Phase 1 Research · Consolidated
Building the
gamification suite
gamification suite
Insight brief for Monterosa
What the fan survey, stakeholder interviews and benchmarking work tell us about the games, predictors, trivia and community play that should sit alongside fantasy.
May 2026
Top of the brief 60 second digest
Headline stats and the five things to take away. Everything underneath unpacks the picture.
72%
Of fans open to playing an official WSL Football digital game
WSL2 fans as likely as WSL fans (48% vs 50%)
#1
Trivia is the #1 ranked game format
Popular across every age group, well clear of fantasy
89%
Rate experiences or practical value as their top reward motivator
Competition-based rewards trail at 6%; emotional recognition at 4%
78%
Find sponsor branding acceptable in a WSLF game or membership
Highest single permission signal in the research
The headlines
Five things to take from this
01
Trivia is the priority build
Ranked #1 by fans, the most under-served format in women's football today, and the strongest education tool available. The single biggest unlock.
02
Don't import the Premier League playbook
FPL-style depth, complexity and hyper-competition is repeatedly flagged as the failure mode to avoid. The suite needs to feel distinct, not derivative.
03
Player-led, not team-led
A structural feature of the women's game. Fans follow players before clubs, and favourite-player capture is a core mechanic, not a feature.
04
Real-world value beats abstract status
Tickets, experiences, meet-ups. Branded digital collectibles ranked last across every fan segment. Build leaderboards as a supporting layer, not the primary motivator.
05
Habit before monetisation
Stakeholders are unanimous. The near-term priority is converting moment-led engagement into routine and capturing clean first-party data. The commercial layer is sequenced behind it.
Going deeper All the detail
Nine sections covering audience, formats, barriers, features, sponsorship, design principles, risks, loyalty and the formal ask. Read in any order.
01Who we're building for
Top-level shape
Large, young, global, and unlike a Premier League audience.
The WSL Football fanbase is structurally different from the men's-game audience the industry is used to designing for. It is more female, significantly younger, predominantly international, and far more receptive to play. But it does not behave like the audience FPL was built for, and the gamification design must not assume it does.
103m
Total followers across all WSL Football clubs
YouGov global fanbase sizing, September 2025
6.7x
More WSL Football fans outside the UK than inside it
25% Asia · 24% Europe · 16% N. America · 13% C&S America · 10% UK
55%
Of WSL Football fans are female
vs 37% for EPL. Only 42% of in-stadium attendees are female.
60%
Of WSL Football fans are under 34
vs 32% for EPL · under-25s are 53% likely to play a WSLF game
The three fan segments
One audience, three behavioural realities.
The Phase 1 work splits the fanbase into three meaningfully different groups. The suite must work for all three, but the mechanics, tone and entry points should not be identical. Where the data shows a strong segment-level signal, we've called it out.
Segment 01
Core fans
55%
of survey respondents · 77% engage daily
Deeply emotionally invested. Predominantly female, often current or former players, with a long-standing love of football. Highly invested in the game's culture and values. Natural advocates and recruiters.
Design implication
Reward advocacy, attendance and community contribution, not just stats mastery. Give them status and voice.
Segment 02
Free fans
↗
strongest growth potential · slight female skew
New to the women's pro game, often new to football altogether. Drawn in by the Euros, atmosphere and values. Lower confidence, weaker communities, lighter spend, but big growth potential with the right onboarding.
Design implication
Low-barrier mechanics, story-driven challenges, friends leagues. Not solo competition: 27% don't play because friends or family don't.
Segment 03
Secondary fans
⚽
football-literate · men's-first by habit
Predominantly male, lifelong men's-game followers. Engage with WSLF around tournaments and family moments. Bring football literacy but treat WSLF as a different sport, with different teams and a different league structure.
Design implication
Predictors and trivia leverage their existing football confidence as a low-friction way in. Don't make them re-learn everything.
Behavioural traits across all three segments
Five things that hold true whichever segment you're designing for.
Trait 01
Player-first, not team-first
A defining and structural feature of the women's game. Fans follow players across clubs, so the design needs to lean into this rather than fight it.
Trait 02
Spiky, moment-led engagement
Website traffic peaks at weekends and around major matches, with limited weekday habit. Games are the mechanism for converting peaks into routine.
Trait 03
Knowledge gaps are universal
Even football-literate fans hesitate to engage deeply because they don't yet know players or league structures well enough. The product is an education tool as much as an entertainment one.
