UP526 Nikki Doucet has the most interesting job in British sport

0:00Hi there, welcome. It's Richard Gillis here and welcome to the first episode of Unofficial Partner for 2026. Our guest is Nikki Doucet, who is CEO of WSL Football, the organisation which is in charge of the Women's Super League Divisions 1 and 2. So she's got a big job, a critical time and it's a really interesting conversation. Just some details here on Nikki. Her early career was in investment banking at Citigroup. She has an MBA in finance from the University of Toronto. Eight years, she worked at Nike from 2013 to 2021, rising to general manager of Nike Women in the UK and Ireland. And she was appointed in November 2023 to the job of CEO of NUCO, which was the forerunner of WSL football.

0:43As you'll hear, we talk about the commercial side. I think just some detail on that. The league's title sponsor is Barclays, which is a£45 million three-year deal from 25 to 28. That's£15 million a year. The broadcast media writes£65 million over five years from Sky, which works out to be about£13 million a year. So that's 118 matches, 78 of which are exclusive. Also, a deal includes the BBC's, 21 games on the BBC and 34 on YouTube. Total revenue for the league is£28 million a year, which is up from£10 million, which is in the number from the pre-Women's Professional League limited days. And part of the structure is a loan from the Premier League,£20 million interest-free.

1:32On the agency side, you've got two circles working through to 28 and 29. That's a relatively new relationship, selling sponsorship. And the international media rights are with IMG. The competitive landscape of the WSL. Chelsea have won eight times, six consecutive. They've been unbeaten in 2024-25. Arsenal are the current Champions League holders, beating Barcelona in the final. London City Lionesses, we reference. First independent club in the WSL, Michel Kang's ownership. And there's been the first million pound transfer, Olivia Smith, who went from Liverpool to Arsenal in August of last year.

2:11attendance is a question we look at WSL 2024-25 is average 6 ,661 which is down 10 % from 7 ,371 I think those figures are from my old mate Matt Cutler from our sister podcast the expected goals with Matt Cutler and Maggie Murphy and those numbers are in Matt's very valuable spreadsheet WSL 2 last year's average was 2 ,086 which is up 108 % includes a record 38 ,500 people who went to watch Newcastle versus Sunderland I go into much more detail about both this conversation and what I think its implications are on Substack so if you're not on Substack already you should do so and follow Unofficial Partner.

3:01You'll find us there. Many people already do and receive the newsletter. This episode of the Unofficial Partner podcast is brought to you by Sid Lee Sport. Sid Lee Sport is the fame-making creative and sponsorship agency for brands in sport. Through exceptional creativity, deep sponsorship expertise, and flawless on-site delivery, they help brands, sponsors and rights holders unlock their full potential in sport most recently picking up a leaders sports award for their work with Lidl at UEFA Euro 2024 everything they do is driven by a culture of effectiveness because in sport performance matters not just on the pitch but in the work too so whether you want to build buzz connect with audiences or do something that actually cuts through sidley sport knows how visit sidleysport.com where brands become champions

4:08well you know people make people make an effort yes i tried i even i even put a little makeup on this morning well i'm beyond that stage so i'm beyond saving so you know no never never you're look great thank you very much I'll I'll take that did they give you a day off for new year and Christmas and all that I did I actually well we have a mid we have a mid-season break which is actually part of our governance which I think we should protect at all cost because uh I think you know we'll get into it obviously but the last couple of years we've been running I think everyone needed a break so I did get a break and I haven't taken a break in a long time and so I feel great right now I had I had days where I got like nine hours of sleep incredible unknown yeah yeah did you have a good break yes very nice actually very lazy break we had quite a long break December I don't know about you but it just closed everything closes down so Christmas is now three weeks long and you know there's two things one is I met you almost the week you got your job there was a a do that we were both at at and it was the sports news lobbies christmas thing in knightsbridge and yes i think it was just literally the first week or two of your job in november must have been yes joanna manning cooper took me that's right that's right and so and i was sort of thinking yeah so you know these things oh you think oh it must be it feels like yesterday but actually so that's now we're now into this is the three years it'll be three years i started as a consultant at the end of january and then two years officially signed the contract in the actual role as of last as of november because there was a sort of period where there was nothing to be ceo of was it that was a kind of weird hybrid period yeah they hired I went through the process and they said, you're the preferred candidate.

