Since the Euro 2022 win, we have all seen an increased uptake and interest in women’s football in England. After the slight drop in 2024, it was not due to Chelsea's dominance but the lack of our lionesses in a summer tournament, as they did not qualify for the Olympics.
To understand and predict what we could see this season, you need to look back at the results of the summer of 2022 to predict the impact of summer 2025.
A big reason for the update is the success of the lionesses and what they show and stand for, even more so this summer. Coming from behind, they won scrappily at the end. They became the first senior side to win a title abroad outside the Wembley arch, and they did it most dramatically.
Look back at 2022
The tournament generated economic activity of £81 million across the eight host cities, which, with UEFA's support, created 1,200 full-time equivalent jobs.
Leah Williamson, England captain, said: It makes me happy because we set out to do that. We also set out to win it, that was the missing piece, and we knew what impact that could have - and look what it's done.
Football is such a beautiful thing, but I'm not just here to play football.
We have a long way to go, and the ceiling is higher and higher every year."
After winning the Euros, they wrote an opening letter spearheaded by Lotte Webber-Moy to the government demanding equal access to school football. In response, the minister announced a plan to double the amount of time women’s and girls’ football teams get allocated at government-funded sports facilities
For Champions League football, there was a 23% increase in attendance between the 2021/22 and the 2022/23 season.
The 2022/23 Women’s Super League (WSL) season surpassed 680,000, 172% higher than the 2021/2022 season, with average attendance per game-week nearly tripling. The use of larger stadiums supported this.
World Cup 2023
The WSL was only boosted further by the World Cup, in which England reached the final, which saw a similar spectacle.
Clubs home to high-profile Lionesses drew the biggest crowds, with Arsenal attracting the most and setting a new WSL attendance record of 47,367 in their first home game at Emirates Stadium post-Euros.
Arsenal have constantly broken the WSL attendance record, though it dropped by 10% last season compared to the previous season. This was the first time in three years that the WSL did not benefit from taking place after an international tournament with home success, as Team GB and NI did not qualify for the Olympics under the new form of qualification.
In 2024, the Football Association (FA) revealed that in the previous four years, 129,000 more girls became involved in school football across the host cities of Euro 2022, while almost 1,500 new female football teams registered.
Revenues for WSL clubs soared by 34% during a record-breaking 2023-24 season, with each club generating more than £1m for the first time.
Look forward to the 2025/26 season.
It was the first on foreign soil when England won in Switzerland to retain their title.
Before the final, Williamson said, “You don't want to be a flash in the pan, a memory, and when we spoke before 2022, we said it was the start of something.
"We are still trying to play our role in that. We know how powerful that is. I hope it continues to grow, and the respect for women's football and sports in general - we can try our best to elevate that."
FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said the WSL was on a "good trajectory" and success at Euro 2025 will "turbo-charge" that, along with plans for grassroots growth.
"We want to get to the point where you know we should have the same number of girls and women playing football as boys and men, and until we've done that, we've got a job to do," he said.
At a reception at Downing Street on Monday after the Euros victory in Switzerland, manager Wiegman said: "We need some more investment. We're not there yet.
"In England, we're up there, but England needs to stay the trailblazer; it needs to be the big example - the players first, the Football Association, the clubs, the government, the country, and the fans. Let's keep being the trailblazers."
And the players are already planning their next move.
Midfielder Georgia Stanway said: "The point is now we don't have to keep winning to create a legacy and create change… but the fact that we win opens the doors so much more, gives us so much more opportunity to make change.
"We'll discuss what it will look like over the next few weeks and what we want to go into as a player group. But this is a massive door for us to step into."
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