“Won’t be around past a year.”
“This is amateur. We are trying to take the men’s team to the Champions League.
“Why are we wasting money on this?”
“The ladies’ league is exactly why Jamie Tartt left.”
The feedback throughout the fictional AFC Richmond annual shareholder assembly on the newest episode of Apple TV’s “Ted Lasso” doubtless hit uncomfortably shut to dwelling for a lot of women’s soccer followers.
They mirrored the persistent skepticism — and, at instances, outright apathy — that has formed perceptions of women’s soccer for many years: Why spend cash on one thing that doesn’t earn a living?
While the prime finish of women’s soccer is efficiently attracting investments from billionaire homeowners, nine-figure valuations and purpose-built stadiums, it has not all the time been the case. Life additional down the soccer pyramid, the place the fictional Richmond Women play, can also be a spot the place some of these emotions and lack of funding nonetheless permeate.
AFC Richmond proprietor Rebecca Welton (performed by Hannah Waddingham) and Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) navigate funding a women’s staff in season 4 of “Ted Lasso”. (Apple TV)
The challenges the present dramatizes, from the damning “Higgins Report,” named after Richmond govt Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift), to kits that fail to arrive on time, insufficient locker rooms and the battle to safe sponsors, are, sadly, not far faraway from actuality.
It could be simple to watch these scenes and assume the writers are exaggerating for impact.
But they aren’t.
For each Kansas City Current or Arsenal, there’s a Blackburn Rovers or Southampton. While the Current built the first purpose-built stadium for an NWSL team, the budgets of Rovers and Southampton have been slashed in recent times.
In the United States, Kansas City spent $140 million to construct the privately funded stadium two years after opening an $18 million, 17,000-square-foot state-of-the-art coaching middle. Several NWSL golf equipment are on the similar path, or not less than practice in state-of-the-art services unimaginable in the league’s early years. In England, Arsenal are among the teams that have moved into men’s stadiums full-time and revel in rising income.
Actor and Kansas City native Jason Sudeikis took some inspiration from his visits to the Current in NWSL. (Jay Biggerstaff / NWSL by way of Getty Images)
However, Richmond represents a staggering quantity of golf equipment throughout the globe that proceed to face actual monetary and useful resource challenges. The dream of being given equal services — like a guests’ locker room — stays removed from actuality.
“Even in Serie A Women (Italy’s top-flight women’s soccer league), not every team has a dedicated facility,” former goalkeeper Arianna Criscione, who performed in the U.S., Italy and France, advised The Athletic. She is now the head of women’s soccer at Krause Group, which owns Parma Calcio 1913 and Portuguese membership Casa Pia AC.
“At Parma, our women train and play at the same place, so the locker room is theirs year-round. But we play teams that share facilities with men’s teams, where the locker room is only theirs for that day.”
“Ted Lasso,” of course, takes some Hollywood liberties with its staff. Richmond’s comparatively new women’s staff trains at the similar facility as Richmond’s males.
“They were training on grass. That’s already massive,” Criscione mentioned. “Most women don’t get to train on the same pitch as the men.”
Even the present’s supposedly depressing circumstances include luxuries few in actuality can entry.
Goalkeeper Arianna Criscione coaching at Paris Saint-Germain in 2020. (Aurelien Meunier / PSG by way of Getty Images)
“When I was at PSG, we had our own locker room at the training facility, with these magnetic name plates on our lockers,” Criscione mentioned. “I took mine home; they are still on my mother’s refrigerator. It was the first time I’d ever had something like that, and I was so happy. Taking home a magnet that said ‘Arianna Criscione’ with the PSG logo felt like a really big deal.”
That magnet represented, as ironic as it might be, the permanence many ladies by no means skilled all through their careers. “Most of my career, we walked into locker rooms that were simply not built for women,” she added. “There might be three urinals and one regular toilet, when what we actually need is more toilets.”
For years, this was primarily the enterprise mannequin for women’s soccer: construct it for males and work out someplace to put girls. The pace at which Richmond’s PR guide Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) can safe a locker room for the women’s staff is only fictional.
The second tier of English women’s soccer solely turned totally skilled in the 2025-26 season. Before that, gamers had to preserve their day jobs.
Renamed WSL2, the league’s monetary fragility is but to disappear. Blackburn, which came 10th in the 2024-25 season, is a chief instance. The staff was demoted from WSL2 regardless of ending above the relegation zone after its proprietor declined to meet the monetary necessities for gamers, infrastructure and workers of a tier-two staff.
