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There is one team whose transfer activity this summer has captured everyone’s attention. London City Lionesses, a club who finished in the bottom half of the second tier a little over two years ago, have stunned the women’s game by signing a flurry of big names, including the Spain stars Alexia Putellas and Mapi León, the former England goalkeeper Mary Earps, and then, on Wednesday morning, the France winger Kadidiatou Diani. It is a startling recruitment drive intent on breaking up the Women’s Super League’s established order.
Reaction has been divided. Many are in awe of the investment that the independent club’s owner, the American businesswoman Michele Kang, is making into the women’s game. Others, including senior staff at lots of rival clubs, are baffled at the idea that one of the league’s smaller teams can afford such world-class signings. They have one key question on their lips: how are London City able to sign all of these top players within the confines of the WSL’s salary cap rules?
The scepticism is understandable on the basis that the Kent-based club’s most recent set of financial accounts – covering the 2024-25 season, when they won promotion to the top division – showed their total revenue for that campaign was £902,000. They recorded an operating loss of £10.6m, well over 10 times their revenue. There were no strict financial rules in place that term. Now there are.
The league’s new financial regulations are clear: a WSL club’s wage bill must not exceed 80% of their revenue plus up to £4m or a further 25% of the club’s revenue (whichever is higher). The potential sanctions for breaching that cap are also explicitly outlined within the league’s regulations: a top-flight team could have one point deducted for every £100,000 of overspending, with a deduction of 10 points or more for an overspend of more than £900,000.
However, the league’s rules also state: “The sanctions set out in these regulations for any salary cost threshold breach shall not be enforced against a club during the 2025-26 relevant period,” which is consistent with what sources at more than half a dozen WSL clubs have told the Guardian. Last season was in effect treated as a transition year, or a “dry run” of the new regulations, and therefore no clubs will be punished for overspending in 2025-26. But from 2026-27 onwards the sanctions will become enforceable, and there is widespread expectation among clubs – who are, after all, the main WSL Football shareholders – that every club will have to work within the salary cap for the upcoming campaign. That means Kang’s ambitious club – who have also signed Janni Thomsen from Utah Royals this summer and Eintracht Frankfurt’s Nicole Anyomi – have now got to get a shift on to grow their revenues, or face a likely points deduction.
With London City having made a series of international-level signings in the summer of 2025, including France’s Grace Geyoro, Spain’s Lucía Corrales and Australia’s Alanna Kennedy, it is widely anticipated across the division that they will not have been able to meet the “80% of revenue plus £4m” wage cap in 2025-26 (they are unlikely to have been alone in that regard as plenty of WSL clubs grapple with lower revenues). Kang’s belief in the ability of women’s footballers to drive commercial success is unwavering. If she is wrong, then after 2026-27 her chickens may well come home to roost. But if she is right, the owners of other women’s clubs around the world will be wishing they had invested more upfront. Either way, there will be a lot of interested parties waiting to see how much London City’s revenues rise and where any such sponsorship comes from.
The club are understood to be confident they are fully compliant and transparent with the league. London City, who finished sixth in the WSL last season, also believe they have triggered commercial growth across the league with the addition of the two-time Ballon d’Or winner Putellas, as well as bringing home a household name in Earps.
London City’s financial accounts for the year ending June 2027 will not be published on Companies House until the spring of 2028, but it is understood that all clubs have to submit their relevant documentation each season by the September immediately after the end of the season in question, so in this case, September 2027.
For the league, there is a fine balance to be struck between the evident need to attract investors and not deter a wealthy owner such as Kang while also maintaining sporting integrity and making it clear that rules are rules. There are many in the sport who also have sympathy for Kang in that she does not have the luxury of being able to lean on the revenues of an affiliated men’s club and blur the lines between the men’s teams’ and women’s teams’ shared revenues in their accounts.
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Yet there is also the fundamental question of whether or not this project is sustainable. And regardless of whether or not London City can be successful in growing their revenues this season, is the ever-increasing gap between the WSL’s haves and have-nots healthy for the game? The juxtaposition between London City’s spending spree and this summer’s budget cuts at clubs including Southampton, Plymouth and lower-league sides such as Forest Green Rovers, who have dropped their women’s team altogether, could hardly be more jarring.
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This is an extract from our free email about women’s football, Moving the Goalposts. To get the full edition, visit this page and follow the instructions. Moving the Goalposts will be sent out once a week, on Wednesdays, in the close season but will be back on Tuesdays and Thursdays from September.
