Over the past decade, the ubiquity of fantasy football has increased tenfold.

The Premier League version of the game has almost quadrupled in size in 10 years, up to a high of 11.4 million players worldwide. For many participants, playing fantasy football is part and parcel of consuming, enjoying and appreciating the sport, and it has spawned its own industry of content creators.

So when Dani Goncalves and Jimmy Thompson got into women’s football during its 2022 European Championship, they were looking for something similar for the Women’s Super League.

“For us, FPL (the Premier League’s official fantasy game) is super-helpful for learning about the whole league,” says Goncalves. “And we just couldn’t find something (in women’s football) that was to the standard that we were used to with FPL.”

With Goncalves’ background in community building and Thompson’s in app development, they decided to take on the challenge themselves, putting their heads together and creating Fantasy WSL.

Technically, Fantasy WSL is not the first WSL-based fantasy football game. ShePlays is an Australian not-for-profit that runs a variety of fantasy football competitions for the AFLW in Australia, the NWSL in America and the WSL in the UK….