6:01They said, but actually the job doesn't exist yet because the company doesn't exist yet. Would you join as a consultant and work with the clubs in the FA to figure out what the new coach should look like and be governed? And with no guarantee that you're the CEO at the end of it. And I said, OK, here we go. So this podcast, it's listened to and the guests we get on are there's people in your on your side of the fence, you know, on the sort of running sports bodies and organizations. But we also get a lot of people on the other side. So from, you know, the media side, the sponsor side, increasingly the money side.

6:38So the finance and private equity types who are looking at sport and tech platforms. And I sort of think it's interesting when I talk to them, you get a lens into what sport looks like through their eyes. And it's really interesting how often the WSL and women's football comes up in the conversation. Oh, really? Yeah, just in the run of play, people are really interested in it, are interested in the sort of growth of it. You will know that people have got lots of opinions about what you should and shouldn't do and all of these things. And sometimes you think, I wonder why that is. I think I understand why, but why do you think it is?

7:22Why are people really engaged in this as a business conversation? conversation? I think there, well, one, I think there's two main reasons. One is there's a massive TAM that I think there's actually untapped potential. And if it's done properly, it's the next 30, 40, 50 years of growth, of incremental growth. So I don't see it as taking, it makes the pie bigger. And I think the second thing is that it's because it's at such an early stage of development, there's still, you're still, we are building things from scratch. And I think that's also, from my perspective, it's super excited me to be building a business.

8:07But if I think about if we were even a year ago to now, we hadn't done the new brand yet. We didn't have a website set up yet. We were still just a few months coming out of the FA. We hadn't officially signed all of our new partners yet. All of the sports science we're setting up, we hadn't done the expansion changes. There was just, so even just in, you know, less than 12 months, what we've done from a business perspective, we didn't have our own office yet. So I just think, you know, setting it up and starting even just the tech platform and the tech stack from what we need to do to enable the business to have the data and analytics that's required by today's fan and by businesses that part I feel is also really exciting yeah I think it sort of combines there's a few things I think that are going on and one of the threads that I wanted to talk to you about is I don't think we know what the future holds across sport I'm not talking about the WSL or women's football But the sort of old certainties are coming under pressure, aren't they?

9:11And the old money, if you like, that was the model was fairly secure and safe and people understood it. And now we're looking at a sort of sport as entertainment, sport as product, sport as a sort of asset to be invested in. And the questions are changing. And I think that's not that's, again, broader than women's football and the WSL. but there's a sense of there's so many new things hitting the market across lots of different you know from golf to cricket to rugby to paddle all of these things that again on a podcast like this you sort of get people on saying right this is the new thing and you start to have an audience conversation you start to have a business model conversation so and WSL seems to encapsulate a lot of that again which is exciting and that's why I think people get interested in that it as a business yes what surprised you along the way um that's a good question I tried I don't know I didn't really come in I guess I came with my perspective and a point of view of where I think I could grow um but I also can't I I because I didn't grow up in England and I grew up in Canada and in North America the biggest thing I think that surprised me was just the difference in the perception of women's sport and female athletes versus how I grew up.

10:30And I still think that today, that is still the difference in terms of just the values and where they should be. And that I think the North American market is slightly ahead because of Title IX and Canada kind of, while we don't have a Title IX like the US does, I think we, you know, I grew up the way, I never had anybody tell me. Right, because people would have heard of Title IX and I, Just give me a one minute, Title IX. Why is that important? Title IX in the US was a law that was done in 1971 that basically said for any school to get federal funding, it had to provide equal access to sport for females.