Trait 04
Mostly first-timers to sports gaming
Almost half of survey respondents have never played a sports-related game before. Onboarding must assume zero prior fantasy or predictor experience.
Trait 05
Discovery is the #1 friction
33% say "hard to find where to watch" is their biggest engagement barrier. Where rights and tech allow, games should help fans surface where the next moment is happening.
48%
The onboarding reality
Almost half of fans have never played a sports-related game before.
This is not an edge case. It is one of the largest single behavioural facts in the research, and the implication for the entire suite is that first-time users are a primary audience to design for, not an audience to onboard around. Tutorials, auto-pick defaults, forgiving mechanics and progressive disclosure are baseline requirements.
02The format opportunity
The ranked format chart
Trivia and predictors. Then everything else.
Top format scored 1,165 ranked points · #2 scored 991 · the gap widens fast after that
Survey respondents were asked to rank their top 3 game formats from a list of 13. The aggregated points are the clearest available indication of where Monterosa's design effort should concentrate. The four fantasy formats are shown for context but sit outside scope, since they're being delivered by a separate partner.
1
Quizzes and trivia about WSL and players
1,165
2
Match result predictors
991
3
Season-long fantasy gameOut of scope
830
4
Simple weekly fantasy gameOut of scope
640
5
Mini-games (fast, arcade-style or puzzle-style)
559
6
Player spotlight challenges
503
7
Season-long predictor leagues
494
8
Pack-opening or surprise rewards
399
9
Team-based or community competitions
361
10
Missions & objectives
347
11
5-a-side fantasy gameOut of scope
184
12
Streak challenges
184
13
Daily fantasy gameOut of scope
156
Total points across rank 1, rank 2, rank 3 selections (n=2,288). Fantasy formats greyed out as out of scope.
Theme #1 · The trivia opportunity
Trivia is the most consistently popular format across every age group, the most under-served format in the women's football market today, and the format with the strongest education payoff per minute of engagement.
Where each format fits the audience
A first read on prioritisation.
Trivia. The priority build. Ranked #1. Universally appealing. Strongest education payoff. The product that most directly addresses fans' top stated need (closing knowledge gaps).
Predictors. The matchday anchor. Ranked #2. Naturally suited to converting moment-led peaks into return habit. The format that lives closest to live match windows and second-screen viewing.
Mini-games. The daily connective layer. Strongest fit for under-25s (53% likely to play vs 25% for 55+). Short-session, mobile-first, sponsor-friendly.
Player spotlight challenges. The player-led storytelling vehicle. Grows in appeal with age and aligns directly with the women's game's defining behavioural trait.
Community competitions and missions. Structural, not standalone. Ranked lower as destinations but punch above their weight. They make every other format more compelling, more social and more loyal.
Strategic notes from the data
Three patterns worth surfacing.
WSL2 fans match WSL fans for game appetite. 48% vs 50% likely or very likely to play. The product should not assume WSL2 fans are a secondary audience for gamification.
International fans over-index on season-long fantasy, player stats and global leaderboards. Where those formats sit outside our scope, the corresponding behaviours (stats deep-dives, league-wide comparison) can be picked up by trivia and predictor mechanics.
Older fans over-index on missions, player spotlight and discovery. Don't treat older fans as the casual segment. They want depth in a different shape from younger fans.
Theme #2 · Almost every fan wants live and personalised
Live scoring updates and player stats are the top two features fans want in any game, with detailed visual data graphics in third. The data shape and live responsiveness of the suite matter at least as much as the game mechanics on top.
03Barriers & habits
What stops engagement with women's football today
Discovery, not desire, is the biggest barrier.
33% of fans · the runaway top barrier
1
Hard to find where to watch
33%
2
Not enough time
28%
3
Lack of interactive experiences
6%
4
Lack of interesting content
3%
5
Not connected to a club
2%
6
Lack of player knowledge
2%
43% of fans say nothing is currently stopping them. This is a fanbase with high stated intent and weak habit structure, exactly the audience gamification is designed to convert.
What stops fans from playing sports-related games
Forgetting to make picks. By a clear margin.
38% · the #1 barrier to game participation
1
Worry they'll forget to make picks
38%
2
Don't have time
30%
3
Friends or family don't play
24%
4
Too complicated to understand
14%
5
Don't know the players well enough
14%
6
Don't know the rules
12%
31% of Core, 33% of Secondary, and 27% of Free fans cite forgetting picks as their top barrier. This is solvable with the right reminder, auto-pick, and rolling-lockout design.
