The Football Association's new summer League, whose title will be announced on Thursday and which is set to kick off in April next year, will not suffer the massive financial problems that the United States' professional women's leagues have experienced, insists Sally Horrox, the project manager for the working-titled "FA Super League".
The US has the world's top-ranked national team but, after the 2003 collapse of the Women's United Soccer Association league with cumulative losses of almost $100m, the 2009-launched Women's Professional Soccer league has already seen two clubs, Los Angeles Sol and Saint Louis Athletica, go out of existence amid fears that this league may also end in closure.
Horrox said: "Our model is much different to the USA's. Their clubs have budgets of $2m-3m a season, ours will be £200,000-300,000. The current American league is more modest than the first one in terms of its wage bills (average $35,000 per player per season), but they're still a lot higher than ours will be – their league is professional whereas ours will essentially be semi-pro, and I don't think that more than a handful of players will be truly full‑time professionals over here."
Top players will earn around £25,000 per season in the FA's league, but the majority will be expected to supplement their earnings with other part-time work. The league will not have title-sponsors but, with a TV deal already in place with ESPN, Horrox said: "We are building a family of commercial partners."
Sunderland, whose bid to join the new league ended in failure, won 4-2 against Watford yesterday to move four points clear at the top of the Premier League. Reading beat Blackburn 2-0 to leapfrog their opponents into second place. Nottingham Forest slipped to fourth after a 2-2 draw at Millwall, who are now fifth.