Action-packed women’s football ‘Grand Slam’

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A lucrative new seven-a-side global women’s football series has been announced with the first event set to take place in Portugal from May 21^st-23^rd.

‘The Guardian’ stated that the competition has been named the World Sevens Football and it is understood there is a commitment to invest $100m (£77m) in the series over a five-year period.

The new series of invitational ‘Grand Slam’ tournaments will feature $5m prize money per event. It is funded by investment from the US-based philanthropist Jennifer Mackesy, Co-Owner of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) club Gotham FC, and will be broadcast live by the streaming platform Dazn (a British over-the-top sports streaming and entertainment platform).

The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) is a women’s professional soccer league and the highest level of the United States soccer league system. The league comprises 14 teams (16 in 2026). It is owned by the teams and sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation. The NWSL is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan.

Chicago (US)-based the United States Soccer Federation, commonly referred to as U.S. Soccer, is a 501 nonprofit organization and the official governing body of soccer in the United States.

‘The Guardian’ further stated that the clubs involved in the first eight-team competition have not been confirmed but a different set of clubs will compete in the second event in November-December which will be staged on a different continent. The winning team at each event will receive $2.5m (£1.9m).

The organizers say the players will be “at the heart” of the series and they have been guided by a Player Advisory Council which is led by the former United States Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT – represents the United States in international women’s soccer) winger Tobin Heath and also includes the former Sweden captain Caroline Seger, the former England and Team GB defender Anita Asante, the former US right-back Kelley O’Hara, and the former France defender Laura Georges who previously spent more than seven years as the Secretary General of the French Football Federation (the governing body of football in France).

The World Sevens Football has named the former US women’s international and the NWSL team Bay FC Co-Founder Aly Wagner as the Chief of Strategy.

Stated Wagner, “This is one of those really pivotal moments in women’s football and an opportunity for us to do something unique and different. This is a global series that will travel the world and one of the keys to this is really opening the market and growing the market of women’s football in those places. The seven-v-seven format is one the players love, it’s one of their favorite things to do in training, the small-sided games, and it’s one that I think the fans will end up clamoring for. It’s so intense, action-packed and it’s all the stuff that the players love, one-v-one duels, shots, goals. This is going to be a world-class event for these players, they’re going to be treated the way we always dreamed of being treated as players from the moment they step off the plane.”

The inaugural tournament will be staged from May 21^st-23^rd in Estoril, Portugal, on a grass pitch at the 8,000-capacity Estádio António Coimbra da Mota where it is understood a ‘stadium within a stadium’ will be built around a half-sized pitch for the seven-a-side games. That is directly in the run-up to this year’s Women’s Champions League Final being staged nearby in Lisbon (Portugal) so that the two finalists will not be involved in the first event.

The venues for the future events have not been announced but the organizers say they are planning to go to Cities “across the United States, Mexico, Asia, Europe, and beyond”.

The group have been in dialog with the FIFA and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) but do not expect to need any governing body’s permission to run the series because seven-a-side is not a codified form of the game.

Nyon (Switzerland)-based the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach football in Europe and the transcontinental countries of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan as well as in the West Asian countries of Cyprus, Armenia and Israel. The UEFA consists of 55 national association members. Since 2022, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the FIFA and the UEFA has suspended all Russian national teams and clubs from any FIFA and UEFA competitions.

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