How the Women's Super League found an unlikely market in Japan: 'Let’s embrace this'
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Katie Whyatt
A combination of streaming, representation and video games has made Japan one of the WSL's biggest markets
A few weeks into the season, Everton’s chief marketing and digital officer, Aaron Duckmanton, received an email from a colleague with links to YouTube and TikTok accounts called ‘Japarton /ジャパートン’. Defenders Rion Ishikawa and Hikaru Kitagawa, and midfielders Yūka Momiki and Honoka Hayashi were racking up tens of thousands of views posting Q&A videos in Japanese and vlogging their days at the club.
“We’ve got four young Japanese football players who are living together in the city of Liverpool and just having a great time,” Duckmanton tells The Athletic. “Let’s embrace this and see where it goes.”
A few weeks ago, Everton’s training ground chefs served traditional Japanese food, with the subsequent taste test posted across Everton’s own channels. “On those platforms that we know the Japanese market are looking at, on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, we’ve featured those players quite heavily,” says Duckmanton.
“We’ve got this perfect storm of wanting to increase the visibility of Everton Women, the league’s continued expansion internationally and players who’ve really bought into that, and are at the heart of what social media is because they’ve grown up with it. By them creating their own content and their own channels, the club has seen a massive uplift.”
While fans from Liverpool and Greater Manchester still dominate ticket sales for Everton Women, international growth opens up new revenue streams. The women’s team pages on Everton’s website have enjoyed a 33 per cent increase in traffic from Japan, according to Duckmanton.
“The impact that these players are having, plus the growth of the Women’s Super League (WSL), is translating back to direct interest in Everton Football Club,” Duckmanton says. “We’re really starting to see our Japanese fans come through and start to become an active member of our community.”
He outlines the trajectory: fans to purchasers, purchasers to subscribers to Everton TV, and on and on. The goal is that “in a year’s time, two years’ time, they’ll be die-hard Evertonians. But they’re not from Liverpool. That’s the beauty of international fandom.”
The trend isn’t limited to Everton.
When the WSL moved its non-broadcast games to YouTube ahead of the 2024-25 season, it found a large audience in Japan.
The country accounted for 21 per cent of the audience for Everton’s opening game against Brighton & Hove Albion that season; the UK audience was 40 per cent. Japan also made up 27 per cent of the audience for Manchester City versus West Ham in October 2024, compared to the UK audience of 28 per cent, according to YouTube.
With the help of global sports marketing agency IMG to extend rights distribution abroad, 30 international broadcasters are showing WSL matches during the 2025-26 season. Though the availability of matches on YouTube depended on the terms of those existing broadcast deals in different countries, there was still an encouraging pattern in Japan.
Seventy-six per cent of the WSL’s broadcast audience last season came from outside of the UK, according to figures supplied by the WSL, but Japan is a particular hotbed of potential. Outside of the UK, Japan is second only to the U.S. in terms of WSL fanbase size, according to the latest YouGov report on the WSL’s international appeal.
The formula for success is a mix of availability and representation.
The visibility helps attract talent. The WSL sent more players to the 2023 World Cup than any other league, and opens up hitherto unexplored commercial markets.
In the 2023-24 season, for example, Japan midfielder Fuka Nagano was the most-requested name on Liverpool Women shirts after their homegrown midfielder Missy Bo Kearns. Discussions with brands and sponsors can take on a global tilt.
Japanese midfielder Fuka Nagano’s shirt was the second-most requested of the Liverpool players in the 2023-24 season (Nick Taylor/Getty Images)
The YouTube data led directly to the sale of WSL rights to Japanese streaming service U-Next, via a partnership with sports marketing agency Pitch International. “They took that YouTube data to start a conversation,” said Zarah Al-Kudcy, the chief revenue officer at WSL Football. “We were able to demonstrate the audience that they will inherit.
“The feedback came that (Japan is) very athlete-centric in how they present a lot of their rights. They also carry the Premier League, and they liked that we had 12 (Japanese) players in our league.”
The WSL also has another virtual behemoth to credit for its sustained international growth: EA Sports FC, previously the FIFA video games series.
“The EA data shows that the younger generations are finding (the WSL) and educating themselves through the game,” continues Al-Kudcy, who previously worked in marketing and sponsorship roles at Sky and Formula One, and on organising committees for rugby union and cricket World Cups.
The biggest driver has been the game’s Ultimate Team feature, which allows players to build a dream squad comprising male and female players from around the world. Al-Kudcy recalls attending the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, and seeing posters for Chelsea forward Sam Kerr promoting what was then FIFA 23.
“The ability of EA to cut through internationally is huge,” she adds. “I think that’s what’s changing the fandom. They tend to be more educated because they’ve learned stuff through the game.”
The research, she says, indicates that those gamers are substantially more likely to engage with the league — buying merchandise and subscriptions and following on social media — than football fans who don’t play the game.
While growth at clubs like Arsenal and Manchester United has been spearheaded by the most visible Lionesses, teams without an England international must look to other ways to market their talent.
Japan was the eighth most-represented country in the WSL in the second half of last season, and there were 19 players in the league in the first half of the 24-25 campaign. In addition to Everton’s quartet, Hinata Miyazawa, the golden boot winner at the 2023 World Cup, recently re-signed with Manchester United; Manchester City’s reigning player of the year is Japan midfielder Yui Hasegawa.