Blackburn Rovers dropped by the divisions after its proprietor failed to meet WSL2’s monetary necessities. (Catherine Ivill / Getty Images)
“The gap between the top of WSL2 and the bottom of WSL has, in recent history, been more precarious than conquerable; the financial buy-in required to compete is not worth the pay-off for most owners,” The Athletic’s Megan Feringa wrote throughout her reporting, explaining the distinction between the two divisions of English women’s soccer.
Sounds acquainted? That’s what the fictional “Higgins Report” says will occur to Richmond.
For many years, women’s soccer was requested to show its worth whereas working with a fraction of the resources afforded to the males. And whereas profitability stays a problem, that’s hardly distinctive to the women’s sport.
In the Premier League, the world’s richest home males’s league, solely eight of 20 golf equipment reported an working revenue in 2024-25, in accordance to Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance, whereas mixture pre-tax losses reached £948 million ($1.3 billion). The distinction? Few query whether or not males’s soccer is a viable enterprise.
Men’s soccer groups are hardly ever evaluated just by their yearly income and losses. Investors take into account their IP, media rights, sponsorship potential, actual property, and, of course, shortage worth, assuming the enterprise will develop sustainably over time.
Women’s soccer is slowly being evaluated the similar method.
The funding increase in women’s soccer is starting to check these limits. Instead of anticipating them to be worthwhile earlier than receiving funding, a brand new technology of buyers is betting that with the right funding, income will observe.
That doesn’t imply women’s soccer will abruptly develop into a reliably worthwhile enterprise; many golf equipment in the U.S. and Europe nonetheless function at important losses, notably as salaries and different prices rise, however that can also be how rising companies are constructed: buyers soak up losses at present as a result of they consider the asset might be price considerably extra tomorrow.
“The growth of the game has been exponential. It’s almost unrecognizable from the early NWSL days when I played. So much of that comes down to investment, something we were screaming about for years,” Lori Lindsey, a soccer commentator and retired midfielder who performed for the Washington Spirit in the NWSL’s inaugural season, advised The Athletic.
“The players and the product were always there. It was about convincing people that women’s soccer was worth investing in.”
According to Deloitte’s 2026 Football Money League, the 15 highest-revenue women’s golf equipment it analyzed generated a mixed €158 million ($185m) in 2024-25, with business income accounting for 72 p.c of the whole.
AFC Richmond proprietor Rebecca Welton (performed by Hannah Waddingham) has to persuade sponsors to assist the membership. (Apple TV)
In the present, Richmond’s males’s front-of-shirt sponsor gets cautious of doing the similar for the girls after the contentious shareholders’ assembly. It takes Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) going to the investor to plead her case.
In the women’s sport, sponsorship is the engine of the enterprise. Brands are successfully inserting the similar guess as homeowners: That the viewers for women’s soccer is rising sooner than the value of reaching it.
In 2024, Arsenal took a leap of religion by designating Emirates Stadium as the fundamental dwelling of the women’s aspect. The decision followed the demand moderately than making an attempt to manufacture it.
Four WSL matches at the Emirates throughout 2023-24 drew a mean crowd of greater than 52,000, together with two sellouts and three league attendance information. Arsenal responded by placing extra video games there. By 2025-26, all of Arsenal Women’s WSL dwelling matches have been scheduled to be performed at the Emirates. The common league attendance at Arsenal reached 33,808 final season — practically 4 instances Chelsea’s, the subsequent highest common.
Arsenal Women play all of their dwelling video games in the similar stadium as their Premier League counterparts. (Adam Davy / Getty Images)
It isn’t a surprise that Arsenal has the highest income for a women’s membership, in accordance to Deloitte’s 2026 Money League, producing $29.1 million (£21.5 million). But the information from the earlier season demonstrates the different aspect of the equation.
WSL golf equipment generated $88 million (£65 million) however recorded mixed pre-tax losses of $38 million (£28 million). Wage prices had climbed 44 p.c to $70 million (£52 million), producing a mean wage-to-revenue ratio of 81 p.c.
Translation: You want to spend cash to earn a living.
And that’s the place “Ted Lasso” highlights one thing necessary.
The elementary argument inside AFC Richmond will not be actually about whether or not the Greyhounds’ women’s staff is nice sufficient. It is about whether or not the individuals controlling the cash consider the staff can develop into invaluable and justify spending on it earlier than the proof is totally apparent.