‘I want to be a Lioness’: research shows more girls than ever engaging with football

While retaining their title is the big aim for the Lionesses this summer, their run to the Euro 2025 final in Switzerland has already delivered a broader success – another huge uplift in visibility for the women’s game, at elite and grassroots level.

The continued progress of Sarina Wiegman’s side, who won the tournament in 2022 and reached the World Cup final a year later, has led to another increase in engagement on a range of measures.

While TV viewing figures peaked at 17.4m in the run-up to the final, tickets sales for Women’s Super League games have soared and more women’s matches have been upgraded to bigger grounds, with Arsenal due to play all their home games at the Emirates Stadium next season.

But perhaps one of the biggest impacts the displays in Switzerland have had domestically is on the rise in support for grassroots football. The Lioness effect has resulted in the number of women and girls’ teams doubling – the biggest rise since the season after England beat Germany in 2022’s final.

The impact of the Lionesses has been tracked by Football Beyond Borders, a social inclusion charity which aims to use football and education to change the lives of young people. Their research shows more young girls are watching women’s football now than ever before. More than a third of the sample of 500 13-18 year old girls surveyed – 36% – are now attached to a football club, demonstrating increased engagement with the sport compared to their 2023 data, which showed that 29% had never played the game.

Rachel Buchanan, the brand and partnerships manager at Girls United FC who run a number of clubs and coaching programmes internationally, said that grassroots opportunities are key to teaching girls about self-empowerment: “I just really see the benefits of taking part in football and teen sports in general, and it is such a great vehicle for supporting girls.

“I think a lot of what you look at when you think of girls and grassroots football is removing as many barriers as possible. What I’ve been speaking a lot about this month is the personalities and the willingness to share that the Lionesses and other professional women have that I think is a real differentiator in the women’s game, because you get to see that they are real people and what they’ve done to get to that moment, and it just makes it that much more accessible.

“So it’s not like a five-year-old girl being like: ‘I could never be that’. When they do the surveys and they tell us what they got out of the session, so much of the time they’re like: ‘I’m going to be a future footballer. I want to play for Chelsea. I want to be a Lioness.’”

Ian Balaam, chairman of Wimbledon Little League, has experienced the same pick-up in interest. “It is growing, I’ve been coaching girls for a while. We have over 300 children come every Saturday now,” he says.

Among his former students is Aggie Beever-Jones, now of Chelsea and England. “I actually met Aggie while coaching at a local school. I said to my friend who was a caretaker at the school that she was special.

“We were invited up to St George’s Park the other week and yeah, it took her a little bit of time to remember me, but I just said a few things that she would’ve remembered and and then she was like: ‘I remember! I remember you!’

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“It was nice for her and she was pleased to meet the girls that we took up and are currently playing in the league.”

Chadderton FC, another notable grassroots club, have also experienced a huge growth in interest for the women’s game. Sophie Julien, a club committee member, said: “It’s really refreshing to see how much they do enjoy the game and the passion to watch female football is becoming bigger within our girls.”

Momentum is being maintained, said Julien, with visits to the club from icons of the women’s game such as Nikita Parris and Jill Scott, and a £900,000 grant for a new pitch.

“It’s just becoming more accessible and more fun. I know that some of the girls at our club come back from watching England on the TV and then they talk about what they’ve seen … they’re like: ‘My god, did you see that?’”

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