Girls' football kit funding sits at the sharp end of the fastest-growing area of UK grassroots sport. Since the FA's "Inspiring Positive Change" strategy launched in 2020, and accelerated hard by England's Euro 2022 win, participation among women and girls playing football is up 56%. Wildcats sessions are full, girls' teams are forming across every county, and too many of them are playing in hand-me-down kit from the boys' section. This guide covers why it happens, what it costs the girls' game, and the routes fixing it.
The scale of girls' football growth
The FA reports over 2.7 million girls and women playing football in England as of 2024, more than double the 2019 figure. Almost 1,500 new girls' and women's teams registered in the 2022-23 season alone, the immediate aftermath of England hosting and winning UEFA Women's EURO 2022. The number of girls' and women's teams across England has more than doubled over the last seven years, and 77% of schools now offer girls equal access to football, up 14 percentage points.
This is not a slow trend. It is a surge arriving faster than the infrastructure built to support it, and kit sits right at the centre of the gap.
Why girls' teams inherit hand-me-down kit
A new girls' team forming inside an established boys' club rarely starts with its own kit budget. The club already has a kit supplier relationship, a sponsor, and a set of colours built around the boys' sides, so a new girls' section is handed whatever is left over: a spare set of shirts from two seasons ago, training bibs the under-14s have grown out of, socks in the wrong colour. It is the path of least resistance for a volunteer committee juggling a dozen other priorities during a growth spurt nobody planned for.
Standalone girls' clubs face a different version of the same problem. A brand new team has no back catalogue of kit, no existing sponsor relationship, and no track record to show a prospective sponsor. Everything has to be built from nothing, at exactly the moment participation numbers are moving fastest.
What hand-me-down kit costs the girls' game
Ill-fitting kit is not a cosmetic problem. Boys' cut shirts and shorts sit wrong on a girls' frame, and a squad turning up in a mismatched assortment of old kit looks and feels like an afterthought next to a boys' team in a fresh matching strip. Morale takes a real hit and players notice when their team is treated as the lower priority, and the message lands hardest with the teenage players a club most needs to retain through the drop-off years.
Retention is where this becomes a participation problem. A team feeling like a leftover loses players to better-treated teams nearby, and a growth story built on 1,500 new teams in a single season only holds if those teams survive their first few years. Kit is a small line item with an outsized effect on whether a new girls' side sticks around.
Lionesses HERe to Play Fund
The Football Foundation's flagship grant for women's and girls' football, launched in 2025 following the Lionesses' back-to-back UEFA Women's EURO wins. The fund runs two strands. The teams strand awards £500 for clubs providing recreational football through an England Football programme (Wildcats, Comets, Squad, or Just Play) and £1,500 for a new affiliated women's, girls', or mixed disability team launching for the 2026-27 season. The facilities strand awards £1,500 up to £25,000 for improvements making grassroots venues more welcoming for women and girls, from better lighting to private changing spaces, with the club covering up to 75% of costs with the club providing the remaining 25% match.
Football Foundation Grow the Game
Grow the Game is the Football Foundation's general fund for clubs creating new teams, not restricted to girls' football specifically, and it sits alongside the Lionesses fund rather than replacing it. Awards have historically run up to £1,500 per new team plus a Nike kit and equipment voucher, with rounds opening and closing across the year rather than staying permanently open. A new girls' team is eligible on the same terms as any other new team, so check both this and the Lionesses fund's teams strand for the current season's windows, since only one of the two is usually claimable per team.
National brand campaigns
Several national brands run recurring grassroots campaigns specifically for women's and girls' football. Just Eat's "101" campaign kick-started 101 new women's grassroots teams after Euro 2022, supplying kits, bibs, cones, footballs, and a manager's tracksuit, and followed up in 2024 with £50,000 of training equipment for the same 101 teams. Starling Bank's "Kick On" campaign, fronted by Jill Scott MBE, is now in its fifth year and has given away £200,000 worth of kit, equipment, and coaching vouchers, with a current goal of matching 2,000 small businesses to local teams. Also, Deliveroo, an official Lionesses partner, runs a Gift of Kit programme pledging kit to more than 200 women's grassroots clubs. These campaigns open and close on their own schedules, so treat them as a route to check each season rather than one to plan a kit budget around.
