The Vrouwen Eredivisie and Dutch football continues to be treated as an afterthought whilst the English game accelerates to new heights.
The KNVB (Dutch football association) have recently announced that the Vrouwen Eredivisie will have 10 teams competing in it from 26/27, moving down from the previously competed 12 teams. It comes shortly after news that the English top flight is expanding to 14 competing teams. The Women’s Super League (WSL) is only growing, whilst women’s football in the Netherlands still seems like more of an afterthought for most clubs. So, why is that? The Halfway Line analyses the parallel differences between the growth of the English game and the reoccurring disregard for women’s football in the Netherlands.
The Eredivisie expanded from 10 to 12 teams in 2023, attracting lots of criticism from many in Dutch women’s football, including Vivianne Miedema. Many feared that there would be a big difference between teams. That fear came true when FC Twente recently beat Excelsior 10-1. Furthermore, they also beat ADO Den Haag 7-0 last season.
Licensing criteria is a roadblock for the Vrouwen Eredivisie
The real issue in Dutch women’s football is the licensing criteria. They are far too loose to ensure a healthy amount of competition and investment in the Vrouwen Eredivisie. Up until 22/23 there were no license criteria at all. The bottom table clubs will just about meet the demands while there are a couple of clubs that do invest in their women’s teams- think PSV, Ajax and FC Twente. So what are these criteria? We will outline the most important and obvious ones:
- The senior team trains at least 5 times a week under the supervision of a head coach
- In 24/25 clubs had to have at least 8 players under a professional contract. These contracts do not necessarily have to be full time contracts, they can be 10-hour ones too, for instance.
- These players with a contract had to earn at least 55,55% of the minimum wage
- Clubs have to support dual careers (i.e. players that work other jobs besides football)
- Clubs all need to hire a manager of women’s football, under contract for at least 32-40 hours a week
- Clubs all need to have at least one physiotherapist and one medical doctor. These can be voluntary roles.
- The head coach needs a UEFA A license at minimum & needs to be hired for at least 32 hours a week
- No demands are made regarding the amount of hours the assistant and goalkeeping coaches are hired for. They can be voluntary roles.
As of today, there are 5 clubs with a Collective Labour Agreement: Ajax, PSV, FC Twente, AZ and Feyenoord. These CLAs line out player’s rights to paid leave, minimum wages and payment in the case of injuries, among other things. According to ESPN’s Sanne van Dongen (in 2024), Ajax players all had a full time professional contract and earned at least 2100 euros a month. So that’s far beyond the licensing criteria. The contents of the CLAs aren’t public but we suspect that the other clubs with a CLA have a similar structure to Ajax’s.
So it’s just five out of the twelve clubs that have a CLA. Seven clubs do not have one. Players from all over the Eredivisie united in 2024 to demand better pay from their clubs. “We are not asking for millions, we just want minimum wage. If you have to be on the pitch six days a week but also have to work another job to support yourself, you can’t fully focus on football”, said bottom half team Telstar’s Kelly Steen.
Steen highlights an important issue. As we stated above, clubs are only obliged to have 8 players under contract, and these contracts do not even have to be full-time contracts. Most players with a contract will get less than minimum wage. Players without a contract will get indemnities at the most. The majority of players in the Eredivisie need a side job to support themselves and will therefore not be able to invest their time and energy into their game.
Licensing criteria in the WSL
The quality of football and amount of investment in the Women’s Super League has grown massively since the league enforced massively improved licensing criteria in 2018. Think of a minimum of 20 hours of paid contact time for all players in 2018. This had repercussions for teams like Yeovil Town, who had to set up a crowd funding campaign to meet WSL criteria. Yeovil Town inevitably went into administration and were subsequently relegated from both the WSL and Championship.
Unfortunately, the licensing criteria are not made public anymore and haven’t been since 2018-2019. We can only assume criteria have gotten stricter ever since. It’s not just criteria regarding the contract status and payment of the players and staff that are key to the success of the WSL in recent years. Clubs have invested more and marketing became a bigger part of the clubs’ daily operations.
A quick analysis of the 2018-2019 version of the licensing criteria learns us that there were spending minimums in place. At the time that was £120 000 and did not entail the player’s salaries. So these were added onto the minimum spending amount for participating teams. Clubs also had to conduct independent research to confirm a minimum attendance of 1000 people was achievable for home matches. Clubs were required to have marketing and commercial plans and had to commit to spending at least 21 hours of marketing activities per week.
Facilities wise, clubs had to prove to the FA that they had security of tenure for at least 2 years for the home ground and 1 year for the training ground. A detailed pitch maintenance plan had to be in place too. Training facilities had to have at least a gym, a 3G pitch, floodlighting and medical facilities.
How the Eredivisie differs from the WSL
Back to the Netherlands. The Dutch criteria set out above mainly fall into the player and staff category, because too many they are the most obvious ones. Let’s take a look at some other criteria set out in the 2024 licensing document by the KNVB and compare these to the English ones from 2018-2019, which have probably only evolved.
Eredivisie clubs need to have a marketing employee working for the club at least 16 hours a week and a detailed marketing plan needs to be in place as well. Clubs need to have ownership or a rental contract for a home ground but do not have to supply proof of a sufficient duration of ownership or tenure, like in England in 2018. No other demands are made on training facilities other than the fact that the club should have said facilities. Floodlights at home grounds have to meet criteria for broadcast. No spending criteria is set out.
So, on all fronts, the 2024 Eredivisie licensing criteria are behind that of the WSL’s criteria from 7 years ago. From player contracts to training grounds and from spending criteria to marketing.
The Eredivisie has a strong need for marketing growth
In 23/24 there was an average attendance of 1190 people at Eredivisie games. A couple of big matches amp up the average here: 15 000 people went to the Johan Cruyff Arena to watch Ajax beat Feyenoord and 10455 people watched Ajax beat FC Utrecht in Utrecht. On the other hand, PEC Zwolle – FC Twente welcomed just 100 people. More often than not attendances are low. What about England? 6681 was the average attendance in 24/25 in the WSL. Almost 6 times as much as in the Eredivisie in 23/24.
Marketing-wise there is a lot of room for growth, as well as in the facilities area. And, as we already lined out, when it comes to player contracts and salaries, things can improve there too. Investing in these areas will improve the overall quality and competitiveness of the league, within it but also internationally. Most Eredivisie teams will not get past qualifying rounds (like Ajax last season) or the group stage (like Twente last season). Ajax’ UWCL stint in 23/24 being an exception, when they made it through to the quarter finals. Meanwhile, remember when Arsenal won the Champions League?
The comparison to the growth of the WSL is not entirely fair as England winning the Euros helped grow attendances in the league too. The Eredivisie did however not experience such a growth after the Oranje Leeuwinnen won the Euros in 2017. If the KNVB really want to grow the league, stricter licensing criteria would be a good way to go. But it might possibly be too big of a step. It might cause some clubs to give up on their women’s branches altogether. On the other hand, clubs that do care about women’s football will actually decide to invest. It’s a tough balance and it’s up to the KNVB to decide whether they want to take the right step in developing the league.
