Women's Football: What Changed After 2022
The numbers before and after
The 2022 Women's Euros at Wembley attracted a crowd of 87,192 for the final, the largest crowd ever for a women's Euros match. The following year's Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand drew a combined TV audience of over two billion across the tournament.
Those numbers reflected something that had been building for years. Women's football had been growing in viewing figures, sponsorship and attendances across Europe since the mid-2010s, but 2022 and 2023 accelerated everything.
What changed for clubs
After the 2022 Euros, several major clubs reported spikes in season ticket applications for their women's teams. Arsenal Women sold out their Emirates Stadium fixtures for the first time. Barcelona's Camp Nou hosted over 91,000 for a Women's Champions League match in 2022, a world record for a women's club game.
The change in media coverage followed the results. Broadcasters who had broadcast women's football as an afterthought began scheduling matches in prime slots and adding commentary teams of equivalent quality to the men's game.
What hasn't changed yet
Pay remains dramatically different from the men's game at every level below the elite. The gap between the top handful of clubs with serious investment and the rest of the women's pyramid in most countries remains very large. Grassroots facilities, coaching pathways and youth development for girls lag behind equivalent boys' programmes in almost every country.
The trajectory is clearly upward. Whether the growth of 2022 and 2023 translates into structural change rather than a viewing peak is the question the next decade will answer.
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