EA SPORTS Women’s Football Summit – Focus on women’s football

It has been possible to play individual women’s national teams since FIFA 2016, but EA SPORTS opened the big stage for women’s football for the first time with FIFA 23. In the current game there are not only 17 national teams, but also the English Barclays Women’s Super League and the French Division 1 Arkema also represented two top-flight national leagues. Another sign of women’s football is that Australian Sam Kerr is the first woman to appear on the cover of the FIFA 23 Ultimate Edition.

In addition, the knockout phase of the UEFA Women’s Champions League will be added from early 2023 with Juventus Women, Real Madrid Femenino, Chelsea Women, Manchester City Women, Olympique Lyonnais Féminine, Paris Saint-Germain Feminine and more. And next summer, EA SPORTS will host the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 in Australia and New Zealand, giving fans the opportunity to experience the pinnacle of international women’s football not just on TV, but in-game.

But all this should only be the beginning of a long-term commitment that increasingly focuses on women’s football. At the first EA SPORTS Woman’s Football Summit in London, there were concrete announcements as to how further development would look like. There was the multi-year partnership with the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL), which was lauded by the Head of Sponsorship & Licensing at UEFA, Guillaume Sabran, as an important step for women’s football.

Another multi-year sponsorship partnership of EA SPORTS was agreed with the streaming service DAZN as Global Broadcast Partner of the UEFA Women’s Champions League. The collaboration will begin in March 2023, coinciding with the launch of the UEFA Women’s Champions League in FIFA 23 and the quarter-finals of the competition. EA SPORTS advertising will be visible on all global matchday broadcasts on DAZN and on DAZN’s UWCL YouTube channel. The aim is for DAZN to become the home of women’s football.

And another piece of very good news for women’s football: With the Starting XI Fund, a growth fund was announced that is intended to further advance women’s football and will be endowed by EA SPORTS with 11 million US dollars. The money is to flow into the promotion of leagues, clubs and athletes and represent an important investment in the future of sport.

So much for the official announcements intended to ensure that more attention is paid to women’s football on an ongoing basis. However, presence in the media does not only mean well-deserved praise for the achievements of the athletes, but more spectators in the stadiums and in front of the screens also ensure a growing interest of other sponsors to get involved in women’s football. The sometimes tight coffers of the clubs can certainly do with more money for future investments.

EA SPORTS Women’s Football Summit, the first event of its kind all about women’s football, had much more content to offer: In top-class panels, competently moderated by British sports journalist Reshmin Chowdhury, active and former players such as Sam Kerr and Laura Georges or DAZN spoke Rights Director Woman’s Sport Andrea Ekblad on the rosy future prospects, but also current problems.

Even after the European Championship in England, which was well covered in the media, there is still a lack of spectators in the home stadiums. As Sam Kerr puts it figuratively, “The viewers know us and we know every viewer.”

Another exciting topic dealt with the ratings of the players in FIFA. As Assistant Producer DCL at EA SPORTS, Dzuljeta Tansome is responsible for processing the values. An undertaking that has taken on a whole new dimension with the two new leagues D1 Arkema and FA Women’s Super League and the upcoming UEFA Woman’s Champions League. So far, only the international match ratings have been taken into account, but now club matches have to be taken into account.

More than 30 attributes in the offensive and defensive area, such as ball control, finishing, sprinting, tackling or duels, are included in a player’s overall rating. There is already a huge database for men, but the situation in women’s football has been completely different so far and in many cases you have to start from scratch.

Tansome works with her team around the clock to create suitable ratings based on video analysis and game reports and to assign a fair rating to the players. By the way, the Spaniard Alexia Putellas is currently at the top of the players with a total rating of 92.

Finally, the panel participants were asked where they would see women’s football in ten years. The answers from Chelsea striker Sam Kerr, Andrea Ekblad from DAZN or Laura Georges, who played an impressive 188 games for the French women’s national team between 2001 and 2018, are similar: “The sky is the limit”.

The desired goal would be that there is no difference between women’s and men’s football, global attention, sponsorship and attendance levels are equalized and more professional leagues emerge. When I think about how I trembled with the German women’s national team during UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 and how much fun I had watching the games, I would be really happy if these predictions all come true.