11:13and so it allowed I think a respect between boys and girls from a very very early age around one benefit of sport but also allowing girls to have access to play sport in any sport not just this is a sport you play because you're a girl this is a sport you play because you're a boy and I think I certainly benefited from that because I had access to a gym teacher I played with the boys. I never had any parents telling me that I couldn't play a sport because I was a girl and I always thought that was my superpower. Now not to say North America is perfect but over here I still think one of the the opportunities we have is how sport is taught between boys and girls in schools and I think that will translate you know into the future into a more respectful society and a more and a healthier society.

12:03So I look at the WSL and I see a sort of campaigning brand you quite often reference it as a startup and I'm going to ask you about that in a minute and you've mentioned Tam and I'm going to ask you about that in a minute but we're talking about Title IX there is a campaigning element to the WSL and this morning your very efficient comms team sent over a new Mercedes-Benz deal which is which is sort of announced as we speak almost let's talk about the sponsorship question because quite often people look at the WSL and women's football and it's presented as a sort of purpose brand purpose play and i want to talk to you about that because you've got this nike background and you know audiences and you know brands so just talk to me about what are mercedes and barclays what are they buying when they look at the wsl they're buying access to a great audience and a great product and they're also buying into the ability of building a growth they're in a growth economy i mean we are i will go back to the tam question when i look at The most recent YouGov data suggests there's around 500 million people who say that they are a fan of women's football globally.

13:12500 million? 500 million. And so we have around 79 million people globally that somehow engage or follow the WSL through our social channels, through YouTube, through our clubs. You have... What's that number again? Sorry, that second number. 79 million. 79 million... Globally. Globally. Engage or somehow with either our club's channels, WSL channels, through YouTube, through social, whatever that looks like. Then you have, when you get into the actual UK audience, there's around 29 million people who say that they are a fan of women's football. We would have 15 million unique audience from a domestic broadcast perspective.

13:57And then we have a million people coming annually from an attendance perspective. So when I look at that funnel, you know, there's and we would say when you look at the demographics within that. A third of the fans are new to women's football or new to football. And so that's we have a relatively new fan base that is learning behaviors. And they also have different expectations than perhaps traditional men's football. Almost 40 percent of our ticket purchasers are female and around 42 percent are between the ages of 18 and 34. So we have a different fan base that has different expectations for our clubs and for our league.

14:42And I think a lot of the companies that are coming on board are coming at it from a value perspective because we are still building. So when I look at the sponsorship that we're bringing on board, you look at starting with Barclays, who continue to deserve such a massive shadow in their support of women's football over the years. They've doubled their investments. They wouldn't be doubling their investment if they didn't see value creation. Nike coming on board and continuing their partnership, but this time extending it so that they're providing boots and gloves to all of our players across both leagues so that our players have the equipment that they need to play.

15:19You have Apple coming on board, which is providing hardware solutions for all of the clubs. So it's starting to minimize the disparity that we have across our league in terms of access to equipment from technical analysis to help create more ability for clubs to compete. We have British Gas coming on board, helping fans either from a tariff perspective, access to tickets or pitch protection. We've got Subway that's just come on board in the last year looking and they've helped us from a nutrition perspective, also in partnership with the WellEHQ, which is helping us from a female athlete and sports science perspective.

15:57And now we've just announced Mercedes and they'll ultimately be the you know the presenting partner for our first ever playoff promotion playoff which is also an exciting new element that we have this season so that's a heck of a roster isn't it when you look at those names on that that roster one of the areas I think that are interesting you've got these potential contradictions or trade-offs that are running through there's the growth and quality trade-off trying to establish two divisions of teams whilst maintaining the quality competitive balance the Chelsea question which you'll be very familiar and you've answered a hundred times so whether you know that's that there's that bit and there's the sort of the differentiation from the men's game whilst also tapping into the infrastructure but also the brands of the men's game so I think it's quite interesting when you look at the sponsor question you're saying that it's additive can you just explain what that means from a sponsor's point of view in terms of what you're selling centrally and then what the clubs are selling because if i'm in a club commercial person i'm thinking that's a great roster of brands that have just shown me that they're interested in football women's football how can i make hay here this is what should be happening well i think the the point that you made around the differentiation from men's football is for me is very important.