Japan midfielder Hinata Miyazawa recently signed a new contract with Manchester United (Aitor Alcalde/Getty Images)
There is precedent in the men’s game for this: Tim Cahill, Tim Howard and Landon Donovan saw Everton fans spring up in Australia and the U.S.. “When we signed James Rodriguez, our Colombian fanbase overnight grew by 4,000 per cent,” Duckmanton continues.
“We know the power that comes with players. The challenge is retaining them: how do we build something so authentic in that region (that) furthers the journey into being a fully-fledged Evertonian — that makes them see past the individual players that we have — even when those players are no longer playing for the football club?”
The WSL has the advantage of effectively being the sister to the Premier League, whose own figures have it broadcast to 189 countries and 900 million homes across the world.
The Premier League’s Summer Series in the U.S. is indicative of its growing focus on the international market and, increasingly, WSL clubs are committing to their own overseas tours. In August last year, Crystal Palace Women played their first overseas match, against Utah Royals, while Manchester City Women toured Australia in 2024 and Arsenal Women and Chelsea played matches in the U.S. last summer.
The Premier League’s global influence is “what has set them apart from a lot of the other men’s leagues,” says Al-Kudcy, and the aim is for the WSL to “achieve similar growth — and I don’t necessarily mean in numbers, but in understanding the principles that they’ve looked at in building their brand globally.” A strength of Premier League clubs, she continues, is “knowing their target markets”.
“It’s not a surprise that for Arsenal Women, Australia is massive, given the number of Matildas (in the squad),” she adds. “So how do we work with them on building that momentum in Australia?” Major tournaments or new signings crossing with the WSL’s significant markets is especially advantageous.
Most clubs are now global brands: Chelsea and Liverpool are the second and third-most supported WSL teams in Japan, according to the latest YouGov report (commissioned by the WSL) on the league’s global appeal.
“In Japanese football history, almost no one has played (at clubs) such as Manchester City, United or Chelsea, like, big clubs, before,” says Momiki, who made her WSL debut at Leicester City in January 2024 before moving to Everton this summer. “I think most Japanese fans are really excited about this. In (the) WSL, the level is (of) one of the top leagues in the world right now.”
Yuka Momiki is one of four Japan internationals at Everton (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)
Manchester City Women are the most popular WSL club in Japan, which Nils Nielsen, the Greenlandic-Danish manager of the Japan women’s national team who also served as Manchester City Women’s director of football during the 23-24 season, attributes in part to their connection to Yokohama F. Marinos, also part of the City Football Group. City’s men’s team toured Japan in 2023, playing against Yokohama, and its trophy tour included stops in Japan this year. That kind of engagement is more significant than the Premier League histories of the clubs, he says.
“I think that (the WSL) is more interesting to watch because there are so many Japanese players,” Nielsen says. “It’s not necessarily because the WSL is more interesting than everything else, but it becomes interesting when you have almost the entire national team based in England.”
In England, the most high-profile Lionesses have attained mainstream fame. At times, it feels like the health of the WSL rests on the continued growth of their profiles. Those same stars do not dominate the conversation around the WSL in Japan, Nielsen says.
Fans are likely to know of the players “that everyone knows” — they will know of Chloe Kelly’s penalty technique, for instance — but little of those players’ histories or positions. “Fans of anybody other than the Japanese — I doubt there are too many of those,” he says. “They do follow it, but it’s mostly because of the Japanese girls, not because they have any connection with the teams and such.”
Japanese players command significant commercial power in their own country: Hasegawa can be seen on billboards in Tokyo.
“It’s a different world for them now than it was before,” Nielsen says. “It gives them so many more options, and it doesn’t really matter if they’re based in Japan. When it comes to the financial part, it’s an advantage to be based abroad because the audience is bigger and they will be more visible.
“It is not as big as in some of the English-speaking countries — as it is in Australia and New Zealand — but after how it was five or 10 years ago, this is massive. The players are much more well-known now than when they were world champions. Now, it’s more accessible and it is more normal for the Japanese to look outside of the country.”
Japan made it to the quarter-finals of the 2023 Women’s World Cup (Maja Hitij/Getty Images)
That broader outlook also applies to Japanese players, who, Nielsen says, are now more open to the prospect of playing in England than ever; there is less anxiety over the language barrier, and improved job security and money. Before the 2023-24 season, only eight Japanese players had featured in the WSL in its 12-year history.
The drawback for Japan’s WE League is a talent drain. Japanese players make their debuts domestically before moving abroad.
“(In) my second year in Sweden (playing for Linkoping), I’d already decided that my next step is definitely England,” says Everton’s Momiki. “I asked the agent to contact only English teams. I need to get better on my physical aspect, not only my intelligence or skills. So coming to England is really challenging myself. I think the other Japanese player(s) think the same way.
“Sometimes, I’ve found Japanese fans in the stadium. I think they’re coming to the Japanese players’ clubs. I think Japanese people don’t watch Arsenal versus Crystal Palace, because there’s no Japanese players. But Leicester against West Ham or against Manchester City, I think many Japanese people are coming to watch now.”
The WSL is a global women’s football league. Now, it has to consolidate that status.
“We have to be more than just the audience that comes to the matchday,” concludes Al-Kudcy. “We do have to think about our global fan group as well.”
