FIFA's Feast — Why Women's Football Is First on the Menu

FIFA's latest push to reorganize the global calendar and expand its marquee club competitions reads like a banquet menu for television executives — but someone always goes hungry. The proposals promise denser windows, more high-paying men's fixtures and a commercial rewind that privileges inventory with the biggest short-term returns. Women's football, with fewer guaranteed broadcast hours and weaker commercial leverage, is the obvious casualty.

The damage is mechanical and political: compressed international windows force federations and clubs to choose which competitions to protect, and the default is almost always the men's product. TV rights and sponsorship flows gravitate to what sells now, not what needs building, so investment in women's leagues and youth development becomes the first and easiest cut. The result will be fewer coordinated windows for women's internationals, strained club commitments and a thinner calendar for growth.

Governance makes it worse. Decision-making remains concentrated among bodies and commercial partners who benefit from men's tournaments, and there are no ironclad guarantees that revenues or calendars will be ring-fenced for the women's game. Clubs such as FC Barcelona Femení, leagues like the UEFA Women's Champions League, FA WSL and the NWSL, and national sides including the United States women's national team and England women's national team already feel the pressure when schedules collide. Without formal protections — enforceable revenue shares, dedicated windows and representation at the negotiating table — the structural inequality will widen.

The Guru's prescription is blunt: demand protected international windows for women, a guaranteed percentage of new FIFA commercial revenues, and binding governance reforms that give the women's game a seat with veto power on calendar and competition changes. If those measures are not written into the new agreements, women's football will be the first casualty and the long-term commercial promise of the women's game will be mortgaged for short-term profits. Insist now, or watch the damage become history.