17:21It's the same sport, different product. Fundamentally, it is a different product with a different value proposition, with a different fan base, with different athletes. And being a female athlete is a fundamentally different experience than being a male athlete. And so same sport, different product and different behaviors from a fan perspective and from an athlete perspective. And what the athlete needs to perform is different than what a male athlete needs to perform. And so our brands also can provide different access and also tell different stories to their fan, to their consumer base through our product and through our storytelling channels, either through the athletes, the clubs or the league itself.

18:03And you get access at the league level. It's our, at this stage of development, it's important that we raise the valuation floor. So those brands that you're seeing come on board our global leading brands. They're raising the valuation floor. They get access to all of the clubs. They can tell, storytell across our athletes, across the clubs, and then the global reach that we have. I go back to the TAM, but also what we're starting to build from a reach perspective, 76 % of our broadcast audience is international. And so we have a global, when you look at women's football and the various women's football propositions, we're almost an always-on annual proposition globally from a women's sport perspective.

18:51So I asked loads of questions from, we've got a WhatsApp group and people who you know on it, and lots of other people from across the industry. And I was sort of asking a few of them what they thought, and they all landed on, why are audiences down this year when you've had a Lionesses victory? the trajectory should be growth and that attendance number is getting in the way of the story I'd love to know what why you think that's happened because it feels counterintuitive to everything you've talked about in terms of the size and the tam and the funnel what's happening on the ground what is not happening what's not working so I disagree that the total audience is down I the total audience from our perspective and what we see is is up so when I look at our our broadcast audience and our broadcast reach, our three-minute reach certainly on Sky is up significantly year over year.

19:45We also have more, all of our clubs have been on Sky at least twice, whereas a year ago, not every club had in the WSL had the ability to be shown on Sky. We also continue to have the reach with BBC and then our international audience continues to grow. Our digital engagement and our digital audience continues to grow year on year. And September was actually our fourth highest month ever from an engagement and audience perspective. And so we see our digital audience continuing to grow. And I think you see the club's digital audience continuing to grow. So the annual attendance, I think there's pockets of growth and then there's pockets of testing and learning and trying to figure out where the pain points are and what you're trying to solve for the fans.

20:34So just to put some numbers on the attendance. So, again, put me right if these are the wrong numbers. But so the attendance across the league at the stadium has fallen 10 percent from last year. Average attendance dropped from 7 ,371 to 6 ,661. That's the number that I've got. And again, that's a different story in terms of the growth and the startup. And that's getting in the way of the narrative. And I just want to just hold on to that for a moment, because we've seen the Arsenal sellouts and we've seen the big moments. But on the week by week challenge of getting people through the gate, what is not working?

21:15I think one of the biggest challenges we have is inconsistency. And so when you're a fan, which stadium are you going to? What time is it? Is it easy to get to? Do you have what you have? And I also think when you look at the three-year average, we're one of the fastest growing attendance sports in the UK. So year over year, people would have thought there might have been a massive bump off the back of the Euros. I think it's very difficult to compare to the home Euros and coming off the back of COVID. I think that's a really unique circumstance. And I think it's different when it's an away Euros.

21:54And if you're not getting the same experience as you go to an England match versus your club match, I think that is where, especially if you're a new fan to football and you have a different expectation in terms of what you want your fan experience to be, I think each club needs to figure out how are you creating an emotionally connected fan base for your women's team for your club. So I think each club, especially if you have a men's team, you have an emotionally invested fan base for your men's team. That's happened over decades. Whereas I think you're still trying to determine how is a fan emotionally connected to your women's team?

