Bay Collective announced it acquired a majority stake in Sunderland AFC this week, expanding its global women's football portfolio beyond the NWS's Bay FC.
The multi-club ownership platform, led by Kay Cossington MBE and backed by investment firm Sixth Street, aims to launch a new era for the historic Northeast England mainstay.
"We are committed to honoring Sunderland Women's DNA and legacy, protecting what makes this club and community so special," said Cossington.
"We're supporting the players, staff, and the Academy with cutting-edge resources, infrastructure, and training models tailored to the unique needs of women athletes."
Sunderland AFC currently sits eighth in the second-tier WSL2 standings with two matches remaining this season. The club also houses a productive academies, after developing England national team stars Beth Mead, Jill Scott, Steph Houghton, and Lucy Bronze.
Founded in 1879, Sunderland represents one of English football's most historic institutions. While Bay Collective assumes operational control, the club will retain a minority stake pending approvals.
The acquisition mirrors recent trends in women's soccer as NWSL ownership groups expand internationally. Bay FC now joins the Washington Spirit and Kansas City Current as operating under multi-club models with European investments.
Bay Collective launched in 2025 with Bay FC as its inaugural franchise. The platform focuses on building women's football clubs that win on the pitch while subsequently thriving on a commercial level.
England's Football Association wants to overhaul the Women's FA Cup — and the proposals are drawing sharp criticism from across the women's football pyramid.
Three main changes headline the FA's 2024-28 growth strategy. First, the top four clubs from the previous WSL season would receive seeding. Secondly, the traditional draw would give way to a World Cup-style bracket starting from the final 32 — the round where WSL clubs enter the FA Cup. Lastly, tier seven clubs would lose the right to compete entirely.
The FA argues the bracket format creates clearer narratives, helps broadcast planning, and builds fan anticipation en route to Wembley. They also claim the seeding system produces higher-quality late-round FA Cup matches.
Supporters groups have subsequently pushed back, saying the reforms erode sporting merit in favor of elite clubs.
"The FA has repeatedly committed to expanding the women's football pyramid and ensuring ‘football is for all,’" a source told The Athletic. "Removing tier seven clubs from the FA Cup feels like a step backwards from this mission."
Lower clubs also list grievances. The FA Cup entry fee tripled from £25 to £75, a significant financial burden for grassroots clubs. Four lowest-tier sides reached the FA Cup's first-round this season: Leyton Orient, South London Women FC, Maidstone United, and Millbrook. One source went so far as to describe the proposed ban as pulling up a drawbridge on the women's game.
According to the Greater London Women's Football League chairman, just one of the region's 50 tier-seven clubs was consulted before the proposal circulated. The FA declined to comment on this claim.
The Women's FA Cup final is set for May 31st at London's Wembley Stadium.
Mercedes-Benz is getting into the women's game, with the luxury car giant becoming the official automotive partner of England's WSL and WSL2 this week.
The deal showcases Mercedes-Benz's growing commitment to women's sports, with the auto giant also signing on as the presenting sponsor of the WTA Tour last month — adding to a resume that includes serving as the official patron of the LPGA Tour's AIG Women's Open.
"The Mercedes-Benz story began 140 years ago with a bold idea," said Mercedes-Benz UK CEO and managing director Olivier Reppert in the WSL's Wednesday press release. "Now, that same spirit of innovation and ambition drives our partnership with WSL Football."
While financial terms of the partnership are not public, Mercedes-Benz is just the latest big-name sponsor to back WSL Football, with some reports saying that the two-league outfit has tripled its commercial revenue since splitting with the FA in 2024.
"Bringing a brand of this calibre…will help us elevate the game, deepen engagement with fans and players, and accelerate long-term growth across both leagues," said WSL Football CRO Zarah Al-Kudcy.
Mercedes-Benz will also present this spring's inaugural interleague playoff, in which the third-place WSL2 club will battle the last-place WSL team for a chance at promotion as a part of the top flight's planned 14-team expansion for 2026/27.
Football Manager is expanding its virtual horizons, with the popular soccer video game's latest release — FM26 — featuring women's teams for the first time in history.
The FM26 lineup spans some 40,000 players across 14 leagues, including the NWSL, the UK's WSL and WSL2, Germany's Frauen-Bundesliga, Italy's Serie A, and Japan's WE League as well as the UEFA Women's Champions League.
Football Manager's new women's soccer offering follows similar moves from other video game entities, with EA Sports also expanding its integration of women's teams and players across its NHL, FC, and NBA2K games in recent years.
Launched in 2004 by British developer Sports Interactive and gaming giant Sega, Football Manager puts users in the driver's seat of their favorite teams, navigating club finances, player transfers, tactics, and even training plans in the hunt for success.
To mimic the manager role most realistically, FM amasses extensive data on players and clubs — with that information bank now so deep on the men's side that clubs have employed it for scouting purposes for over 10 years.
The road to launching a similarly real-world women's game required similar stat-gathering, a project which began in 2021.
"An army of people from the women's game helped us, who wanted us to ensure that women's football was properly represented," said Sports Interactive studio director Miles Jacobson.
Football Manager also recreated their motion capture models using former WSL and WSL2 professional players, twins Mollie and Rosie Kmita, to accurately portray women's movement and body structure in FM26.
"Growing up, I would never have imagined playing Football Manager because it wasn't a space for us," Mollie told BBC Sport. "I think we're about to engage a whole new audience and I'm excited to see how this community continues to grow."
