UK pay-television giant Sky and public-service broadcaster the BBC have confirmed short-term domestic rights extensions with English soccer’s top-tier Women’s Super League (WSL) for the 2024-25 season.
The broadcasters have finalized one-year extensions to their present WSL coverage tie-ups, which expire at the end of the ongoing 2023-24 campaign (having kicked off in 2021).
As part of the renewed deal, Sky will again show up to 44 WSL matches next season.
Jonathan Licht, Sky Sports managing director, said: “It's a hugely exciting time for women's football in this country.
“Audiences have increased hugely over recent years and we're proud of our contribution to the growth of the game and women's sport more broadly, showing 70% of all live action last year on our channels.”
The BBC, meanwhile, will broadcast 22 live matches again in the 2024-25 season.
All matches will be shown on the BBC iPlayer streaming service, with a minimum of 18 live games across the linear BBC One and BBC Two channels.
Alongside live matchday coverage, regular highlights will continue on The Women's Football Show and across the BBC Sport Website and app, with goals and clips available on BBC Sport's social channels.
BBC Radio 5 Live commentary will be available on selected games.
The move has reportedly come as a short-term solution to give the league’s organizers, and broadcasters, more time to arrange a longer-term set of deals from 2025-26 onwards.
The current three-season WSL domestic rights cycle began in advance of the 2021-22 campaign, with Sky and the BBC striking deals that, combined, had a total value of just over $11 million per season, GlobalData (Sportcal) estimated.
This season, both Sky and the BBC have secured record audiences for their WSL coverage, with the BBC breaking the barrier of a million peak viewers (across linear and digital platforms) for its coverage of Chelsea’s 5-1 win over Liverpool in November.
Sky attracted a peak audience of nearly 600,000 and an average of 485,000 for last month’s clash between Manchester City and Manchester United.
These viewing figures come on top of attendance records for the league also being set this year.
The WSL has already seen more than 700,000 fans attend a match so far this season, with the previous record of 689,297 having been set in 2022-23.
November also saw the 24 clubs across the WSL and the second-tier Women’s Championship come together to agree on the creation of a new, club-owned, structure to run those leagues from 2024-25.
NewCo (a working title at this stage), will take control of the two divisions, both of which have up until now been run by the Football Association (FA) body. Each club in the top two tiers will become a shareholder, and former Nike executive and investment banker Nikki Doucet has become the firm’s first chief executive.
The FA has run the 12-team WSL since the league first launched 13 years ago but unveiled in 2018 that it did not want to run the WSL as a long-term commitment and that it would welcome proposals as to the creation of an alternative governance structure.
It has now been reported that once NewCo is properly up and running, and in control of the top two leagues, a more long-term and lucrative domestic broadcast deal can be struck.
The WSL is also close to finalizing a lucrative title sponsorship extension with global bank Barclays.
Barclays will pay as much as £9 million ($11.4 million) per year over three seasons to continue as the title sponsor of the WSL, as well as of the second-tier Championship, from the beginning of the 2025-26 season through the end of the 2027-28 campaign.
This would amount to as much as double the current yearly fee the league receives from Barclays for the same sponsorship rights.
Barclays has been the title sponsor of the WSL since the beginning of the 2019-20 season and the agreement was renewed for a second three-year term ahead of the 2022-23 campaign. That deal stretches to the end of 2024-25.
