Of the 11 remaining WSL clubs, five had their average attendance drop between 2023-24 and 2024-25 – Arsenal, Aston Villa, Everton, Manchester City and Manchester United, which includes three of the top four.
Aston Villa and Manchester United had by far the biggest drop-offs, with both clubs’ attendances falling by 33%.
For Villa, the move to playing all their WSL games at Villa Park – compared with only five the season before – does not look to have paid off, though they also spent the majority of the recent campaign in a relegation battle.
Manchester United played the same number of WSL games at Old Trafford in both seasons – two – and in 2023-24 those games attracted attendances of 43,615 and 28,737. In 2024-25 it was 8,761 and 31,465, with the former in their opening game against West Ham.
However, they also had a fall in attendances at their main stadium, Leigh Sports Village, with an average of 4,562 last season compared with 5,353 the season before.
Manchester City had the next biggest decrease of 8% – despite going from one to three matches at their bigger Etihad Stadium – followed by Everton at 5.5% and Arsenal at 4%.
Arsenal, considered a success story in the league for the way they have managed to attract record numbers to Emirates Stadium, played nine of their 11 home games there last season compared with six the previous one.
Yet while they did not hit the heights of the previous campaign when they broke the WSL attendance record and had two sell-outs at the Emirates, the figures were still impressive, with five matches attracting more than 35,000.
All but one of their matches surpassed 20,000 – that was the 5,539 who turned out for their midweek match with Leicester in April, which was rescheduled for an evening kick-off at short notice because of their Champions League involvement.
