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One of the most visible discussion points around international level, professional women's football in recent years has been that of gender equitable payment of players. This chapter presents some of the cornerstones of the equal pay debates at play in women's football. First, the emergence of international women's football as a major force in the global sport nexus is highlighted, which has enabled women to be paid to play football as a profession. Second, the historical roots of equal pay debates are presented, before turning to the most public and high-profile remuneration dispute in the sport of football, that of the USWNT versus the United States Soccer Federation (USSF). In this chapter, we outline how the drawn-out legal process has undoubtedly contributed to greater pay parity on the international stage for many professional women footballers and conclude the chapter by offering our thoughts as to the significance, and future, of gendered pay debates in football.

The launch of the Football Association's (FA) Women's Super League in 2011 was a major milestone towards the professionalisation of women's football in England. The league's formation aimed to increase the competitiveness of elite women's football in England at domestic and international level (Dunn & Welford, 2015). In 2014 the league expanded, creating a second division now known as the FA Women's Championship. This chapter explores the impact of the professionalisation of women's football in England on the second tier of women's football, by examining how players and staff at a Women's Championship club are negotiating the transition from amateur to semi-professional status. This qualitative project adopted a single case-study approach. Observations took place on home match-days to explore the match-day experience. Follow-up semi-structured interviews were then carried out with players and staff. The empirical data highlighted the key challenges and opportunities faced by clubs and their players as women's football continues to develop in this professional era. The introduction of the Women's Championship has helped to bridge the gap between amateur and professional club football in England. However, the experiences of the players and staff illustrate that operating effectively in the Women's Championship required significant sacrifice. Players were required to meet the more professional demands that were being placed upon them, without receiving any significant financial rewards for their commitments. Paid staff roles were underpinned by precarity, with the funded staff roles disappearing should the club not be able to maintain its Championship status.

This chapter introduces women's football in a global, professional era. Key in this is an acknowledgement of the male-dominated roots of the sport in many contexts, which has historically served to restrict women's participation. However, we identify the significant growth of women's involvement in football, which has resulted in professional opportunities for women playing and working in the sport. Football organisations are increasingly taking the development of the women's game more seriously and football can be considered a legitimate career opportunity for women. The chapter then identifies the scope of the book, which includes contributions on the lived experience of professionalisation, the processes of professionalisation and the role of commercialisation and media.

Launched in 2011, the Women's Super League (WSL) has raised the media profile of women's football in England, benefitted from greater sponsorship investment and signalled, for the first time, a more co-ordinated effort by the Football Association (FA) to develop the game from grassroots to international level. However, whilst the FA's insistence that the WSL's future is best secured by clubs aligning themselves with male ‘parent’ clubs has led to more buy-in from English Premier League (EPL) clubs, some historically established women's clubs have been excluded from the highest echelons of the sport or even folded. Clubs' heavy reliance of volunteerism has been retained and salaries, even for internationally capped players, remain modest. There have been criticisms of player welfare (Taylor, 2018b), inadequate support for players' facing racist and sexist abuse (Gornall & Magowan, 2019), poor support for competition structuring (Wrack, 2018a) and a marketing strategy that is centred on heteronormative notions of family (Fielding-Lloyd, Woodhouse, & Sequerra, 2018). Popular discourses have heralded the professionalisation of women's football as evidence of significant progress in gender equality in the sport and as signposting an unequivocally positive future for the game. This chapter will critically assess the FA's conceptualisations of WSL as a neo-liberal project that has not consistently worked in the best interests of all players, clubs and fans and examine the FA's commitment to, and responsibility for, the development of the female game at elite club level.

Association Football (football) is currently recognised as the world's most popular women's sport (Andersson & Barker-Ruchti, 2019; Dunn & Welford, 2017). In this chapter, we build upon a Foucauldian-informed feminist body of work (e.g. Barker-Ruchti & Tinning, 2010; Liao & Markula, 2009; Markula, 2003) to analyse the impact of the ‘shift in approach and purpose’ in the women's game (Rosso, 2010). And, in doing so, seek to explore how the relations of power operating in the context of women's elite and professional football have changed over the last 20 years. Moreover, we consider the implications of these changes for both elite female players and those responsible for their development and welfare. To achieve our aim, we compare the experiences of two players (Christine and Maria, pseudonyms) from opposite ends of the last 20 years, all the while recognising that the partial and situated insights we provide in relation to these shifts are inevitably tied to the intersections of marginalised (female) and privileged (white, able-bodied, heterosexual, middle-class) subject positions.