3+
The retention target
Three or more weekly interactions per user is the internal benchmark for habit formation.
This is the shape of the metric we're being asked to design against. Not single peak DAU, but average weekly interactions across the entire suite. The retention curve matters as much as the peak. Joey's success criterion was specific: "repeat usage curves, not spike-and-drop."
04Cross-game features that matter
What fans want in any game format
Live scoring, player stats, visual data. Then progression and social.
14 features ranked · top six all clear 27%
Fans were asked to select which features matter most across any WSL Football game. This is the cross-cutting feature set that should apply across the entire suite, regardless of which format they're embedded in.
1
Live scoring updates
50%
2
Detailed player stats Core fans 49%
45%
3
Visual data graphics
31%
4
Levels & progression
29%
5
Social leagues
27%
6
Community competitions
27%
7
Bonus points
21%
8
Difficulty levels
18%
9
Global leaderboards International over-indexes
18%
10
Story-driven challenges Free fans 20%
16%
11
Surprise pack rewards
15%
12
Daily streak check-ins
13%
13
Sharing progress
10%
14
Boosters / chips
9%
Worth flagging: daily streak check-ins ranked #12 (13%) but consistently produce the highest behavioural retention impact in benchmarked products. This is a stated-preference vs revealed-preference gap to watch.
Who you'd play against
Club fans and friends, tied at the top.
Fans of my club
52%
Friends
52%
Global WSLF fanbase
38%
Fans of the same player as me
35%
I don't want to compete
23%
Family
18%
Colleagues
13%
Important nuance: 23% don't want to compete at all. Competition can't be the only entry point, and solo and cooperative modes need to exist alongside competitive ones.
When fans want to play
Build for flexibility. Nearly half are agnostic.
48%
either is
fine
fine
Either, scheduled or on-demand48%
Scheduled play29%
On-demand play22%
Mandatory scheduled lockouts will exclude a fifth of the audience. Wherever possible, build for both modes: a scheduled "moment" play and an on-demand alternative.
Theme #3 · Personalisation around the player
Fans follow players before clubs. Favourite-player capture early, surfaced everywhere, with personalised prompts and reward eligibility wrapped around it, is the single most valuable cross-cutting mechanic the suite can deploy.
05Sponsorship integration
The permission picture
Acceptance is high. Conditions are specific.
Fans are unusually open to sponsor integration in WSLF games and membership, but the conditions of that acceptance are specific. Sponsor value lands when it funds rewards, experiences and prize draws. It does not land when it touches editorial, when it tries to operate as a digital collectible economy, or when it interrupts game flow.
78%
Find sponsor branding acceptable
45% completely, 33% mostly · only 3% find it unacceptable
All 3
Fan segments equally accepting
Core 44% completely · Free 42% · Secondary 48%
Which sponsor benefits fans value most
Discounts and prize draws on top. Branded collectibles last.
1
Discounts on relevant products or services Consistent across all 3 segments
66%
2
Sponsor-led prize draws and giveaways Free fans 69%
64%
3
Access to sponsor events or experiences
51%
4
Cause-related or charity-linked rewards Values alignment
45%
5
Branded digital collectibles or badges
12%
Branded digital collectibles came last in every segment (13%, 13%, 11%). Don't rely on them as a sponsor monetisation vehicle. They belong in the product as supporting features, not headline inventory.
What works as sponsor inventory
Five integration formats, in priority order.
Prize-funded inventory across every format. Sponsor-funded prize draws for predictor streaks, trivia leaderboards, mission completion, weekly highlights. Strongest CTR-friendly inventory.
Branded weekly or daily quizzes and mini-games. Short-window sponsor takeovers of single quiz or mini-game instances. Lower commitment, faster activation, easier sell-in.
Discount mechanics in the loyalty redemption layer. Partner products or services unlocked through point earning, ideally tied to categories that resonate (food, sportswear, financial services).
Sponsor-funded experiences as headline rewards. Meet-and-greets, training-ground access, hospitality. Lower volume, higher prestige.
Cause-linked activations. Sponsor-amplified community goals or charity unlocks. Values-led and culturally aligned with WSLF's distinct tone.
The guardrails
Where sponsor integration must not go.
No editorial influence. Sponsor inventory cannot extend into player storytelling or content. Multiple stakeholders flagged this as a non-negotiable.
No game-flow interruption. Sponsor placement must never block or slow access to core game mechanics, even with explicit consent.
