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Q&A: Nicole Allison, Worcester City Women Owner and Sports Consultant

18 May, 2025
Q&A: Nicole Allison, Worcester City Women Owner and Sports Consultant

As founder and owner of Worcester City Women, experienced sports consultant and football business professional Nicole Allison has been pioneering a new approach to structuring women's football off the pitch.

Having previously worked at organisations such as the English Football League, guided Tottenham Hotspur Women's transition to full-time status as General Manager, and set up her company NA Sport in 2019 to offer consultancy, education and mentorship to athletes and organisations, Nicole brought a wealth of experience to Worcester City Women and is aiming to gradually progress the first team up the football pyramid.

For our Career Pathways series, we spoke to Nicole about her experience within the football industry and her hopes for the future of the women's game.

You completed a Master's degree in Sport Management and Football Business at Birkbeck. What did your course focus on?

"When I started in 2011, there weren’t many Sport Management courses around. Birkbeck appealed to me because it was in London and it allowed me to work full-time while doing the course part-time. It was Sport Management with Football Business, so it was football-specific and we worked a lot on the governance and commercial side.

We had modules on marketing, policy, sports development, but nothing was mentioned about women’s football, it was very much focused on the commercial growth of the men’s game."

When you were studying, did you have any inclination of the commercial potential of women’s football? 

"I’d already played football myself, but I’d never had my eyes opened to the commercial growth of the women's game. It seemed like there were only two routes: player or coach.

The WSL also started at that time, and when I played for Wolves pre-WSL, we were at the second-highest level, and there was no marketing, no commercial, no promotion, so it never really entered my mind that women’s football was something that could be marketed and commercialised.

As I did my dissertation on fan engagement as a catalyst for growth in terms of attendances and building long-term fandom, I started thinking about my experiences as a fan of men’s football and women’s football (which I’d started watching more regularly in London).

There was a little more noise, investment, and visibility around women’s football, so it was around that time that I started thinking about how we grow this."

After graduating, you worked for the EFL. Could you tell me about that role?

"It was a really interesting hybrid role: marketing, data, fan data, and commercial. I looked after all the main EFL sponsors, reported back to them on their media valuations, so the media value that they were attributing to their sponsorship rights, and the value that they’d paid for the sponsorship.

I worked with Capital One, Sky Bet, and the 72 clubs to help them package their partnerships and sponsorship packages better. A lot of League One and League Two clubs were basing their value and their sponsorship on hospitality, basically slapping on a logo and utilising the audience data.

If they had a Sky Sports game or an FA Cup run, it was the best thing ever, but we were trying to get them to think more long-term and treat fans as a valuable asset."

Fan engagement has improved drastically in recent years, particularly in the EFL.

"When I was doing my dissertation, clubs were using Twitter mainly as a one-way form of communicating key information and minute-by-minute game reports. Now it’s more two-way, less a broadcasting channel, and more about engaging and building value and loyalty within your fan base.

That has better commercial value for your sponsors and partners. My time at the EFL reminds me of working with the Women’s National League, also a 72-club system; they both feel like the heart and soul of football in our country.

The community aspect of the Women’s National League, as in the EFL, is really special. It’s great football, but it’s also got a real feeling, whereas Premier League football, and perhaps even the WSL feels less accessible." 

Women's professional football is at a crossroads; with money flooding into the game, there's the danger of growing wealth inequality between the top WSL clubs and those further down the pyramid. How can that risk be addressed?

"We have to be cautious and work together to ensure the long-term health and sustainability of women’s football is a core priority. I think it’s great that the WSL and the Championship have formed this new WPL breakaway league, but I don’t want to lose what makes a healthy football pyramid in this country.

It’s early days but it does provide us with a great opportunity to highlight the unique properties of the Women’s National League, and it would be great to see some sponsorship and partnership attributed to the Women’s National League to support healthy growth for clubs like ourselves, rather than us being so dependent either on men’s teams or on money coming down from the WSL."

You were General Manager of Tottenham Hotspur Women at a similarly transitional time, overseeing the team becoming full-time. What were the main obstacles you faced?

"There were lots of changes and challenges… the growth of the game from a licensed criteria perspective was needed to help professionalise the leagues and get clubs up to standard, but sometimes that was a challenge because a lot was happening quickly.

I came into Tottenham after they’d just got promoted to WSL2, so it was a lot of work to make sure we met the WSL2 criteria at the time, then we had to recruit and become competitive, and look to get into the WSL.

Trying to manage numerous stakeholders in an environment that was changing constantly was extremely challenging but also very rewarding because if you get it right, you can move very quickly. And we did that; in our second season in the WSL2, we finished second and guaranteed promotion to the WSL1.

We were very limited at Tottenham, I was the first full-time member of staff, and this was before Tottenham Women had their own section of the Tottenham Hotspur training ground.

We trained three evenings a week there, and it was great having access to that, but due to safeguarding rules, we couldn’t access the ground until after 8pm, when all the boys' training had finished, and we could only access the indoor dome, which was a 9v9 pitch.

With that, we managed to get promoted to the WSL, which makes the achievement even more incredible. A lot of the experiences I had around Tottenham put me in good stead for managing Worcester City Women.

You successfully pitched the idea of creating a new, restructured Worcester City Women's team to Worcester City FC. Where did the vision come from?

