Women's Super League receives boost as Barclays steps in with record multi-million pound sponsorship deal

The Women’s Super League will benefit from the biggest-ever investment in UK women’s sport by a brand when Barclays takes over as the division’s first title sponsor from the 2019-20 season in a three-year deal understood to be worth more than £10 million.

The partnership with the financial services company, which also supports the men’s Premier League, will see record levels of investment in the women’s game as well as prize money offered for the first time.

The WSL is Europe’s only fully professional domestic women’s football league, with all clubs ­full-time as of this season.

An annual £500,000 prize fund will be available from next season, the distribution of which is still to be decided by the Football Association’s women’s board, but is likely to be based on league position. The prize fund for the WSL is currently zero, with clubs instead given grants by the FA for their inclusion in the league.

Kelly Simmons, the FA’s director of the women’s professional game, confirmed that the governing body had received sponsorship offers from several organisations, but said the deal “will impact all levels of the game and will support our ambition to make the Barclays FA ­Women’s Super League the world’s most successful league”.

The partnership will mean a ­significant commitment of money to grow grass-roots women’s football, with Barclays now a lead partner of the FA Girls’ Football School Partnership scheme to improve girls’ access to football at more than 6,000 schools.

The investment should go some way to ensuring women’s clubs become self-sustaining. Yeovil Town may revert to part-time status at the end of the season amid financial concerns, while in recent seasons Notts County have folded but since returned, Sunderland have dropped two divisions as they were unable to fund top-flight or Championship football and Sheffield FC and Doncaster Rovers Belles both withdrew from the Championship last summer for financial reasons.

“This is a really important step because it’s not only about the revenue that Barclays is investing,” Simmons said. 

“It’s about the big investment in marketing. Ultimately the game’s only going to be sustainable if we can get more people aware of the WSL, more people turning up through the turnstiles, more people watching on TV.

“In some ways that’s more important than the cash, because that will help clubs long-term to be able to attract their own sponsorship deals, get more money from match days and help us with our TV deals in the future, which is where a lot of men’s football money comes from.

“A big priority now is, can we find somebody to help us invest in the women’s Championship? It’s ­really important that clubs are able to come up into the WSL. We don’t want it to be a closed league and ­investment and support in the Championship is a big part of our new strategy.

“When I came in, I was determined to make sure that the WSL was the first sport to break through into regular coverage and profile. We know that in women’s sport, the big pinnacle events – World Cup, Euros, Olympics – [see] everyone talking about women’s sport, and then it just disappears again.

“There hasn’t been a sport that’s been able to really break through that domestic weekly profile, ­coverage and fan base. 

“I really, genuinely think the WSL can do that, because we are a massive football nation with fantastic clubs involved. We’re really ­investing and supporting growing the game, building the profile, building the fan base [so that we] see it every week, not just the big pinnacle moments.”

The deal comes in the same month that Nike launched bespoke women’s kits for its countries, Adidas pledged its female World Cup winners will receive the same bonus payments as men for the first time and Lucozade, Gatorade and Budweiser announced deals with the Lionesses, Manchester City and Tottenham respectively.

Jes Staley, group chief executive of Barclays, said: “It’s especially ­appealing that it’s female sports. You’re making a big social contribution, in addition to the joy of watching athletics. That’s what makes it so exciting. Women’s sport is terrific. What sport does in terms of building character and building confidence is great.”

Emma Hayes, the Chelsea manager, whose side are the last English team remaining in the Champions League and host Paris St-Germain in the first leg of their quarter-final today, said: “As we saw with the announcement at The Telegraph, the investment into the recording of women’s sport has reached the point where sponsors want to put their money into it. I ­expect we’ll see more deals ­announced in the next year or two and you’ll see that snowball effect.

“Tell me a league in the world in the women’s game that’s going to attract a sponsor and level of investment like that. It’s absolutely ­brilliant and credit to them.

“We are setting the tone, the trend, the way in the world. It’s always been about America. [Now] they lag behind us. They may have more equality in terms of the teams they have in the league and the support the players get, but the interest in the game is growing and it’s a snowball. I can’t see anybody getting in the way of England becoming the best place in the world to play football.”