Why the WSL's viewing figures don't tell the whole story
Last November's Arsenal-Chelsea TV audience alarmed fans. What's behind it is worth unpicking
When The Guardian reported last November that Arsenal-Chelsea had drawn an average of just 71,000 viewers on Sky, it landed a gut punch to the women’s game in England.
That same fixture had reached an average of 732,000 viewers in 2024-25 when it was free-to-air on BBC One. Meanwhile, this season’s fixture attracted fewer viewers on Sky Sports Main Event than were in attendance at the Emirates.
This worrying comparison fed a growing insecurity within English women’s club football – and the UK sports industry as a whole – that the WSL’s popularity could be in decline, and that women’s club football has overcommitted to pay television at a time when continuing to grow its audience could have been the better strategic move.
Until the end of 2029-30, the league’s domestic media rights deal with Sky grants the broadcaster 118 live matches a season and 75 per cent of the WSL’s top match picks, leaving the BBC with up to 21 matches each season to show on free-to-watch platforms. Some of those BBC games, including last weekend’s London City Lionesses-Liverpool game, are shunted onto its streaming service, iPlayer.
Taken in isolation, a flagship match settling at around 70,000 viewers on Sky looks like a warning sign. But put against the WSL’s viewing figures in 2024-25, this kind of viewership is entirely normal for a fixture that faces competition from men’s football.
The least-watched televised WSL game of 2024-25, Leicester-Spurs, was reported by the British Audience Research Board (BARB) to have attracted an average of 26,000 viewers on Sky. These clubs don’t attract big audiences at the best of times, but the game also clashed with an FA Cup quarter-final being shown live on BBC One.
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