Average broadcast audiences for the Women’s Super League have dropped by 35% year on year, a new report by the Women’s Sport Trust has found, but there have been vast increases in engagement for women’s sports across social media platforms.
In rugby union, average audiences per game for the Women’s Premiership were up 86% on TNT Sports last season, whileEngland’s Red Rosessaw 75% more TikTok views than England’s men’s rugby union side between January and April 2025.
However, across women’s sports overall, for the first time since 2021, the charity’s report found a dip in the number of hours of women’s sport coverage on mainstream television, which is down 15% year on year.
The most notable decrease in average viewers per game was seen in the WSL, which had climbed sharply in the previous two campaigns after theLionesses’ Euro 2022 triumphand theirrun to the 2023 World Cup final. Last season was women’s football’s first campaign since 2021 that had not immediately followed a major international tournament. The league’s 35% television audience drop follows a 10% decrease in the men’s Premier League’s viewership last term, too.
The Women’s Championship – whichhas since been renamed WSL 2– saw attendances double compared with the previous season, reaching a new average of 2,086 attenders per game, but crowds in the WSL fell by 10% to an average of 6,661. The WSL’s new broadcast deal with Sky and the BBC kicks in next season, and the league recently announced an expansion to 14 teams from the summer of 2026, with a new playoff decider for relegation aimed at driving up jeopardy and engagement.
The report also found the BBC’s highlights show, the Women’s Football Show, saw its audiences drop to their lowest post-pandemic level, which coincided with the programme airing at a later time, starting from midnight or later 76% of the time, although it does air earlier in the evening via the BBC iPlayer.
However, the WSL attracted nearly 40m views on YouTube, making it the world’s second-most watched women’s sports property on that platform, behind only tennis’s WTA. There has also been growth in the WSL’s overseas audiences, with about a quarter of their viewers being based in the United States.
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WSL clubs saw a 154% increase in year-on-year TikTok views, overtaking the men’s EFL Championship clubs to be the second-most viewed domestic league on TikTok in England, and the league’s account saw a 35% rise in Instagram engagements. Thanks largely toBristol Bears’ signing of Ilona Maher, Premiership Women’s Rugby’s social media interaction levels skyrocketed, up by more than 1,000% compared with last year to climb to 2.3m TikTok views.
The report also found that the Women’s Boat Race, with a peak audience of 2.18 million viewers, was the UK’s single most-watched women’s sporting event of 2025 so far, but that is expected to be eclipsed emphatically during next month’s women’s football Euros and the Women’s Rugby World Cup, which gets under way on 22 August.