The Business of Women's Football Download
A snapshot of the big deals that have happened across the women's game
Welcome to the first edition of a brand new monthly newsletter from The Cutback.
The Business of Women’s Football Download will tell you about all the big deals and headline moments from the previous month, including media rights, sponsorship and more.
In this month’s issue: UWCL rights fees bump, more US broadcasters for the NWSL, and a record-breaking Women’s Rugby World Cup.
The Uefa Women’s Champions League’s new media rights deals have come with a “sizeable increase” according to SportBusiness, thanks to increased investment from Disney, the European Broadcasting Union and the US media giant Paramount.
Sources tell The Cutback the new deals with Disney+, the EBU and Paramount take the competition’s global media rights income well above €10m a season. Uefa and its commercial sales agent, Two Circles, have done well to secure such increases after Dazn struggled to build a commercial case to renew the rights.
Disney’s increased spend compared with Dazn indicates that the UWCL will be a loss-leader for the company, used primarily as a marketing tool and as proof of concept should Disney explore other multi-territory deals with sports rights holders.
The new media deals did not include rights to the UWCL’s preliminary rounds, which are sold by the home club in each leg. Uefa and Two Circles have been exploring ways to deliver those matches to Disney, the EBU and Paramount since agreeing their deal in May. In future, this could include acquiring matches and providing them to broadcast partners at cost.
Elsewhere, Uefa renewed a wide-ranging licensing deal with games publisher EA for its eponymous FC 26 video game. The deal includes all intellectual property relating to the UWCL and the Women’s European Championship, but will also see EA exit as a UWCL sponsor.
Uefa and Two Circles are selling women’s club competition sponsorships separately for the first time from 2025-26 and have also scrapped the secondary tier of sponsors EA belonged to from 2022-23 to 2024-25.
As part of its three-season sponsorship deal, EA put $11m into a marketing and sponsorship fund across in-game and real-life activations. EA also sponsored Dazn’s coverage of the UWCL in a separate agreement.
The publisher has scaled back its sponsorship investment now that women’s club football is well established as a feature in FC 26. This is particularly true in its popular Ultimate Team game mode, in which mixed-gender teams are constructed by players using content licensed from leagues, clubs and Fifpro name-and-likeness deals.
EA may have dropped out of sponsoring the Uefa Women’s Champions League, but Uefa and Two Circles are busy filling partner slots ahead of the 2025-26 season. global telecoms group Vodafone has agreed a five-season deal to become the UWCL’s official telecommunications partner, joining PepsiCo and Amazon as competition sponsors.
Another media rights partner for the NWSL
The NWSL expanded its US media coverage from 2026-27, signing a new deal with Victory+ for a total of 57 fixtures, 25 of which will air on Sundays.
The NWSL also secured additional linear broadcast coverage across ABC, ESPN and CBS Sports Network, rather than being locked behind streaming paywalls. The league will now have five separate media rights partners showing games alongside its own NWSL+ platform, which will show 40 matches next season.
The new deal with Victory+ will help with exposure in key US markets for the NWSL. Victory+ has existing rights deals with the NHL’s Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks, as well as Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers and the Western Hockey League.
These deals cover three of the NWSL’s biggest catchment areas: California, Texas, and the Pacific Northwest.
The NWSL plans on expanding more than just its broadcast deals. League commissioner Jessica Berman spoke to reporters at NWSL Media Day and confirmed the league’s ambition to expand continuously up to as many as 32 teams.
However, Berman’s ambition to expand into a second-tier league – functionally similar to farm leagues in other major US sports – has been delayed until at least 2027.
Record-breaking Rugby World Cup
Women’s football might have some serious competition for fandom and family days out after the smashing success of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup.
Viewership of the tournament took a giant leap in 2025, breaking records around the world. In the UK, the final between England and Canada attracted a peak audience of 5.8 million viewers on the BBC - more viewers than any of England’s group games attracted during Euro 2025.
Over 440,000 tickets were sold across the month-long tournament, with the final smashing the attendance record for a women’s rugby match by over 20,000 spectators.
Attendances and viewership of domestic rugby union competitions are now expected to grow significantly across Europe and while there’s plenty of room for both football and rugby union in a fan’s weekly diet, women’s football execs will be casting a nervous eye to their attendances should WSL and UWCL games clash with major women’s rugby fixtures in years to come.
Quick hits
Mercury13 inched closer to achieving its goal of becoming a multi-club ownership group in women’s football, acquiring a majority stake in Bristol City Women pending league approval. The deal would see Bristol City join FC Como Women in Mercury13’s ownership stable.
The Chicago Stars announced they will move to Martin Stadium for the 2026-27 NWSL season, putting the team in a smaller 12,000-seat stadium that also hosts Northwestern University’s American football, soccer and lacrosse teams. The move to Evanston, Illinois puts the Stars in a good catchment area for women’s sports, with over 20,000 college students in the city.
A report by EY found that Euro 2025 broke attendance records for the tournament, with both the cumulative number of attendees and the average match attendance rising on Euro 2022 – itself a record-breaking tournament. EY found that the tournament contributed around €220m to the Swiss economy.
 |
|