WSL attendance: the real numbers behind 'fastest growing' claims

The WSL has been called the fastest-growing league in women’s sport. Broadcasters repeat it. Sponsors lean on it. And the maths looks compelling at first glance: the league average in 2011 was 550. By 2023-24 it had reached 7,363. That is a 1,239 per cent increase — the kind of number marketing departments build campaigns around.

But growth claims, like any claim, need to be examined from more than one angle. Percentage growth from a near-zero base is mathematically easy. And when you look at what has happened since the 2023-24 peak, the story becomes more complicated.

The numbers, season by season

The FA’s own end-of-season review for 2023-24 confirmed a league-wide average attendance of 7,363 — the highest in WSL history. The single-game record fell three times that same season, ending at 60,160 for Arsenal’s sold-out Emirates Stadium fixture against Manchester United in February 2024. It was, by any measure, a breakthrough year.

But here is what happened next. In 2024-25, the league average dropped to 6,662 — a fall of 9.5 per cent from the record. The 2025-26 season recovered partially to 6,911, still 6.1 per cent below the all-time high.

So the WSL is not on a straight line up. It spiked, and it has not yet returned to that spike. That matters because the “fastest growing” framing implies sustained momentum. Two seasons below the peak suggests the story is more about a specific post-Euros surge than a permanently reset baseline.

The Euros effect

The single largest year-on-year jump in WSL history came between 2021-22 and 2022-23, when the league average rose from 1,924 to 5,272 — an increase of 174 per cent in one season. The timing is not a coincidence. England won the European Championship at a sold-out Wembley in July 2022, watched by 87,192 people and a peak BBC television audience of 17.4 million.

That moment funneled unprecedented attention into the domestic league. Arsenal, in particular, capitalised by moving six of their eleven home fixtures to the Emirates for the 2023-24 season. The results were spectacular — but they were concentrated. Arsenal’s Emirates fixtures accounted for the three highest WSL attendances ever recorded and a disproportionate share of the league-wide average.

What the average hides

The league-wide average of 7,363 in 2023-24 tells you what happens when you put Arsenal versus Manchester United in a 60,000-seat stadium. It does not tell you what a typical WSL matchday looks like.

In the same 2023-24 season, Arsenal’s club average was 30,017 — more than four times the league average. Several clubs played in front of fewer than 2,000 fans per match. The gap between the top-drawing club and the rest of the league is wider in the WSL than in almost any comparable competition.

This matters for the growth narrative. If six Emirates fixtures are removed from the 2023-24 calculation, the league average drops substantially. The “fastest growing league” story is being carried by a small number of big-event fixtures, not by uniform growth across all twelve clubs. Until mid-table and lower-half clubs can reliably draw four-figure crowds without relying on a visiting Arsenal or Chelsea, the structural health of the league is less robust than the headline numbers imply.

Why the framing matters

None of this is to say WSL attendance has not grown enormously. It has. The league has moved from 105 people watching Liverpool versus Bristol Academy in 2012 — the lowest attendance ever recorded — to regular five-figure crowds at major fixtures. That is a genuine transformation.

But “fastest growing” is a claim that invites scrutiny, and the scrutiny reveals a more nuanced picture. The growth is real, but it is uneven, concentrated, and plateauing. Percentage-growth claims from an extremely low base flatter the trajectory. The post-Euros bounce has not yet become a self-sustaining trend.

The WSL does not need to be the fastest growing league in women’s sport to be a success. It needs clubs that can fill their own grounds every week, not just once a season when Arsenal come to town. The next measure of growth will not be how many people pack the Emirates for a one-off — it will be whether the clubs at the bottom of the attendance table can move the needle on a wet Tuesday night in January.