Academically constructed segments may often fail to be implemented by practitioners. There may be a number of reasons for this, but at the heart of the matter for practitioners must be an economic reward that outweighs the incremental costs of segmenting. Central to this issue is the ease with which different types of data can be collected and used. Experience from direct marketing practice suggests that segments based on customer value and customer benefits sought often lead to successful strategies. Accordingly, looks to utilise these variables to complement the traditional use of geo‐demographic and psychographic approaches. Examines the business of football. Using a mixed qualitative and survey based approach, an exploration of football supporters was undertaken with the objective of identifying segmentation opportunities. A number of new segments were identified, among them “professional wanderers”; “carefree casuals” and “repertoire fans”. Suggests directions for broader studies. Hopes that this work will better inform the marketing efforts of professional sports franchises and indeed all leisure sectors that rely on regular live audiences for their livelihood.

The goal of this research was to explore career patterns of senior marketing managers in the best European football clubs (SMMEFCs).

The data came from the LinkedIn profiles of current and past SMMEFCs. Firstly, the optimal matching algorithm was used to determine clusters of pathways leading to a first SMMEFC position based on the main activity of the employing organisation. Secondly, these patterns were compared in terms of variables depicting the career paths, clubs and managers. Finally, the evolution of the post-SMMEFC careers was analysed.

People in their first SMMEFC positions are mainly male with a university degree in business and marketing, and with a predominantly functional experience in marketing. There are five ways to become an SMMEFC: through business (40% of the sample), football (32%), other sports (11%), marketing and communication (11%), and media (6%). As the majority of SMMEFCs come to their positions from outside the sporting world, the specificity of the football industry is not a serious obstacle. Instead, the careers are bounded by functional marketing experience. Among the individual sequences leading to a first SMMEFC position, only around half of the football cluster may be considered traditional careers. Football, and sports in general, seem attractive for post-SMMEFC career development for the majority of managers coming from all pathways.

The study is the first one to quantify career patterns in professional sports management. It provides new insights about marketing careers and practice in European club football.

This chapter draws together some of the key sociological ideas presented in the book on women's football in a global, professional era. It is highlighted that professionalisation processes specific to women's football, as the most popular sport for women globally, include accelerated commercialisation, increased expectations on clubs for sponsorship and marketing, intense resource demand, and extreme competitive pressures. It is hoped the book holds the potential to shape future research agendas, and has aided our understanding of the fragmented and varied nature of professional women's football and why it should be considered in parallel to, but distinct from men's football. Whilst we recognise that the growth and development and increasing professional opportunities for women should celebrated, we also advocate to approach this celebration with caution as inclusion does not mean equality or equity and therefore the fight and struggle must continue.

This chapter examines the interconnected social, political and economic forces that are shaping and reshaping contemporary football. It identifies drivers but, critically, attributes commercialisation to structural (and not solely) economic differentiation, including the greater interdependence of the sexes in the game. First is a brief overview of the growing significance of women's football within the global sport system. Two zones of prestige exist currently for the professional game, in the United States and England. Questions are raised concerning the uneven effects of commercialisation and the contested values that underpin changes in the women's game. The chapter concludes with some reflections on future developments and research avenues that might be explored.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in early 2020 prompted widespread global lockdowns as the world looked to contain and reduce the impact of the virus, including a pause on most sporting competitions (Parnell et al., 2020). COVID-19 has greatly affected the world, exposing stark inequalities, especially across gendered lines, in areas of society such as the labour market, domestic responsibility and economic hardship (Alon et al., 2020). Sport is a crucial, interwoven aspect of society and like wider societal trends, elite women's sport has been adversely affected by the pandemic, facing an existential threat (Bowes et al., 2020; Clarkson et al., 2020; Rowe, 2020). The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of how the pandemic is negatively impacting a wide variety of elite women's sports. Specifically, we cover sports where women have traditionally existed on the margins of the sport and could be considered as male-dominated labour industries. Centring primarily on the United Kingdom, we present a brief chronology of the impact of the crisis on elite women's sport, across football, rugby, cricket and golf – in many ways different from the men's versions – spanning the eight months since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 until the time of writing in November 2020. Throughout, the chapter utilises qualitative data from elite sportswomen encouraged to share their experiences during the pandemic (see Bowes et al., 2020). Subsequently, this chapter concludes with a summary of the challenges for women operating in (semi-)professional sports environments.