COVID-19 is killing Women's Football

Anthony Saunders 10th May, 2020

2019 will go down as the year that Women’s football finally came into the public spotlight. The Women’s World Cup was a major success, drawing a viewership of 1.2 billion over the tournament, the final between the USA and Netherlands topped out at 264 million unique viewers, a figure that was up 56% from the previous World Cup. The women’s game seemingly couldn’t stop rising, until the Covid-19 pandemic brought the world and all of this progress to a screeching halt.

Image courtesy of pixabay.com

The world players union, Fifpro, released a report last month claiming that "The long-term consequences [of the pandemic] in terms of the equality and the diversity in our game could be much harder hit on the women’s side."

Fifpro General Secretary, Baer-Hoffmann continued to say how the vast majority of female athletes cannot afford to voluntarily take the kind of wage deductions or referrals that have been seen at high level of the men's game, because of their low salaries. The low salaries of women footballers continue to be a highly contested debate, with Megan Rapinoe’s quest for equal pay recently being thrown out in the States. As per a Fifpro report, the average monthly salary for a female footballer is £515 out of the 3,600 surveyed in early 2019. If players are dedicating their time to earning money to survive, are they going to be able to put the necessary hours of training it takes to compete at a high level? Almost certainly not.

It is not only the players themselves who will be affected. Reported by the Guardian, the FA is preparing for the possibility that professional WSL and WC clubs could fold under the financial pressures that Covid-19 has imposed. However, it is the clubs lower down the pyramid that should raise the most concern for the FA.

Many of these clubs operate on a shoestring budget and do not have the finance coming from being the part of an established elite club such as Arsenal or Manchester City. The FA declared all divisions below the Women’s Championship season’s to be cancelled, with no promotions or relegations or a restart date in sight. A really damaging turn of events for clubs that may have been chasing the benefits of promotion or enjoying the spoils of a successful season. We have unfortunately already seen the weight of the pandemic become too much for one club. AFC Fylde Women became the first to fold, just twelve days after the Fifpro report and one month after AFC Fylde Chairman, David Haythornwaite, assured the supporters that they are “wholeheartedly committed to its women’s team”.

Image courtesy of afcfylde.co.uk

The players are being left in the dark over what their future may hold, however, there may still be light at the end of the tunnel as FIFA have stated that their proposed investment of £800 million into the Women’s game will not be pulled back. A spokesperson for FIFA said, "This funding will be invested into a range of areas in the women's game including competitions, capacity building, development programmes, governance and leadership, professionalisation and technical programmes”. If FIFA proceeds with this plan in the correct manor, along with support from broadcasters and sponsors, perhaps women’s football can continue the promise of growth it showed before covid struck and the game is not placed back to square one.