Something needs to be done about this
Some footballers in the Women’s Super League are earning as little as £20,000 a year, with some of the top paid players earning 50 times less than male professionals.
As revealed by The Telegraph, many salaries in the WSL are as low as £20,000 per annum, plus bonuses, across the 12 clubs inside the top tier. There is sign of this changing however, with one England international being offered £300,000-a-season to sign a new contract.
One agent has even warned that the younger talents in the country were being “priced out of playing professional football” due to the lack of opportunities within the women’s game in England.
As recent as 20 years ago, players at top clubs in the women’s game were earning just £100 per appearance and were often forced to work full-time alongside their playing duties.
However following the creation of the WSL in 2011, wages have significantly increased – especially since 2018, when the league went fully professional.
The league’s three most well-known clubs (Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City) pay out the most to their players – with some players earning in the region of a quarter of a million a year.
Despite the WSL’s rise in wages, some clubs around Europe and America are still able offer more lucrative salaries. Birmingham City’s 2019-20 financial accounts showed that the average salary for a player was in the region of £19,000.
Meanwhile, French and women’s football giants Lyon have some players earning around the €500,000 (£411,000) region.
However it pales in comparison to the men’s game where the top 10 earners in the Premier League can earn upwards of £250,000 per week – 52 times more than the highest earners in the women’s game in England.
Related links:
- More than 2/3 of male football fans harbour misogynistic view of women’s sport, study finds
- Women share their harrowing experiences of sexual harassment at football games
- Kim K and Leeds Utd help Afghan women’s football team who escaped Taliban