Local business sponsorship
A girls' team sponsorship pitch sells on different strengths to a boys' team pitch. The audience skews significantly more female, since match-day crowds for a girls' team lean toward mothers, sisters, and female family members, giving a sponsor targeting women a direct, low-cost route to a female audience. The growth story is genuinely compelling to a business, since a girls' team's player numbers are still climbing while a boys' team's numbers have often levelled off. For a business under B Corp assessment, ESG scoring, or public sector procurement social value criteria, sponsoring girls' football scores measurably better than sponsoring boys' football, since these frameworks explicitly reward investment in underrepresented groups. Local and regional press also treat girls' fixtures as news in a way they no longer treat boys' fixtures, so a sponsor's logo travels further per pound spent.
Kit Funder for girls' teams
Kit Funder matches girls' and women's football teams with a sponsor year-round rather than working to a single seasonal grant window, using AI matching on budget, location, and sport. A full match kit for a sixteen-player girls' team through Kit Funder costs £630, the same as a boys' team, delivered in a genuine women's and girls' fit through My Club Group rather than a boys' cut kit resized down. Every invoice adds 5% on top, donated to a local mental health charity, and the club pays nothing at any stage.
How schools and clubs fund girls' football kit together
A school with a girls' football programme and a local grassroots club serving the same age group often compete for the same limited pool of local sponsors and grant funding without realising it. Coordinating rather than competing gets further: a school's PE and Sport Premium funding covers coaching and equipment for curriculum and extracurricular football, while a grassroots club pursues the routes above for match kit and league affiliation costs. A joint approach to a local business, offering visibility across both the school programme and the linked club team, is a stronger single pitch than two separate, smaller asks landing in the same inbox weeks apart. For teams still short after exhausting the grant routes above, our guide on how to get free football kit for your grassroots team covers three further options open to any grassroots team, not girls' teams specifically.
Your Kit, Funded
Register your girls' football team free at kitfunder.ai/teams. Kit Funder matches teams with sponsors year-round and delivers women's and girls' fit kit through My Club Group.
FAQ
How much has girls' football grown in the UK since 2022?
Participation in women's and girls' football is up 56% since the FA's "Inspiring Positive Change" strategy launched in 2020, an increase largely driven by England's Euro 2022 win. The FA reports over 2.7 million girls and women playing football in England as of 2024, more than double the 2019 figure, with almost 1,500 new teams registered in the 2022-23 season alone.
How do grassroots girls' football teams typically get kit?
Most new girls' teams either inherit hand-me-down kit from an existing boys' section at the same club or start with no kit at all as a standalone team. Funded routes include the Lionesses HERe to Play Fund, the Football Foundation's Grow the Game scheme, national brand campaigns, local business sponsorship, and platforms such as Kit Funder, which matches teams with a sponsor directly.
What is the Lionesses HERe to Play Fund?
The Football Foundation's flagship grant for women's and girls' football, launched in 2025. It offers £500 for clubs running recreational programmes such as Wildcats, £1,500 for a new affiliated women's, girls', or disability team, and £1,500 to £25,000 for facility improvements making grounds more welcoming for women and girls.
Can businesses sponsor girls' football teams specifically?
Yes, and many actively choose to. A girls' team offers a business a stronger growth story, a more targeted female audience, and better CSR and social value scoring than an equivalent boys' team, on top of local press coverage running more readily for girls' fixtures than boys' ones.
Does Kit Funder cover girls' football teams?
Yes. Kit Funder matches girls' and women's football teams with sponsors year-round, delivering a genuine women's and girls' fit kit through My Club Group rather than a resized boys' kit. A full sixteen-player match kit costs £630, and 5% of every invoice goes to a local mental health charity.
Sources
The FA, women's and girls' football strategy update, thefa.com/womens-and-girls-football.
Football Foundation, Lionesses HERe to Play Fund, footballfoundation.org.uk/here-to-play.
Football Foundation, Grow the Game, footballfoundation.org.uk.
Just Eat, Feed The Game / 101 campaign reporting, justeat-101.co.uk.
Starling Bank, Kick On campaign, starlingbank.com.
