Data, Risk and Building Resilience: The Future of Women’s Football

Women’s football has entered a new era of global visibility and investment, and with qualifying matches for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup underway, the focus on player welfare has never been sharper.

For specialist Accident & Health insurers and brokers operating in the sport’s fast-growing market, the opportunity lies not only in providing financial protection for the players, agents, and clubs involved, but in helping to shape a safer game through deeper risk insights, data driven understanding, and innovative product design.

Long underserved in terms of structured insurance protection and long term injury support, these critical factors to building a safer, sustainable professional sport are starting to improve for the women’s game as it professionalises, standards of performance rise, and financial stakes increase.

Understanding major risks

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear remains the most prevalent and disruptive injury affecting female footballers. Studies suggest women face a three to six times higher risk of ACL injury than men—an imbalance underscored by the high number of players who missed out on the last World Cup due to ACL tears. The growing collection of data being collated by clubs and insurers on movement patterns, deceleration forces, playing intensity, biomechanics, and return-to-play timelines, offers hope that persistently high ACL injury rates can be reduced in time.

The expanding dataset supports two core developments:

More targeted injury prevention strategies: Insights into how and why women incur ACL injuries, including biomechanical differences and movement patterns, inform training modifications designed to reduce high-risk moments such as cutting, pivoting, and landing. Several top tier clubs are already integrating these insights into personalised conditioning programmes.

Insurance solutions aligned to female specific injuries: Data allows underwriters to better understand risk frequency, severity, and recovery trajectories, enabling development of more accurate pricing, more relevant coverage triggers, and better structured rehabilitation benefits.

Hormonal health and monitoring

One of the most significant advancements in women’s football risk research involves hormone based insights, particularly the influence of menstrual cycle phases on musculoskeletal vulnerability. Emerging research into hormonal deficiency, stability and injury likelihood is reshaping how clubs design training loads for female athletes. Some clubs now track players’ cycles, integrating data into training intensity planning, recovery protocols, personalised conditioning, and return-to-play timelines.

For insurers, this enhanced understanding of physiological risk adds a new dimension to coverage design. Product development and enhancement is underway to reflect real world risks for female athletes focusing on coverage being gender inclusive, early intervention and injury prevention to encourage best practice clinical referral.

Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S)

RED-S is a medical condition that occurs when an athlete does not take in enough calories to support training demands and basic physiological functions. While RED-S can affect any athlete, it occurs more frequently in female athletes. The condition influences multiple body systems and can impact athlete physiology, performance and psychological well-being. Including the costs for tests and treatments for RED-S in medical policies could support proactive screening for risk factors. This approach may help prevent stress fractures and other injuries, given that those with RED-S have a higher overall injury risk.

Bridging risk and prevention with tech

Wearable and performance tracking technology is becoming increasingly common in the women’s game. These systems allow monitoring of player workload, fatigue, movement patterns, and early indicators of biomechanical stress. For insurers, this data is invaluable:

• It sharpens exposure modelling at a team and individual level
• It reveals predictive indicators of high-risk periods
• It helps establish objective claim triggers for long-term injury cover
• It assists in understanding treatment variability across clubs and leagues

Beyond injury prevention, APIs now help insurers track player transfers and international call ups, improving the accuracy of exposure management in a fast moving global market.

Building a safer future through insight and innovation

While we don’t set the rules of the game, we are always supportive of measures that clubs take to use data and tech to track players’ health and performance, and elevate insurers’ understanding of how to reduce injury and mitigate risk.

With women’s football accelerating into a new era, insurers and brokers can help play a pivotal role in unlocking meaningful progress in player protection. The more we understand the real risks female athletes face, the stronger and more sustainable the sport becomes.

Guy Bonwick and Kayla Lennox further discussed this topic in an article first published in Insurance Post: Insurers upping their female football game

This material is for general information, education and discussion purposes only. Statements contained herein are not professional or legal advice of AXIS or its affiliates. AXIS makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained herein and is under no obligation to update or revise the information as a result of new information, research or future events. AXIS assumes no liability by reason of the information within this material.