22:36And is that the same reason for your men's team or is it a different reason? And if it's a different audience, how are you talking to them? How are you storytelling? And how are you bringing them into your stadium? Why should they be coming to support? And what do we, we did a podcast with Joe from, who runs Sky Sportswomen on television. And the question there was, who's watching? And their research suggests that it's a lot of men who are watching. and so again i found that quite an interesting lens and i've been trying to think and this was about six months ago and i've been trying to think why that is and some of it is men 70 percent of sky's audience is male and they buy the subscriptions and therefore it's going to be a large male audience who are watching but it was quite it's quite a dangerous stat that because it runs against the marketing story of it's about a new audience it's about women it's about young cooler more urban or less you know it's just less the traditional male football audience and i can see a marketing conversation going one way and then you've also and the media or conversation is supporting that because of the digital numbers and we can we can talk about digital numbers and their validity and their relationship to fandom but there is the attendance is really the nagging bit but also that it's a lot of men who are watching so you're trying to this contradiction of new and additive with actually traditional male audience you see where i'm going that's that i'm genuinely confused and i've been thinking about this for quite a long time and i asked people around the place on the research side.

24:24And everyone comes back to this question about who is a WSL fan? Well, if we're doing it right, everyone's a WSL fan. And if we're, if we have the right strategy across each of the... See, I wonder though, can I just interrupt? I wonder whether that is the right strategy and actually the big strategy versus much more targeted and narrow. There will be targeted and narrow in the right situations, but ultimately it's a sport that's for everybody. And everybody should be able to watch it and find the reason for why they want to watch it. And when we look at our fan insights and our fan segmentation, we've looked at it on everybody's relationship to football.

25:11And so I think there is what we would call a secondary fan who is traditionally someone who's come in through men's football and is now has an interest in women's football either because of the club or because they have family or kids and that's how they want to introduce their kids to the club and that's their so and i see and they are a significant part of the of the fan base you then have a core fan who probably their relationship with football started with men's football but now they've found women's football for whatever reason and that's their, they're the season ticket holder. And then you have what we would call the free fan who is new to football and has probably come in through the lionesses and they're, they have a fundamentally different relationship with why they're watching and what they're doing.

26:01And so it's important that we have the right strategy across each of those segments because they each have different behaviors and different reasons for what they're watching. So the core fan or the secondary fan wants a really strong technical analysis and the elitism and the athleticism and the football strategy is really important. Whereas the free fans still learning what the offside rule is and we need some football 101 for them. And so the spectrum of how we have to communicate and bring new fans into the game, bring them down the funnel, find a reason for them to want to come and then ultimately convert to purchasing tickets and ultimately be a season ticket holder and find the club, that free fan on BBC, 80 % of that audience doesn't follow a WSL club.

26:46And when you look at the statistics of our new website that we've only launched in, you know, a few months ago, the majority of people coming through our website choose three to four teams. And so the behavior of some of our audience is slightly different. And over time, it might become more tribal, like men's football, but that will take time to develop the emotional connection to clubs which might be a slightly different reason for why they're emotionally connected to a club either through a player or through different reasons for what the club is doing for the community versus men's football okay let's just pause on the fan for a moment and then look at you mentioned TAM which again is a you know total addressable market which is a finite you know that's a cube into a financial conversation and you're a former investment banker.

27:38So you have that background. And I'm really interested in, again, one of the running themes is, what would radical change look like? What would a completely different strategy look like? What would a closed league, much more focused, fewer teams, and you then go to private equity and say, right, okay, let's have a very large number. You get an ownership of that new entity and we throw the kitchen sink at this and move very much quicker and there's two things in there one is i'm interested in your just your philosophy i guess about private equity ownership and also open and closed leagues because again people will hear a canadian north american accent and make all sorts of preconceptions as to your lens into sport more generally and one of the running things that we get on this podcast all the time is that european model versus american model and you'll be very aware of all of that but just just don't pick that for me because i threw a lot at you there but you can sort of see that that's again a running argument it's a financial question and a product question and actually i'm going to steal some of your language from one of your i think earlier podcasts and i think i see it more around the concept of value creation versus extraction and and i was quoting warren buffett i think you were so i don't want to say too much credit he's you know somewhat more successful at money than i am and i and i also i'm also shaped by more so i think by my experience at nike and understanding the consumer and obsessing the product and the consumer and there's there's two things from that one is there's an economic model and what the numbers will say and you can build an economic model to show yes a closed league or something different or a radical change on paper you know has economic merit or can deliver returns or drive value but then there is the emotional side of sport and the economic profit and economic side is transaction.

