Laura McAllister does not remember who coined the title, but the vice-president and deputy chair of the UEFA Women’s Football Committee knew, as did her colleagues, there was no need to brainstorm any further.
“I genuinely think women’s football has momentum of its own,” McAllister tells The Athletic while discussing Unstoppable, UEFA’s new six-year women’s football strategy launched in October.
Women’s football in Europe is entering a critical juncture in its development. The game’s exponential growth over the past five years has led to shattered attendance records, lucrative broadcast deals and increased investment across the continent. Seventeen clubs broke their UEFA Women’s Champions League attendance records between 2021-22 and 2023-24, while 5.1 million viewers tuned in to watch the 2023 Champions League final, representing a 96 per cent increase from 2020. The number of professional leagues in Europe has risen from one in 2019-20 to four in 2024 (England, Germany, Sweden and France).
But the rate of development has not been the same across nations, with women’s footballers in some countries still facing persistent barriers to participation and professionalisation. The knock-on effect is a landscape lacking competitive balance.
“What we’re trying to do with the strategy is steer it in a way that produces maximum benefits for everyone, for all 55 member nations, rather than just letting it grow laissez-faire and benefiting the few,” says McAllister.
“We don’t have to copy the men’s game. We can take the best bits, but we can shape our strategy in a way that is exclusively geared and unique to the women’s game at the same time.”
The plan is built on four strategic priorities, including making Europe the home of the world’s top players with six fully professional leagues and 5,00o fully professional players across all leagues (there are currently just more than 3,000 spread sporadically across the 52 domestic leagues and approximately 20 leagues without professional players, according to UEFA); and making football the most sustainable and investable women’s sport across the continent.
The strategy is bold, not least the pledge that €1billion ($1.093bn) will be committed to the women’s game until 2030 in order to achieve these ambitions.
McAllister, who is the only woman on UEFA’s 20-member executive committee, welcomes the scale of the ambition.
Laura McAllister is driving the growth of the women’s game through her role with UEFA (Kristian Skeie – UEFA via Getty Images)
While working on UEFA’s first women’s football strategy in 2019, Time for Change, “nobody was talking about professionalising the game,” she says. “They were talking about incremental improvements, the game was still amateur.”
Now, conversations centre on professionalisation in a holistic sense, she says. “Not just paid players, contracts, minimum standards, but improving the experience of the players, fans, grassroots and pitches so that the game looks completely different in 2030 to how it looks now.”
The governing body’s €1bn investment is critical to this evolution. The money will come via multiple sources, says McAllister, including the new five-tiered sponsorship structure for the upcoming commercial cycle beginning in 2025-26. The new model will introduce fully centralised sponsorship rights for the Women’s Champions League for the first time and no bundled rights deals with the men’s Champions League.
Significant investment will be driven from the revenue accrued through men’s competitions. This cross-fertilisation is not new, says McAllister, but the sums will increase.
Concerns have been raised about women’s football’s reliance on the men’s game to propel it forward, but McAllister believes long-term reliance can be outgrown.
“There was no investment in women’s football for such a long time,” says McAllister. “So when we say we invest as much into the women’s game as we are, there’s a reason for that. It’s because the investment was starved for 50 years. We’ve got to play catch-up. The women’s game can’t be as transactionally successful as the men’s game for now.
“But it’s all framed by the idea that women’s football, certainly by 2030, can become a €1bn industry in itself. Those two things have to be taken together, that we’re investing a lot of money now and it comes through various different sources, but the investment is making the game more sustainable and more attractive to broadcasters and sponsors.”
UEFA, European football’s governing body, has also pledged to keep player welfare “at the heart” of its decision-making processes.
This risks grinding with UEFA’s other ambition to expand the game’s business appeal and establish a financially secure future. UEFA confirmed the launch of a new second-tier club competition for the 2025-26 season, broadening opportunities for clubs outside the elite to participate but simultaneously adding more fixtures to an already congested schedule.
“We haven’t got this nailed in the men’s or women’s game at the moment and it is so important to do that,” McAllister says. “You can’t keep piling games on players, male or female, then expect them to be injury-free and perform to the top of their game. It’s just not feasible. But there are no easy answers either because somebody’s got to compromise.”
Further, UEFA’s mission to “inspire” more shareholders to invest in the women’s game will need to account not only for the mounting concern around the calendar’s breadth but also the unique relationship with political and social advocacy. Last month, more than 100 professional female footballers from 24 countries called on FIFA president Gianni Infantino to end the global governing body’s sponsorship deal with Saudi oil company Aramco. The open letter arrived more than a year after notable figures in the women’s game, including former USWNT stars Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, denounced FIFA’s deal with Visit Saudi for the 2023 World Cup due to human rights concerns. FIFA dropped the deal due to the backlash.
“There will be tensions between stakeholders as the game grows because that’s normal business,” McAllister says. “But we have to be ready for it.
“(Social advocacy) is the unique selling point of the women’s game. It’s a really special and culturally different feature (to men’s football). We don’t want to erase that, so we need to involve players early on in our decision-making.”
One method in doing so, McAllister says, is the establishment of a dedicated women’s football board — the men’s game established one in April 2023 — to meet quarterly in Nyon to discuss issues in the game. The first meeting was held in September 2023 and included Norway and Lyon striker Ada Hegerberg, Bayern Munich and Denmark forward Pernille Harder, secretary general of the French FA Laura Georges, former Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall and UEFA head of women’s football Nadine Kessler, amongst others.
From May 2025 players will also be represented for the first time on UEFA’s executive committee, its highest decision-making body, through a new memorandum of understanding with FIFPRO Europe. The players’ union will operate in an advisory capacity, with an emphasis on women’s football, but McAllister says voting powers could come in the future. A second female-designated seat on the executive committee will also come into effect in April.
“It would be really easy to say it’s still not brilliant, two females guaranteed, but it’s double what we’ve got now. It’s progress,” says McAllister, who is also leading UEFA’s gender equality committee aimed at addressing the gender disparity within the governing body. “We could have three women on ExCo or more from April if women come through the open elections. But having the base of two is a lot better than one.
“In order to deliver an ambitious strategy like Unstoppable, we need to have agency from women and women’s voices at every decision-making table. Some countries have historically not had women in their decision-making structures or not looked at equality or diversity in the way that other countries have. But if we’re serious as a football family, we’ve got to bring all the national associations and presidents on this journey. I think we’re well placed to do that.”
(Top photo: Burak Akbulut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Read the full article here