"The catalyst was Covid, because Covid highlighted the disparity between men's and women’s football.

Men’s football had all the resources put into it to continue, whereas women’s football was in complete chaos, the WSL continued but the Championship and anything below was classed as non-elite and had to stop. Women’s teams at all levels of the pyramid either folded, lost players or had very uncertain futures.

I’d left Tottenham and started my own agency supporting players and students, doing lots of teaching and consulting globally around growing women’s football. Everywhere, these clubs were in disarray; there was no vision or strategy, no financial security because they’d been so dependent on their men’s team, and it was the same for Worcester City.

I did an audit looking at clubs around tiers 5 and 6 of the women’s football pyramid, which ones were closely connected to their men’s equivalent? I looked at what would happen if someone came in with some dedicated resources and experiences to take that women’s team and lead them.

The moment I looked at my home city Worcester, it was a no-brainer for me to put all my efforts into securing that. I had some conversations initially with the board of Worcester City, who at the time were fan-owned.

I told them about my experiences working in the game, lacking opportunities to play football as a young girl growing up in Worcester — I was privileged that my extremely supportive parents could drive me to training at Wolverhampton Wanderers. I wanted to make sure those opportunities could exist for girls in Worcester in the future."

Could you tell me about the process of building faith in your vision and setting up the club? 

"The idea really resonated with one director, Luke Cox, he could see the potential of having someone come in dedicated to growing a women’s and girls' club and ensuring it had the support and resources it needed. 

Many men’s teams further down the football pyramid are short of cash, so for someone to come in and fund the women’s club but have it as a separate entity was something they very much supported.

It’s been 4 years, Worcester City now has new ownership, but we’re still very supportive of one another, and the new owner is a guy who was brought up in Worcester and wants to leave a legacy, so it's a similar story.

We don’t rely on any men’s team, and I think that's the right way to go for women’s football. We’ve certainly had some challenges, but also some incredible moments — getting to the Women’s National League last season was a highlight. We've just secured our status in the league, so we’re now busy planning and preparing for next season."

Do you think more clubs will separate the ownership structures of their men's and women's teams?

"There are now clubs at all levels, including the WSL, that are looking at their governance structures. There are people who want to invest in the women’s teams only, so how can they set up their governance structures to bring on that investment?

I think it’s important that women’s clubs protect themselves and their assets because a lot of people have been working for free over the years to grow the women’s and girls sections of these clubs and it’s important to have governance structures in place to ensure that there’s always dedicated resource and funding.

[With] women’s football increasingly commercially attractive, investors are looking at how they can be a part of this wave of growth." 

Can you tell me more about the impact you've made on the broader community of young women and girls in Worcester? 

"We’ve recently set up a CIC alongside our limited company, which focuses on our community outreach, initiatives for girls football, mixed football, women’s only football, working in schools which allows us to apply for a lot more funding… There have been so many inspiring stories, and those are my proudest moments, but we couldn’t do what we do in the community, inspiring young girls, without having a successful first team, which is why we invested initially in getting that first team into the Women’s National League.

Now, there's a pathway for talented young girls in the local area. It's also important to make football accessible for all; sport can teach you so many transferable skills. We spend a lot of time working with grassroots clubs, giving them mascot opportunities, opportunities to come and watch our games, collect autographs from our players and play on the pitch.

We also run community initiatives for all ages, we’ve got a girls' football development centre led by Worcester City Women players and coaches, we do workshops talking about female health, nutrition, media and careers in football for young girls.

And then the young players come and watch their heroes playing on a Sunday and they recognise that it’s not just about winning, it’s about teamwork, communication, resilience, community. I’m proud of the fact we finished third from bottom this season but third from top in average attendance.

Our fan base has been growing and coming to support us week in, week out despite it being a challenging season. It tells you a story about the health of the club off the pitch.

What are the long-term goals for Worcester City Women?

"The long-term vision is to own our facilities, because we could have much more control over the atmosphere and the experience we can provide. It’s tough to create your own special environment when you’re constrained by the club or company that owns that ground, so a key objective is to develop this community hub and use it as a sustainable revenue stream.

Progression throughout the pyramid is also important, and doing things in the right way. Looking at what success means to us, in football that's always meant the highest points tally and winning at all costs, but that's never gonna be our strategy.

We believe by getting the foundations right, gradually and sustainably, the outcome will be winning. But there's a way to do things: creating employment opportunities for local people, creating a pathway for young boys and girls to look at women's football and be proud of this club."

What advice would you give to young women and girls interested in the business side of football?

"I stumbled upon the course that I did with no guidance whatsoever, and I was so grateful to some individuals, people like Brighton CEO Paul Barber, who gave me his time to be interviewed when I was doing my dissertation.

So have the confidence to speak to people and reach out to people. LinkedIn is a great place to connect and you'd probably be surprised the amount of people who would reply and give you half an hour of their time.

There's a community of women in football business that want to support and lift each other up, so I'm always encouraging people to reach out and build their contacts.

The other thing is to make sure you know your stuff; it can be easy now to utilise things like AI, there's a tendency for some students to think that will give them the answers, but there's stuff you can't know without going through it.

So read articles and books, speak to people and interview people. A lot of it centres around confidence and just going for it."