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 \u2013 another huge uplift in visibility for the women\u2019s game, at elite and grassroots level.<\/p>\n
The continued progress of Sarina Wiegman\u2019s side, who won the tournament<\/a> in 2022 and reached the World Cup final<\/a> a year later, has led to another increase in engagement on a range of measures.<\/p>\n While TV viewing figures peaked at 17.4m<\/a> in the run-up to the final, tickets sales for Women\u2019s Super League games have soared and more women\u2019s matches have been upgraded to bigger grounds, with Arsenal due to play all their home games at the Emirates Stadium<\/a> next season.<\/p>\n 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\u2019 teams doubling \u2013 the biggest rise since the season after England beat Germany in 2022\u2019s final.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s football now than ever before. More than a third of the sample of 500 13-18 year old girls surveyed \u2013 36% \u2013 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.<\/p>\n England forward Nikita Parris with players from Chadderton FC.<\/p>\n Rachel Buchanan, the brand and partnerships manager at Girls United FA, who run a number of clubs and coaching programmes internationally, said that grassroots opportunities are key to teaching girls about self-empowerment: \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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\u2019ve 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\u2019s game, because you get to see that they are real people and what they\u2019ve done to get to that moment, and it just makes it that much more accessible.<\/p>\n \u201cSo it\u2019s not like a five-year-old girl being like: \u2018I could never be that\u2019. When they do the surveys and they tell us what they got out of the session, so much of the time they\u2019re like: \u2018I\u2019m going to be a future footballer. I want to play for Chelsea. I want to be a Lioness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ian Balaam, chairman of Wimbledon Little League, has experienced the same pick-up in interest. \u201cIt is growing, I\u2019ve been coaching girls for a while. We have over 300 children come every Saturday now,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Among his former students is Aggie Beever-Jones, now of Chelsea and England. \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWe were invited up to St George\u2019s 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\u2019ve remembered and and then she was like: \u2018I remember! I remember you!\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt was nice for her and she was pleased to meet the girls that we took up and are currently playing in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n Chadderton FC, another notable grassroots club, have also experienced a huge growth in interest for the women\u2019s game. Sophie Julien, a club committee member, said: \u201cIt\u2019s really refreshing to see how much they do enjoy the game and the passion to watch female football is becoming bigger within our girls.\u201d<\/p>\n Momentum is being maintained, said Julien, with visits to the club from icons of the women\u2019s game such as Nikita Parris and Jill Scott, and a \u00a3900,000 grant for a new pitch.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019ve seen \u2026 they\u2019re like: \u2018My god, did you see that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While retaining their title is the big aim for the Lionesses this summer, their run to the Euro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-296612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114926813650382355","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}