Women’s Football Remodel In Doubt Following Rebellion
Plans to create a two-tier commercial structure at the top of the English women’s game are in significant doubt after Championship clubs rejected the latest proposals for the new body’s voting structure.
According to Telegraph Sport sources, a majority of Championship clubs voted ‘no’, in an indicative but non-binding vote last week, because it is being proposed that Women’s Super League clubs would have slightly more voting powers in the ‘NewCo’, the temporary name for the new entity that is being set up to run the elite women’s club game in England from next summer.
As it stands the Football Association currently oversees the Women’s Super League (WSL) and the Championship but has publicly stated it does not think it should do so beyond next summer.
The new entity was to have been funded with a £15m loan from the Football Association or, less likely, the Premier League, as the sport’s administrators seek to capitalise on an explosion of interest from fans in recent years.
However, club sources said on Tuesday that Championship clubs had overwhelmingly decided to reject the deal, even though they had been offered a 25% share of the combined leagues’ commercial income.
Multiple Championship sources suggested that the 75:25 split was agreeable, but it is the voting powers that the second-tier clubs are not happy to sign up to yet.
The stall in negotiations comes to a blow for NewCo, which consists of a working group of clubs’ chief executives from across the WSL and Championship, with the deadline of having the company functioning fast approaching, and with the next phase of TV rights still not having gone out to tender.
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