How to play Football Manager 26
FM26 is currently available for download across multiple gaming platforms.
WSL side Liverpool opened their 2025/26 League Cup campaign with an emotional 5-0 win over WSL2 club Sunderland on Wednesday, dedicating the shutout victory to former manager Matt Beard after the 47-year-old's sudden passing last Saturday.
The match marked the Reds' return to the pitch following the postponement of their Sunday regular-season game against Aston Villa due to Beard's passing.
"It's a good win for Matt. We played with a lot of emotion," Liverpool defender Jenna Clark said afterwards, calling Wednesday "a really emotional night and an emotional few days for everyone involved with the club."
"We have pulled through together as a team the best we could and you saw that on the pitch tonight," Clark added.
Beard won back-to-back WSL titles with Liverpool in 2013 and 2014, departing the Reds in 2015 for a two-year stint with the NWSL's Boston Breakers.
He made his return to Liverpool in 2021, lifting the club back into the top-flight WSL by earning promotion his first season back at the helm.
"Matt will leave a huge void in the women's game," USWNT head coach and former Chelsea boss Emma Hayes said in a statement earlier this week. "He was one of a kind, and his loss will be felt by all. My heart goes out to his family, but I want to take the time to acknowledge what a special man he really was."
How to watch Liverpool this weekend
Liverpool will continue their 2025/26 WSL campaign against Manchester United this Sunday, kicking off live at 7 AM ET on ESPN+.
The NWSL salary cap has become a hot topic in recent weeks, with big-name — and big-money — transfers like Angel City forward Alyssa Thompson's overseas move to Chelsea and North Carolina Courage striker Jaedyn Shaw's reportedly imminent trade to Gotham raising concerns about the league's financial edge.
While Shaw's reported league-record $1.25 million trade proves that US teams are willing to pay a premium for top talent, the disparity between flashy transfer fees and salary limitations could be holding the NWSL back.
"I know that in the NWSL there are ambitious clubs that want to be able to compete with the likes of a Chelsea, with the likes of a Barcelona," retired USWNT star Tobin Heath said on last week's episode of The RE—CAP Show. "These teams are capped out, they can't compete. They're going to lose their best players."
The league's most recent collective bargaining agreement sets each NWSL club's current salary cap at $3.3 million, which will titrate up to $5.1 million by 2030 while also adding potential revenue sharing options.
In 2024, the average league salary was $117,000. However, with 22- to 26-player rosters, teams often low-ball some athletes in order to afford to pay out for superstars.
Soft salary cap overseas lures soccer's top players
In comparison, the UK's WSL and second-tier WSL2 operate with soft caps, recently shifting to a framework that allows teams to spend up to 80% of their revenue plus a capped contribution from club owners on player salaries.
"We have no intent to kind of 'cap' any players' earnings," WSL Football COO Holly Murdoch told The Guardian earlier this month. "We're at the investment stage of women's football, so we don't want to deter investment. We don't want to put in rules that don't make us an attractive investment."
With NWSL top earners Sophia Wilson and Trinity Rodman becoming free agents in 2026, the US league might need to rethink its model to stay competitive in an increasingly aggressive global market.
The Women's Super League (WSL) is growing, with the UK league's top two flights deciding in a Monday expansion vote to enlarge its top tier from 12 to 14 teams ahead of the 2026/27 season.
The number of matches played each season will also balloon from 22 to 26 games to accommodate the incoming clubs, as will established cup competitions.
Monday also saw the WSL vote down a prior proposal to temporarily suspend the relegation and promotion process to accommodate this expansion, deciding instead to adopt a "two up, one down" model for the second-tier WSL2 next season.
As such, the top two finishers of the 2025/26 WSL2 season will automatically join the higher-tier WSL, while the WSL's last-place team will battle the WSL2's third-place club in "a high-profile, high stakes match" for the final spot in the top flight.
After reaching 14 teams, both leagues will return to relegating the last-place WSL finisher while promoting the WSL2's top team for the following season.
Along with the increased investment in club infrastructure, a 14-team WSL keeps pace with the global women's game — most notably, the NWSL, which will become a 16-team league in 2026.
"Our priority was to find a route that would benefit the whole women's game pyramid, and we believe this next evolution of women's professional football will raise minimum standards, create distinction, and incentivize investment across the board," said WSL Football CEO Nikki Doucet.
Just two days after wrapping the 2024/25 Women's Super League (WSL) season on Saturday, the UK women's soccer pyramid scored a full rebrand, with new names and visual identities announced for England's first- and second-tier leagues on Monday.
While the WSL will retain its name, the second-flight Women's Championship will become the WSL2 beginning with the 2025/26 season, bringing both top leagues under the same naming umbrella.
The Women's Professional League Limited — the independent company that took over running the WSL and Women's Championship in August 2024 — is also undergoing a name change, becoming simply WSL Football.
Following a development process with creative agency Anomaly, new visual branding "born from the movement of female footballers" has also rolled out across the leagues, with the WSL adopting an orange colorway while the newly named WSL2 will use a magenta palette.
"As a long-time football fan, having the chance to create the future of women's football is the absolute brief of dreams and a career highlight," said Clara Mulligan, Anomaly's managing parter and head of design.
Along with a new WSL Football website, this summer will see the updated designs from the rebrand incorporated across league merchandise, venues, jerseys, soccer balls, and more before the 2025/26 season kicks off.
"There is a lot more in store over the coming months as we continue to grow the women's game for the future," noted WSL Football chief marketing officer Ruth Hooper.