Football: Females

(asked on 30th January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what support they are giving to women’s football.


Answered by
Baroness Barran Portrait
Baroness Barran
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This question was answered on 10th February 2020

We are determined to encourage more women and girls to get active, something we set out in our sport strategy, Sporting Future. Football is a popular choice for women and girls to get active: it is the second most popular team sport in terms of participation for adult women, and the top ranked team sport in terms of participation for girls. It is also growing in appeal for spectators with a record total audience of 28.1 million tuning in to watch the BBC coverage of last year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Through our national sports council, Sport England, the government is investing £24.6m in The Football Association over the course of 2016-21 for its work on grassroots participation, the football talent pathway, and coaching programmes. Within this, there is no specific ring-fencing of funding between men's and women's programmes, apart from £2.6m which is specifically reserved for women and girls talent programmes.

Sport England has also awarded The FA £544,500 to date to deliver The FA FIVES national promotion programme, a mass participation five a side football competition linked to EURO 2020. Its aim is to provide opportunities throughout England for men and women to take part in a fun, friendly football event.

Separately, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport invested £18m in football facilities through the Football Foundation in each of 2017, 2018 and 2019. It is not possible to separate out the investment amounts by gender.

The Government has also committed to investing £550m into grassroots football facilities, for all ages and genders, over the next 10 years to support plans to bid for the 2030 Men’s FIFA Football World Cup.

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