The new Womens Super League season will be the first with an official fantasy game.Launched on August 19, 16 days before the start of the 2026-27 season, the game is the next step in the leagues pursuit of more engagement with existing fans and a broader toolkit to attract new ones.The extremely popular Fantasy Premier League (FPL) game was born 24 years ago, ahead of the 2002-03 season. At the end of last season, FPL had over 13million users around the world.Naturally, in the quickly evolving world of womens football, one cant just copy and paste what has achieved success in mens football when it comes to creating an addictive game where users create a team that earns points for WSL players real-life performances.I think there was an assumption that core fans love playing fantasy, Joey Davidson, head of digital products at the WSL, tells The Athletic. But I think we also had to acknowledge that a core fan of the Premier League, for example, was very different in their behaviours from a core fan from the WSL.Prior to the launch of the official WSL Fantasy game, there was a very popular unofficial version. Aerial Fantasy by Even Sports launched properly in 2023 under the name Fantasy WSL and garnered over 80,000 users across three seasons before shuttering its WSL game at the end of last season. Even Sports still operates an NWSL equivalent.We genuinely love this game and this community, said Aerial Fantasy co-founder Dani Goncalves in a statement on their website. However, after putting in all the time and effort to make it exist, we realised it also needed to sustain itself financially.In the development of their own fantasy game, the WSL spoke to many creators of existing games out there, including FPL and Aerial. In the end, the WSL chose to work with Sportz Interactive, who handle UEFAs fantasy league offerings.Davidson acknowledges the decision to partner with Sportz Interactive over Aerial has created some division amongst WSL fans.Thats the main criticism weve had since launch, he said. It obviously made it quite challenging for that portion of the audience to really buy into a WSL Football product.Honor Wicks, co-host of womens football podcast Screamers, who had been playing Aerial Fantasy for the last two seasons, says that she will not be signing up to play WSL Fantasy despite previously talking about fantasy football on the podcast and having segments analysing picks in Aerials game.I think this is probably because I was just feeling a bit disillusioned with not being able to continue with the Aerial fantasy game, which I really enjoyed, Wicks tells The Athletic. When it came to developing the official game, Davidson and his team came in with an open mind. They werent exactly sure what a fantasy WSL game should look like when tailored specifically to WSL fans.In December 2025, the WSL ran a research project to try to better understand the desires of their fanbase. Would they prefer a weekly match-prediction game or a trivia app over a traditional points-based, season-long team selection fantasy game?We explored everything and it wasnt just us presenting a lot of options, Davidson says. We took it to fans and said: What do you actually want to play? What do you want to do week-to-week? I think we engaged around 7,000 fans in the initial outreach.The primary positive response was community. People play fantasy to connect with other fans and learn more about players and the league they love.Community is key to it all, Davidson said. We needed a game which brought people closer to the league, close to what players exist, and needed it to be a mechanism for fans learning about whats going on in real life, which then brings you closer to other fans, letting fans find community.El, an Arsenal fan based in London, says that playing fantasy has been a feature in her social circles built around football. She has signed up to play WSL Fantasy.Im in leagues with some of the girls that I play football with as well, so we get a bit competitive with each other, El tells The Athletic. Sometimes well chat about it at the pub after our training sessions; have a bit of banter about whos doing crap or whos doing well.I think creating leagues with other womens football fans from online communities is a really nice lead-up to the season starting, says Mia, a Manchester United fan based in Manchester, who has also signed up to play this year. Ill be doing my research right up until the final day. Its fun to have something competitive and interactive to play.In terms of deterrents to playing fantasy, one of the biggest issues the WSL identified was users creating a team at the beginning of the season, falling behind in the competition, and then dropping off entirely.As a rapidly growing and adaptive league, Davidson and his team also wanted the game to remain open to new fans discovering the WSL throughout the year.So how could a fan who doesnt discover the WSL until December or January not be made to wait until the next season begins in September to play the leagues fantasy game?The WSLs solution was the creation of the leg system. In addition to the traditional season-long classic league, every manager in WSL Fantasy will also compete in six mini-seasons, known as legs. Each one lasts between three and six matches. There will be prize-winners and leagues created for every leg.What we wanted to do is create that feeling: youre always there, youve always got a chance to win, says Davidson. Youve always got a chance to compete with your friends again. Whereas if its just that season-long game, you kind of have got one opportunity a year, and thats the main thing we wanted to tackle.Another bold choice the WSL made when developing their game was bundling selectable players from the WSL and the WSL2 together. The theory was that by increasing the number of players in the game, there would be more variable squad selections and outcomes. More players means less similar teams and, in turn, more strategy.You get to January, and in previous games, the game has really slowed down because everyones got the same team. Thats because the talent pool in what was a 12-club league was too small to support a game with real depth, Davidson says.Other fantasy games have adopted this. Fantasy EFL, home to the official fantasy game of the second, third and fourth tiers of mens football, offers players 72 clubs to select from across three leagues.These decisions, though, are certainly splitting opinion.For Arsenal fan El, all the new rules felt a bit confusing, and she wishes the format of WSL Fantasy WSL was a bit simpler. Wicks agrees and feels that the WSLs new game is convoluted.While Mia believed that even as intimidating as it was to see all the WSL2 players included in the game, she saw their inclusion as a positive change, saying it would encourage people to keep up with both leagues.There is no concrete metric for success when it comes to WSL Fantasy. Davidson is not putting a ceiling on the leagues targets or audience gains, partly because he believes this fantasy game can go beyond traditional core fans.We feel like weve designed a format here that has a much wider appeal because our game can appeal to people who are completely new to football, he says.At the time of writing, Fantasy WSL has had over 25,000 sign-ups since its launch two weeks ago.Around half the WSLs investment for this project is going into exclusive creator-, coach- and player-driven content surrounding Fantasy WSL. All this lives on the app itself as well as on YouTube and podcast streaming platforms. Cultural influence, conversation and engagement might be the real reward that the WSL is seeking to seize.In terms of what success looks like for everybody, its more about reach, says Davidson. Its not just a game. Theres a whole content ecosystem which surrounds this.This article originally appeared in The Athletic.Fantasy Premier League, Women's Soccer2026 The Athletic Media Company