New Season, New Start for Women's Super League

The FA Women’s Super League (WSL) kicks off its new season in September, the era of ‘summer football’ having ended and a winter schedule introduced for the 2017/18 season.

Helping the national team and those clubs in the Champions League are the headline reasons for the change, aligning competition in England with that on the continent but on an everyday level it is also hoped that a more regular schedule of matches throughout the season will lead to the hard-won increase in interest and attendance being entrenched still further.

WSL clubs have always worked hard to ensure that their matches are affordable to watch and provide a family-friendly environment in which to do so and hopefully inspire the next generation of girls to take up the game.

But the 2016 season was a disjointed affair with a ‘feast or famine’ schedule which sometimes saw teams play two home matches in quick succession before a long gap until their next one, hampering efforts to build a fan base and make use of social media to generate interest and excitement in the build-up to games.

The initial move to playing in the summer was made with the best of intentions, a chance to promote the fledgling WSL in the absence of the relentless frenzy surrounding the Premier League, not that that ever experiences much of an off-season lull.

However it brought with it problems of its own, ranging from the logistical with unavailability of grounds as repair work was taken place on pitches to the physical as the top clubs found themselves out of synch with their continental rivals as the Champions League reached its final stages.

The transitional Spring Series having done its job, attention now turns to the first September to May season after a summer in which the European Championships has enjoyed plenty of terrestrial television coverage on Channel 4.

England’s semi-final exit may have been something of a disappointment to those in the game, coming as it did with the team being the highest-ranked left in the competition at the final four stage, but their performances will have created enough of a positive vibe to take into a WSL season where a number of the other star players from Euro 2017 will also be plying their trade.

And, although the likes of Yeovil Town Ladies will battle it out in WSL 1, the competition as a whole is taking on more of a similarity to the Premier League as Brighton & Hove Albion and Tottenham Hotspur take their place in WSL 2 (Brighton having also competed in the Spring Series) following promotion from the FA Women’s Premier League.

There may be a few more years of flux until a relatively settled group of teams make up the top ten in the country, the demise of 2015 FA Cup finalists Notts County just days before the start of the Spring Series showing that the financial model of the professional game doesn’t always add up in the absence of strong backing from a parent club.

Fixtures run from later September through to mid-May, with a Winter Break over Christmas, which should ensure an exciting end to the season with the FA Cup Final at Wembley followed by the final round of league matches.

The Wembley showpiece has been a huge success in the past two seasons, nearly 40,000 watching Manchester City defeat Birmingham City earlier this year, and tickets are already on sale for the 2018 Final priced at £15 for adults, £5 for concessions and free for children with discounts for groups of ten or more people.

And those clubs who have already released their season ticket prices are looking to be more than competitive on their offering to supporters, watching BristolCity, for example, in WSL 1 will cost an adult £42 for the whole campaign of nine home matches.