{"id":5716,"date":"2026-08-19T14:51:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=5716"},"modified":"2026-08-19T14:51:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T14:51:33","slug":"womens-super-league-wsl-fantasy-league-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=5716","title":{"rendered":"The women\u2019s soccer league trying to fix fantasy sports"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Most fantasy sports leagues suffer the same problem: retention. Leagues play out over monthslong seasons, require regular attention, and can punish players severely for missing even a single week. I\u2019ve started<\/em> Fantasy Premier League (FPL) multiple times, but never finished a season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s a problem for any fantasy league, but especially so for a new game in a growing sport, hoping to attract new fans who might grow along with it. And so when Manchester United take on London City Lionesses on the opening day of the Women\u2019s Super League (WSL) season next month, fans will have a chance to compete in a fantasy league that\u2019s a little different, with six parts to the season, two leagues in one, and an Instagram-influenced design.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I got to play an early version of the game last week, which launches today online<\/a> or inside the WSL app<\/a>. The basics are still there. Users spend a fixed pool of money on a team of players drawn from across the league, with a maximum of three players from any individual club. Players score points based on their performances in real matches, with the option to substitute players or transfer them in or out of the team as the season progresses. The WSL will run its own league table, with prizes for the top spots, but fans can create private leagues too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The most obvious change from existing fantasy games is given away by the name: Barclays WSL and WSL2 Football Fantasy. The WSL\u2019s 14 teams will be joined by the 12 in WSL 2, England\u2019s second division. Players will be interspersed, and users free to build a squad drawn entirely from either league or a mix of both.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The WSL merged its two leagues to avoid winning teams becoming samey. Although it\u2019s expanding to 14 teams this season, until now the WSL has only included 12, compared to 20 in the men\u2019s Premier League. And only three or four of those \u2014 Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, and at times Manchester United \u2014 ever truly have a shot at the title. The result was that in Aerial Fantasy<\/a> \u2014 an unofficial league that\u2019s closing to make way for the official game \u2014 almost every successful team was built around the same handful of players. By January \u201cthe game just lost momentum,\u201d says Joey Davidson, the WSL\u2019s head of digital products, \u201cbecause so many of the squads in the leader board were just so similar.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Adding a second league doesn\u2019t just add more teams; it adds more competitive<\/em> teams, with players at top WSL 2 clubs likely to be valuable point-scorers. Players from WSL 2 will tend to be cheaper in-game, but that\u2019s not written in stone: the developers say that in practice no WSL 2 players prove quite as dominant in their league as top WSL footballers like Manchester City\u2019s Bunny Shaw do in theirs, but if one did then the fantasy game\u2019s dynamic pricing could drive their value up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Players from across the two WSL divisions can compete against each other in a single fantasy league.<\/em><\/figcaption>Image: WSL Football<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Just as significant is the shift to break the season up. From the outset, the WSL and developer SI wanted to fix the player retention problem. Leagues play out over entire seasons \u2014 nine months in the case of the WSL \u2014 and to have any chance of being competitive a user has to pay attention to almost every single game week. Miss one, and you\u2019re screwed. Things are worse for late arrivals, who are either cut off from joining a league after it\u2019s started, or can join but have no real chance of victory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While there will still be a season-long league table, WSL fantasy will also break it up into six shorter \u201clegs,\u201d each including three to six matchweeks. Timed around the natural breaks in the soccer calendar, dictated by international fixtures and the pause for Christmas, each leg will have its own mini table, including prizes for the winners. You\u2019ll need to be devoted if you hope to win the whole season, but shorter bursts of commitment could bring their own reward. Fans who find fantasy mid-season, or those who drop in and out, can still hope to perform well in a leg or two.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Existing fantasy soccer fans are used to putting up with these headaches, but the WSL isn\u2019t only trying to appeal to them. The popularity of women\u2019s soccer grew substantially in England a few years ago, sparked by the national team winning the Euros in 2022. That momentum hasn\u2019t entirely been maintained since, with fluctuating match day attendance figures propped up by big numbers at a single club, Arsenal, though there\u2019s reason to hope this year could mark the next push in popularity. The league expanding means more teams and more games; there\u2019s another World Cup due next summer; and perhaps most importantly, Ted Lasso<\/em> has returned<\/a> with a new focus on the women\u2019s game. Davidson calls it \u201cperfect timing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If the new fans arrive as anticipated, the WSL wants its fantasy app to be ready. It\u2019s tried to make life easy for fans who are entirely new to fantasy, with a simple interface that feels intuitive and makes it quicker and easier to build a team, at least compared to the clunkier FPL app. The game itself is a little more flexible too, offering more of the free transfers and wildcards that allow users to reshape their squads, plus the ability to make substitutions to your team in the middle of a matchweek, so it\u2019s easier to fix a mistake or adapt when a key player picks up an unlucky injury.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the WSL also sees fantasy as an opportunity to engage fans with the league at large. There are simple changes, like including players\u2019 photos on the teamsheet to help users recognize them, but more surprising tweaks too. Most interesting is the introduction of \u201cFantasy Stories,\u201d short vertical videos presented in an almost identical UI to Instagram\u2019s. These might show off player highlights from a match or interview snippets from afterwards, and while at launch the content will be universal, over time the aim is for it to be dynamic, with tailormade Stories appearing based on the players in your team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of these changes to the established fantasy format are ambitious, and the WSL knows it. A running theme of my press briefing was that everything will be up for assessment as this first season goes on, from the pricing of WSL 2 players to the type of content created inside the app. Davidson admits he has \u201cabsolutely no idea\u201d how popular to expect the fantasy league to become, but by breaking the season up into legs hopes that it could end with more players than it begins \u2014 a tall ask for any other fantasy league.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But you can\u2019t fault the effort to try, nor the decision from day one that the WSL\u2019s fantasy game needed to be more than a mere clone of the men\u2019s equivalent. This is its own league, with its own fans and its own foibles. If it\u2019s going to grow, it has to do it its own way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf we just replicate what already exists, we know that there is a ceiling to how far it can go,\u201d Davidson says. \u201cAnd we don\u2019t want to give ourselves a ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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