“It just hits different”: Three opportunities for brands to connect with women’s football fans

TL;DR? Three opportunities for brands to connect with the fast-growing fanbase of women’s football:

#1. Connection with players. Fans feel closer to female players and want to know more about them. Surface player stories, spotlight their achievements, and give fans more access to individual players.

#2. Connection with brands. Fans trust players who promote brands and are more likely to buy from brands that consistently support the women’s game at all levels.

#3. Connection with culture. The women’s game is spinning out and creating a vibrant, wide-ranging and inclusive culture of its own. Help level the playing field and ensure everyone gets the same access to that culture.

#1. Connection with players

What’s most striking about fans of the women’s game is how they feel about the players. These are relationships that feel … deeper. Why? Because female players feel much more authentic and accessible – regardless of the supporter’s gender.

Research from the Women’s Sport Trust saw that, of total IG engagements from clubs and players across the Women’s Super League, 35% came from player accounts – significantly higher than in the Premier League and a signal that the women’s game is about more than simple fandom.

It’s about true and deep connections.

“If I’m watching a player, I like to invest in them and know their story … then I feel like I can really support them” - this comment from a female fan, aged 35, is typical of supporters of the women’s game.

The opportunity for brands? Well, while female players feel more accessible IRL and URL, their stories are harder to find. Sky research found that women’s sports content – such as player personalities or stories - is scarcer than men’s, and while brands like Nike are stepping in to fill the gap (Nike’s United Collective shows Nike is always on the front foot in finding new ways to connect to consumers), there’s still space for others to act. All they need to do is help meet that that desire to get to know the players fans not only relate to, but that they feel they invest in, too.

#2. Connection with brands

Outlawed. Marginalised. Belittled. We all know that women’s football has faced a long fight to get on the pitch, but perhaps less understood is how that history still defines the relationship between fans and brands.

Brands talk about consumers, but women’s football fans are more than that. For them, purchases around the sport aren’t simple transactions so much as an investment into their passion. It’s a level of emotional engagement that drives their higher purchasing power, and the reason why they spend more on merch and entertainment than the general population.

(These Nielsen stats back that up, by the way: 68% of women’s team sports fans plan to buy sportswear or sports equipment in the next 6 months versus 50% of the general population.)

They also think differently about the role of brands: 70% believe brands should drive increased visibility and positive perceptions of the game, for example.

And, if brands step up – and meet that expectation – something beautiful happens. It creates a new level of trust and preference and between fans, players and brands.

In this scenario, fans trust players. But they also trust the brands behind the players – and are more likely than fans of men’s football or team sports to choose a sponsor’s product than a rival’s.

It’s that trust and preference that’s up for grabs, but only if brands back the whole of the women’s game, from big tournaments to the day-to-day training, grassroots matches and local communities that have re-established women’s football.

Investing in women’s football is also, then, to invest in passion.

#3. Connection with culture

Football culture has been defined by men until now - and as the rise of women’s football has expanded beyond the sport, it has spun out into a newly-created and much broader culture of its own.

Again, this cultural influence has its roots in the history of the game:

“After being ignored, underfunded and undermined by traditional media, the culture around women’s football was forced to grow between the cracks. Together, players and fans established a visual language that felt more specific, politicised and personal,” said Gem Fletcher earlier this month in It’s Nice That.

Women’s football culture spreads its net widely, with its fans more likely to stay ahead of trends in music, art and fashion, and to be more engaged with a brand’s purpose.

Fans of the Lionesses, for example, not only connect strongly with topics such as sustainability, human rights and climate care, but build stronger connections with the brands positively associated with these topics.

Yet there’s still work to be done, particularly when it comes to young people. Not every aspect of this new culture is open to everyone and, “the more aspects of football culture that teen girls from cities feel like they can participate in, the stronger and more enduring their connection to the game will be,” said Youth Beyond Borders in 2023.

With that comes the opportunity for forward-thinking brands to broker deeper engagement with consumers – young and old, united by their sport and by their determination to build a truly representative culture around it.