The FA has had a clear plan for women’s football that has seen it become one of the biggest successes across sport in our country. The growth at all levels has been game changing and we’re incredibly proud of the progress that we have led.
To drive this growth we invested over £50 million into our initial ‘Gameplan for Growth’ strategy; which doubled female participation, delivered professional and semi-professional women’s football and a successful England team. We built on this with even more investment in our ‘Inspiring Positive Change’ strategy that launched last year, with a long-term plan to work with Barclays FA Women's Super League and FA Women’s Championship clubs to accelerate growth of audiences and revenues. This will help make women’s football in England more commercially viable in the future and allow further re-investment.
The Vitality Women’s FA Cup’s significant development over the last few years is just one example of this growth. Whilst the competition doesn’t yet drive commercial revenue to fund prize money growth, The FA Board has agreed a significant increase in prize money to support the competition’s continued development. More details are to be announced in due course and the additional prize money will come into effect from the 2022/23 season.
