’s a better organisation to do it — but viewers want to watch competitive, unpredictable games. We need a product that delivers the unscripted drama of the men’s Premier League, but the way the women’s game is configured reminds me of the famous cab driver joke.

Customer: “What’s the best way to Wembley?”

Driver: “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.”

Attend Palace Women's matches

In order to grow interest and attendances, the woman’s game needs a competitive pyramid in which everyone has the chance of success. If this were the case there would be a huge incentive to start a women’s professional team.

Instead, we have the reverse, a system where the spending is uncapped and we have allowed the richest football brands in England to create presently unassailable super-teams, where there is no effective cost control and pioneers such as the Doncaster Belles are left behind and play in the Midlands Division One.

Some of the world’s best players are now playing here, with the biggest men’s clubs investing sums most clubs can’t get close to.

It is estimated that the top clubs are spending upwards of £5-6 million a year net on their teams with a broadcast and sponsorship deal that delivers about £500,000 for the winners and average attendances of about 3,000. Post-Euro 2022 I’m sure attendances will increase but, even so, for every team in the league spend will continue to be far in front of income.

There are 12 WSL teams and 12 Championship teams and every one that I know of is losing money. At Crystal Palace we will increase our investment this year, with our women’s team becoming mainly professional.

They will train partly at the Academy and play some games at Selhurst Park, but we are one of only a small handful of clubs investing significant sums to create a professional team.

Not only are clubs in the Championship losing significant sums but promotion, while bringing satisfaction and glory, comes with the less attractive reward of losing £1-2 million more just to have a chance of avoiding relegation and then getting trounced every week by the top four.

I hope it’s being looked at and I’ve heard some positive comments about improving competitiveness — but it is essential if we want to see a thriving league.

The Super League that many big clubs covet so much in the men’s game has arrived by stealth and taken root in the women’s version. While it may be a satisfactory system for those at the top, driving more supporters to their 'brand', I can’t see how under the present system the domestic game will develop and grow across the country.

At international level the game is thriving. It is of great quality, packed with talent and attracting huge crowds. For that, the FA must be complimented. But the domestic club game isn’t working and we need to rethink the proposition from the ground up.

Perhaps we should look to the US men’s game for the solution. For the WSL the future may lie in creating a sustainable model similar to Major League Soccer (MLS), except with relegation and promotion, incorporating the MLS’s system of cost control via caps on player salaries. Just like in the MLS, teams would be allowed a limited number of 'designated player' slots so they could still sign big stars.

Phasing this in would need to happen over time. I’m not suggesting that it would be fair to reduce the salaries of the top players but we need to allow others to catch up and become more competitive.

The league could then charge for club licences to invest lower down — such would be the demand to form a team in a sustainably-run league, designed to give every club a fair chance of success while not losing money.

Under a system like this there would be more professional teams and many more professional players, and the women’s domestic game would grow rapidly and thrive. The magic of Euro 2022 could be at a ground near you every weekend.

With thanks to The Times for permission to publish the above in full. You can read the piece on The Times' website here.

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