29:56But sport is emotion. And there's certain parts of that, like you can't, a number doesn't, I can't quantify in the same way. And the emotion of sport, the edges of sport, the edges of culture, and being on the forefront of that, of a product that, you know, people experience joy that they love. Like we're in charge of a public entity. And I might have this role for however long I have this role, but while I'm in this role, that's the responsibility. And, and it has to be shaped by the culture, by the emotion of sport, by people wanting hope, you know, they want to win something they want. There's, there's not always an economic reason as to why someone's going to go to a game and paint their face and cheer.

30:45And that's that, the emotional connection of sport if it becomes transactional you've lost it but the bankers would say and you could tell me because you used to be one but they could say you could get to you can have both you could have the money and the structure sorted the other bit what you're talking about about fandom and passion and culture all of that should be achievable with both i don't know whether that's true or not but that's what their argument would be it's just money you take it but we'll let Nicky sort out all of the important bit, the social bit to what sport is. So there's sort of two lenses into sport and taking advantage of the money when it's available during this, what could be quite a narrow window.

31:31I'm hoping that it's a 20 year window, but money doesn't. And we know the world doesn't work like that. So you're right. You're in an important job. And it's a very, very focused period here because the decisions you're making now are going to have much of long-term implications up and down the pyramid so i can i know that's easy for me to say and there's a weight on you as a as the post holder but do you again it's that where the money is what the money wants because you've you had goldman sachs look at this you've come in and you know you've looked at you've modeled this and i'm interested in what conclusions you walked away from that process i think if you're looking at what the what the strategy is to grow.

32:13And if there are considerations for a capital investment or investment required to grow, the uses of funds is really important. And we've only been an independent company now for probably a number of just over a year, trying to understand what it takes to run this company and what's required to grow and what investment is required takes the right time. And I think when you see capital being raised but not deployed efficiently, I think that I would rather making sure that with the clubs and our stakeholders and our board and also understanding the governance of football and all the various checkpoints you have to go through, decision making is not fast.

33:00And

33:05understanding what's required and where investment needs to go. So even when you think about the talent pathway or referee development or the technology required to build the foundation of the business and what that looks like going forward or production expense, development of talent, helping the athletes and making sure that they're set up for success. Those are the types of things and the conversations that we're having. But ultimately, the clubs are the ones that will create a great league. We have to have great clubs. OK, Michel Kang is an interesting figure in this because trying to work out how London City Lionesses fit in to a league of Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs.

33:54They're a sort of microcosm of this a bit about this conversation. But again, instinctively, where are you on multi-club ownership in terms of just as an idea and its role within football? We're still reviewing what I think our guidelines are around multi-club ownership. And it's really important at this stage that we enable investment to come into clubs and to come into the game. And I think we're still going through the review as to what would be the impact. How does it, does it, is it a positive impact, a negative impact? Does it impact the integrity of the game? And so we're still in the process of building out what the guidelines are from our perspective at this stage of development.

34:41What are your sort of priors in that? What's your instinct? My instinct is we need more investment in general. And you need to have the right capital base that is patient capital over the next 10 years at a minimum, ahead of a potential home World Cup, which I think is the next massive inflection point. And that's what we're building towards. So, but you can't do it at the expense of game integrity. And how many Michel Kangs are out there, do you think? Is this just a one-off that you'll have to deal with? And there's the multi-club thing. That's one question about it. But there's also the investment and the buying of talent.