The Rangers Women’s team have reportedly held talks with English football chiefs about joining the Women’s Super League south of the border.
Both Rangers and Celtic have held preliminary talks with the WSL with a view to potentially joining the division later down the line.
Rangers have been a leader in women’s football in Scotland since professionalising the club’s set-up back in 2019 and won the SWPL title in 2022.
Rangers and Celtic women in WSL talks
According to STV, ‘initial discussions’ have taken place between Rangers, Celtic and the WSL with a view to the Old Firm clubs moving south of the border.
Whilst the SWPL is certainly a more competitive division than the Scottish Premiership, Glasgow’s big two are viewed as having ‘more potential’ than the other options in the league.
Glasgow City are the current leaders of the SWPL and the nation’s dominant women’s team but Rangers and Celtic have taken big strides in recent seasons.
Rangers are led by former England international Jo Potter and are five points off Glasgow City in second.
Celtic are in 5th place, with nine points between the Parkhead side and the league leaders and Hibs & Hearts also well in a title fight this season.
Last season’s champions Celtic became the first Scottish women’s team to play in the Champions League this season, whilst Rangers fell to Arsenal at the qualification stage.
WSL brace for landmark new TV deal
Whilst there is no suggestion that Rangers and Celtic are set to imminently move south, the money on offer in the WSL dwarfs that of the SWPL.
In October 2024, the WSL announced a landmark TV deal which will see Sky Sports and BBC Sports pay £65m (£13m per year) into the division and screen every game across five seasons, starting from the 2025/26 campaign.
To put that into context, the SPFL signed a £30m-per-year deal in 2022 which came into effect in 2024 and which will run until 2029 for both the men’s and women’s game.
As part of that deal, Sky Sports have agreed to show a minimum of five SWPL matches per season.
If the broadcaster was to fulfil its 60-game contract with the men’s game, and the five matches from the women’s game, it works out at around £460k per match.
Whilst the dividends from TV money are more complex, in basic terms this is around £2.3m per annum which could pour into the Scottish women’s game via TV money.
It means Rangers and Celtic would benefit substantially from a switch to England, with over £10.5m more per season pouring into the WSL clubs via TV money.
