When it comes to women’s football, the top of the pile is the Women’s Super League. The top-flight has now been around for nearly two decades, seeing the game grow and expand over the years, which has seen attendances increase accordingly.
Interestingly, the better the Lionesses do on the international stage, the more interest there is in the national game and the more people there are buying tickets for matches.
Some of the biggest teams will occasionally play matches at the stadiums that the men’s team uses, depending on the importance of the match in question, whilst the majority of teams have their own grounds to play in.
History of the WSL
The history of the Women’s Super League actually starts before the league itself was formed, thanks to the fact that top-flight women’s football in England began well before 2010. The women’s game will forever be linked to the decision of the Football Association to ban women from using FA facilities in 1921, even though that didn’t stop amateur leagues from developing. The England Ladies’ Football Association incorporated 57 teams, for example, whilst the establishment of the Women’s Football Association in 1969 saw the game grow incrementally further. That saw the creation of the England Women’s team and a premier league side.
The Women’s National League had been created by the WFA, becoming the Women’s Premier League in 1992, which was the same year that the Premier League launched in the men’s game. It was as the sport grew that the majority of men’s teams decided to either create a women’s team or else affiliate themselves with one. The announcement of the creation of the Women’s Super League was made in 2008, transforming the league system for women’s football. There were 16 teams that applied to join it, with the best eight being taken and a system of a single division without relegation was planned for creation, ultimately being delayed.
That was thanks to the financial crisis of 2008, pushing the league’s formation back until the March of 2011 as a replacement for the FA Women’s Premier League National Division. The new league launched with Arsenal, Birmingham City, Bristol Academy, Chelsea, Doncaster Rovers Belles, Everton, Lincoln and Liverpool as the teams taking part, with the inaugural campaign being won by Arsenal. A second league was formed in 2014, given the name of the FA WSL 2, made up of nine teams as well as one that was relegated from the Women’s Super League. Doncaster Belles were relegated, replaced by Manchester City.
By the end of the year, the Football Association had announced a plan to expand the WSL to ten teams, which was achieved by two teams being promoted and one relegated two years in a row. The WSL also became connected to the rest of the women’s football pyramid in England thanks to that move to promotion and relegation. In the summer of 2016, the FA confirmed that the league would move to a winter league format, which resulted in a shortened season in order to bridge the campaigns. The 2018-2019 season had 11 teams and the league, which had also become fully professional for the first time in its existence.
When Yeovil Town went into administration, they were relegated out of the WSL, with Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United being promoted in order to make it a 12-team league. Point-per-game was used as the deciding method to declare Chelsea as the champions in 2020 after the season was curtailed due to the pandemic, then in the November of 2023, the 24 teams of the Women’s Super League and the Women’s Championship voted to form a new organisation to run the professional game in England instead of the FA, with the Women’s Professional Leagues Limited being the result, rebranded to become WSL Football.
How the WSL is Structured
At the time of writing, the Women’s Super League is made up of 12 teams. There are plans afoot for that to change, however. From the 2026-2027 season onwards, the league will have 14 teams. The league has been referred to as ‘professional’ since its formation, thanks to the fact that the top four players of each team were paid an annual salary of more than £20,000. That changed to become ‘semi-professional’ in the November of 2010, with only a handful of players paid full-time. As we now know, the teams went fully professional ahead of the 2018-2019 season, which was also true of the Championship.
The teams compete in a round-robin format, whereby they all play one another twice: once at home and once away. At the end of the season, the points are added together, with three points to the winning team, one point for each time for a draw and zero points for a defeat. At the end of each season, starting from the 2026-2027 season onwards, two teams are relegated and two are promoted, ensuring that the WSL and the Championship maintain the same number of teams from season to season. The team that finishes second to bottom in the Women’s Super League will enter a play-off game against the second-place team in the Championship.