News & Insight
Posted on December 2, 2025
By Emma Cordell
More than one in three fans of professional football clubs in England now consider themselves fans of the women’s team. That’s 37% of football club fans now supporting their women’s team too, marking a shift that speaks to far more than increased visibility. It’s a meaningful rebalancing in how fans follow, identify with, and emotionally invest in women’s football.
I was introduced to men’s football at six days old (yes, really bundled up in the terraces at The Goldstone Ground in Brighton) and fell in love with women’s football during the Lionesses’ Euros success in 2022. Since then, I’ve spent the past few years speaking with Barclays WSL and WSL2 clubs, researching women’s football fandom, and observing the rich culture surrounding the game.
So when I had the chance to dive into new data from The Fan Graph, Two Circles’ global model mapping the fan, audience and buyer ecosystem for sports properties, I was curious to find out more about the state of play for women’s football fandom in the UK.
THE RISE OF WOMEN’S FOOTBALL FANDOM
Women’s football has never been more visible. 12.2 million people tuned in to watch the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 final on the BBC, making it the most-watched moment on UK TV of 2025 at that point. This attention is translating into affection, and increasingly, into fandom.
The sport’s ability to build emotional connection has placed it at the centre of the “For You” economy, where attention and affinity are earned through authenticity, storytelling and cultural relevance.
The next challenge? Converting that affection into habit, from fandom to avidity. What do I mean when I say “avidity”? Someone who sees themselves as really passionate and consumes the sport out of habit.
WOMEN’S FOOTBALL TEAMS CLIMBING THE RANKINGS
Affection for women’s football is rising fast. Five of the 25 biggest sports teams amongst the UK population are now women’s football teams: Chelsea FC Women, Arsenal Women, Manchester United Women, Liverpool Women, and Barcelona Femení.
Football offers an unrivalled platform for fandom growth, it’s a category many times larger than any other sport, with 64% of the sports fans identifying as a fan of football, more than double any other sport. Women’s teams benefit from the powerful ‘brand rub-off’ of shared names, logos, and identities with their men’s counterparts, with 75% of women’s team fans also supporting the men’s team of their club. Within this landscape, women’s football is seizing the opportunity at remarkable speed.
Its growth reflects the Lionesses’ ongoing success, Arsenal’s UWCL triumph, the rise of star player profiles, and the transfer of fan affection across club ecosystems in the world’s biggest sport. All of this has been amplified by the power of social and broadcast storytelling, accelerating fandom growth at an unprecedented rate.
Looking at people who identified as fans of the WSL, the younger generations are leading the way with 29% of 16 to 34 year olds who are fans of domestic clubs identifying as fans of the WSL, with this percentage dropping to 17% amongst 55 to 64 year olds.
This generational pattern signals not only who is driving today’s momentum, but who will sustain and accelerate it in the years ahead. As this younger cohort matures, bringing friends to matches, introducing family members, and eventually passing their fandom on to their own children, the effect becomes compounding. Each generation builds on the last, steadily widening the base of fans and strengthening the long-term foundations of the women’s game.
CHELSEA WOMEN TRAILBLAZE IN THE ‘FOR YOU’ ECONOMY
Growing digital engagement has been critical to deepening affection. Few have done this better than Chelsea FC Women, who have built a social following of 12.3 million and driven 518 million video views and engagements in the past year alone, making them the ninth most followed club team of either gender on social media.
As the chart below shows, 54% of Chelsea club fans consider themselves fans of the women’s team, 17% higher than the average for clubs with women’s and men’s teams competing in both the WSL and Premier League.
For modern sports properties, success on social means creating culturally relevant content – short-form, lo-fi, and authentic. The women’s game has led with this formula on TikTok, turning travel days, training clips and behind-the-scenes moments into ongoing storylines that make fans feel part of the team.
Teams are also expanding their reach beyond sport. Chelsea’s themed run club, Friday Night Lights, transformed match build-up into a shared community experience, while Manchester City spotlighted Mary Fowler’s Paris Fashion Week debut to connect football with culture. Meanwhile, Birmingham City tapped into pop culture with viral, player-led TikToks riffing on The Traitors.
This is the future of fandom – fluid, multi-dimensional, and culturally connected.
FROM AFFECTION TO HABIT
Across sport, the most engaged 20% of fans drive around two-thirds of total consumption, as detailed in “Nurturing Lifelong Fandom”. The next frontier for women’s football is building avidity, converting casual fans into habitual ones.
Fan Graph data shows that while women’s football fandom has expanded dramatically, its percentage of fandom identifying as Avid remains lower than in men’s football. 61% of men’s football fans have been identified as Avid, while that number for women’s football is 36%. A similar pattern plays out for UK audiences of other emerging women’s team sports like Cricket and Rugby. In Rugby, the average gap in Avidity between men’s properties and women’s is 57% vs 43% respectively, while in cricket it’s 53% vs 31%.
Given that 53% of women’s football fandoms have formed in the last four years (compared to just 15% in men’s football)* this is hardly surprising. This gap reflects a natural stage in fandom maturity.
The most passionate sports fandoms are “Made by 14”, meaning they’re built through childhood experiences, and women’s football is still nurturing that next generation of lifelong fans; making the opportunity an exciting one that’s happening in real time.
GROWING KEY BUYERS TO GROWING AVIDITY
Arsenal were among the earliest to convert the surge in interest during and after the 2022 Euros into something more enduring. They positioned themselves as the natural home for new fans entering the women’s game, leveraging the visibility of their star players, staying on sale when attention was highest, and moving quickest to stage more fixtures at the Emirates.
The club has cultivated a matchday experience that feels both premium and communal, turning the stadium into a genuine weekend destination. The results are impressive: more than a third of all WSL attendances in the 2024–25 season were recorded at the Emirates – and that excludes the sizeable travelling support they now bring on the road. Their sales of 17,000 season tickets and membership bundles for 2025–26, up 12% year-on-year, underline a crucial shift. Fans are no longer just coming once; they are committing time, money, and emotion. This movement from one-off affection to habitual consumption is the bedrock on which lasting fandom is built.
THE ROAD AHEAD
If the past decade has been about visibility and affection, the next will be about habit and avidity. The Lionesses sparked a cultural movement; now clubs are building the framework to sustain it, through data-driven audience growth, player-led storytelling, and immersive fan experiences.
Women’s football has proven its cultural power. The opportunity now lies in capitalising on that affection, turning moments of connection into lifelong commitment.
WHAT IS THE FAN GRAPH?
The Fan Graph is a proprietary estimation and comparison tool that defines audiences, fans, and buyers for global sports properties. Powered by 1.6 billion data records and 1.2 million consumer research responses per year, Two Circles’ AI-driven model harmonises attitudinal and behavioural data to map three key groups:
- Audiences – people who pay attention to a sport or property
- Fans – those with enduring affection
- Buyers – those who transact with a sports property or ecosystem
Within fans, the most passionate subset, those who habitually engage, are classed as Avids. The percentage of fandom identifying as Avid measures what proportion of a property’s fanbase sits in that group.
References
*The Compound Effect in Women’s Football, VISA, www.visa.co.uk/dam/VCOM/regional/ve/unitedkingdom/PDF/uk-the-compound-effect-in-womens-football.pdf
For further information contact:
Eliza MacQuillan
PR and Communications Executive
eliza.macquillan@twocircles.com
