Arsenal Women’s 20k profit on €25.6m revenue: what that really tells us

There was a stat I mentioned on the pod recently that really stuck in my head, and I think it’s worth talking about properly, because it tells you a lot about where the women’s game is right now.

Arsenal Women topped Deloitte’s women’s football rich list with around €25.6 million in revenue last season. That’s about £21 million. We had the highest turnover in the WSL based on shirt sales, commercial work and attendances. But on that twenty odd million, we made a profit of about twenty thousand pounds. Twenty thousand.

I’m just going to pause and let that sink in for a second.

That’s how fine the margins are. You can be the “richest” club in the women’s game, have record crowds, sell loads of shirts, win trophies and still only just be in the black.

For me, that shows two things. First, we’re still very early in this journey. Second, clubs like Arsenal Women have to be careful and they have to do things properly.

We know there was an injection from the parent club of about £11 million last season. Given how well the men did, winning the Premier League and all of that, you’d hope the backing for the women will grow. But we still can’t behave like there’s an endless pot of money. We can’t compete pound for pound with someone like Michelle Kang, who’s spending at London City Lionesses like there’s no tomorrow. We’ve got to run Arsenal Women in a sustainable way.

This is why I was so angry with some of the reaction to Leah Williamson’s Calvin Klein campaign. You had blokes in the comments, half of them probably never even seen any form of women’s football, telling her to “focus on football” instead of “prancing around in underwear”. It’s pathetic. Whatever she was paid for that campaign, she deserved every single penny.

The plain truth is that the players are not getting men’s team money from their clubs yet. Not even close. If brands want to pay them properly for ads and campaigns, that’s one of the ways they can close that gap a little bit while the game grows. It’s also great for visibility. It puts women’s football in front of people who’d never normally see it.

In the short to mid term, we need those sponsorships and endorsements. We need the players earning from commercial work as well as club salaries, because that’s how they can make a proper living while the leagues catch up. I want to see the women earning what they’re worth, I want to see them earning as much as the men one day. But that’s going to take time.

If we try to rush it, if clubs suddenly double or triple wages across the board without the income to support it, we’re in big trouble. That’s when you risk leagues growing too fast, spending too much and then completely collapsing. And if that happens, we all lose and no one wants that.

For me, the choice is simple. I’d rather see the WSL, Liga F, Frauen Bundesliga, NWSL and all the other women's football leagues grow at a pace they can handle, stay alive and keep improving, than watch them blow up, chase silly money, then go bust. We need smart owners, smart investment and a bit of patience.

So the next time you see a player doing a big brand campaign, or a club like Arsenal talking about injections from the parent club, keep those numbers in mind. Twenty thousand profit on twenty odd million in revenue.

The game is growing and it’s in a much better place than it was. But we’re nowhere near “job done” yet.

If you’ve got thoughts on this, or you’ve seen good or bad examples of how clubs are handling money in the women’s game, come and find me on Instagram and let’s talk about it there.