Why WSL expansion is needed, but scrapping relegation is not
Expansion to the current format of the Women’s Super League is reportedly being discussed and the idea of scrapping relegation has even considered.
Late Thursday evening in The Guardian, it was reported by Matt Hughes that the Women’s Super League is considering abolishing relegation as part of the efforts to expand the league in the future, with all 23 clubs in the WSL and Women’s Championship called to a strategy summit by the Women’s Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL) on Friday, where it was said that they would be exploring a range of options that will help raise the league’s profile and increase the sustainability and profitability of women’s football.
The removal of relegation is being seen as a way to encourage greater investment from club owners and hope that it develops into a more competitive league which as we know has seen the same team win it for five straight seasons now and are the more likely to win for a sixth time.
It has then been reported since in a follow-up article that a vote will be held on these radical plans at the end of the season, with the idea that relegation from the 12‑team WSL would stop from the 2026-27 season as part of the plan to expand both the top flight and the second‑tier Women’s Championship to 16 teams. It is the clubs that will have the say on any changes with a majority needed for anything to ever happen.
Promotion from the Barclay’s Women’s Championship would continue as a way of attempting to grow the size and strength of the WSL, with one extra club to be admitted to the WSL each season over the next four years. Then relegation could be reinstated in the 2030-31 campaign, although that part of it isn’t believed to be guaranteed.
The WSL was launched back in 2011, where if those who remember will be aware that there wasn’t relegation for the first three seasons before a second tier was then introduced in 2014 and relegation became part of it. In 2018, the WSL became a full professional league and expanded to it’s current format today of 12 teams with one team relegated down and one team promoted up from the Women’s Championship or WSL2 as it was once known, however, reports are also going around that from next season the Championship could adopt the WSL2 name once again as early as next season.
For years it was the FA who had overall responsibility for the leagues until last summer when the WPLL who were known at the time as NewCo, took over the running of the WSL and Women’s Championship. Nikki Doucet assumed the role as chief executive and as we have seen, there have been some notable things that we can praise them for.
The five-year TV deal signed with Sky Sports and the BBC which is worth £65 million, and the continuation of the title sponsorship with Barclays worth £45 million, have both been good signs of growth and the money being put into showcasing the women’s game.
Challenging English football culture yet again
So onto the reaction of this news that came out, and I think it has been safe to say that the viewpoint on the thought of scrapping relegation in the WSL is something that has gone down negatively and as you can probably tell from the title, I include myself in that.
Managers and head coaches were asked about the story in their press conferences ahead of games at the weekend. Manchester City and Tottenham bosses Gareth Taylor and Robert Vilahamn had given answers after being asked about it. What should be important to state again is that it is just a proposal that may have been discussed at this meeting which happened last week.
Seeing this news appear on Thursday night was one that immediately just made me think back to those few days we had hearing of the Super League in the men’s game and how certain clubs wanted to form their own ‘closed shop’. Now granted, this proposal isn’t as immediately threatening and is at an early stage, but the fundamental idea behind it is something that once again dares to challenge the norms of English football culture to benefit a small number.
There is that mindset where the idea of relegation is something that they just can’t get their head around. It’s not something you see in American sports, even in the NWSL where you have the same 14 teams involved every season and it expands with two new teams every few seasons or so, as we will see in 2026 when Boston and Denver have clubs join the league.
What often gets lost with football by some at a very powerful level in terms of club ownership is that as much as every football fan wants to see their team be competing for trophies every season, there is this other side of it where the jeopardy of seeing your team in that position still does mean that there is something to fight for.
Expansion is needed in the WSL, that is for a fact. The league has outgrown its current format and having one team go up and one team go down doesn’t benefit enough teams in the long-term and in recent seasons, the team promoted from the Women’s Championship has then gone back down at the first time of asking.
Remember when Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy was understood to be very keen on the WSL becoming a closed league? His thought process behind that was that owners would put more money in if that threat wasn’t there. But to me, it surely would be more of the opposite, would it not?
The threat of relegation should actually be a way better incentive to invest more into a squad and infrastructure. If you can’t show as much ambition when there is a serious threat of not being involved in the best league, why should we believe that more investment will happen when things feel a bit more cosy? Because surely without the jeopardy, you would feel safer about your team’s placing and not feel as encouraged to have to do anything about it if you really did care.
How do the leagues expand?
Scrapping relegation is unnecessary. Simple as that. If you want to expand the WSL, then we should see one season where more promotion spots are opened up from the Women’s Championship rather than this proposed idea of adding teams season-by-season.
The Women’s Championship this season has been so close and competitive, and it will feel bad to see so many teams miss out with just the one team being promoted. It’s a good mix of teams with backing from having men’s teams in the Premier League and Championship, e.g. Newcastle United, Birmingham City and Southampton. There’s also the independently owned teams such as London City Lionesses and Durham who have both performed very well this season and will be after a spot in the top league too.
But one thing for me has to be considered with expansion, and it’s that it can’t happen without consideration for those teams outside of the top two leagues. The clubs that play in tiers three and below all play in the National League divisions and are owned and run by the FA. How would they factor into everything?
Teams below Championship who play in the National League tiers should not be closed off from ever having the chance to play at the highest level possible, considering many of them will have already been showing ambitions to work their way up the English football pyramid. Just to think of a few teams, there’s Wolves, Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, all clubs that do have the backing of Premier League sides as well.
The idea that it has to be different?
WPLL CEO Nikki Doucet has been open about the women’s game not having to be the same as men’s football in the models and systems used and I do agree, there are some things that would be great to see done differently in the women’s game. Although, is there an issue with replicating some elements of it?
If all leagues were to undergo format changes, opening up more spots for promotion and relegation would be a better route to try and achieve rather than just creating that closed shop. Also, if you want to add more excitement and drama to the women’s game, would it be a bad thing to add a play-off system? You have to create incentives for people to want to care and if you don’t have them in place then what is there to get excited about?
I do like the NWSL and a lot of other American sports, but that’s because they have had those formats in place for a long time and have other elements around it that make it work. These things are not in place within English football and you would have to do a hell of a lot of convincing to make the overwhelming majority even want something like what is being proposed to be implemented.
I’ll end on this closing note. For me, the idea of football is that nature of everybody, no matter what team it is, whether they have shown ambition in pushing for trophies or they’re a team that battles to survive year-upon-year. Everybody should have an equal chance of becoming successful.
There won’t be any decision on these proposals any time soon of course, but the warning signs are there considering how some want the game to go, and fans are already feeling unnerved by the possibility of the women’s game being messed with in an unnecessary way that raises the chance of widening an already big gap, rather than decreasing it. So clubs should consider all options yes, but they also should always think of the bigger picture and wider effect any change would have. Don’t try to change the foundations of what was already laid down before you.
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