At a meeting this week, the Women’s Super League and Championship clubs accepted the loan, which will be returned if the women’s game generates £100 million in revenue, Sky News has learned.
Sky News has learned that the finance was agreed by Women’s Super League (WSL) and Championship clubs during a meeting on Wednesday. This approval came after discussions over a similar loan package with the Football Association had been going on in parallel for some months.
Executives from the club announced that the Premier League loan would be interest-free and would only need to be repaid if the ‘newco’ formed by the top two divisions generated an annual revenue of £100 million.
The extra funds will be put to use once the new commercial organization starts up for a number of different things.
Following the success of the England national team, Nikki Doucet, a former executive at Nike, was named the newco chief executive in November. She is rumored to have big plans to expand women’s football at a time when interest is booming.
The talks to create the new organization were tense until teams in the second division made a sudden about-face a few days after dismissing the plans to organize the corporation due to disagreements about rights to governance.
Now, 25% of the merged leagues’ commercial revenue, the great bulk of which is produced by the Women’s Super League (WSL), will go to women’s championship teams.
“Recently, our clubs agreed that they would make a financial loan to the NewCo that is being set up at the top of the women’s game in the Premier League and have a seat on the board and provide a whole bunch of services to the game such as advice on how to commercially develop the league,” Premier League Chief Executive Richard Masters told MPs during a recent select committee hearing.
“It still has to be approved by the WSL board, but I hope that is the start of a relationship and the men’s game can help the women’s game in a whole raft of different areas.”