No digital collectible economy. Direct fan demand is low and the format risks feeling extractive. Use it as a delivery layer, not a value layer.
Parity across activations. Sponsor inventory should not over-index on top clubs or star players. Club focus group asks were explicit on this point.
Always proportionate. Brands accepted when they enhance the experience, rejected when they override the fan-first feel.
The principles that came back consistently.
Eight design principles emerged from the survey data, stakeholder interviews and benchmarking. They're written as binding constraints, not preferences. Where a feature looks attractive but breaks a principle, the principle wins.
06Design principles
01
Low friction over depth
Almost half of fans have never played a sports-related game. Forgetting to make a pick is the #1 reason fans drop out (38%). Default to auto-pick, rolling lockouts, in-app reminders, and modes where one missed pick doesn't ruin the season. Depth is optional. Friction kills retention.
02
Don't import the Premier League playbook
FPL is the most-cited benchmark in stakeholder conversations, but almost always as a cautionary tale. Hyper-competition, tactical complexity and "expert" mechanics clash with the audience's values and tone. The suite should feel distinct, not derivative.
03
Player-first, every screen
Fans follow players before clubs. A structural feature, not a preference. Favourite player(s) should be captured at sign-up, persist across the suite (predictors, trivia, missions, mini-games) and unlock personalised content, prompts and reward eligibility. This is the single most valuable cross-cutting mechanic in scope.
04
Education is a feature, not a side-effect
Stakeholders described WSLF platforms as "a place for fixtures and results, not a place fans go to learn the league." Games are the most powerful learning tool available. Every quiz answer, predictor outcome and mini-game should leave the fan knowing one more thing about the league.
05
Parity across clubs
A consistent and emphatic club focus group ask. Mechanics, rewards and prompts must not over-index on a small number of star clubs or players. Discovery and rotation are explicit design requirements, especially for WSL2, where 48% of fans are as likely to play as WSL fans (50%).
06
Globally accessible from day one
Most fans are international, and 54% of website traffic comes from outside the UK. Rules, scoring, rewards and reminders all need to work without UK-specific friction (time zones, ticketing, currency, language). Build globally, don't internationalise later.
07
Real-world value beats abstract status
89% of fans cite experiences or practical value as their most motivating reward type. Only 6% cite competition-based rewards and 4% emotional recognition. Branded digital collectibles ranked last among sponsor benefits (11–13%). Build leaderboards and badges as supporting layers, not as the primary motivator.
08
Habit before monetisation
Stakeholders are unanimous that the near-term priority is growing habit and capturing first-party data, not extracting revenue. The brief is to build the engagement engine first; the commercial layer is sequenced behind it. Monetisation too early is a primary identified risk.
07Risks & failure modes
Taken directly from the Phase 1 risk matrix and stakeholder interviews. These are the failure modes most likely to materialise if not actively guarded against, sorted into the two categories that matter most: high-likelihood, high-impact (primary risks to actively manage) and structural risks to govern carefully.
High likelihood · High impact
Primary risks to actively manage
Product feels "copy-paste men's football". FPL-style mechanics, tone, complexity or commercial intensity will alienate Core Fans. Apply Edie's design test: "what would a women's football fan want, not just a football fan?"
Product too complex for new fans. Mechanics that assume football literacy lock out Free Fans (the audience with highest growth potential).
Club backlash on parity. Any sense that the suite over-indexes on star clubs or players will cause friction. Parity is a structural design requirement.
Matchday operational failure. Especially live scoring and check-ins at smaller grounds. Reliability is a credibility risk.
Monetisation introduced too early. Asking fans to pay before value is established is a confirmed risk.
Structural · govern carefully
Lower likelihood, high impact if missed
Sponsor overreach. Partners influencing editorial or player storytelling will damage trust. Sponsor inventory must be designed in product layers that don't touch editorial.
Privacy and consent failure. Poor opt-in flows or unclear data usage damages the trust the league is trying to build.
Building in silos. Fantasy separate from CRM, content, ticketing and games is repeatedly named as a watch-out. Integration into the single fan profile is non-negotiable.
Data feed reliability. Predictor and live-scoring mechanics depend on the data feed. Game design should be resilient to imperfect data.
Over-promising features that can't be operationalised. Especially live clip-based mechanics that depend on broadcast rights position.
08Loyalty, prizes & rewards
What rewards motivate fans
Experiences and practical value: 89% combined.
Fans were asked what type of reward is most motivating to them overall. The signal is overwhelming and unambiguous. Real-world value, not abstract status.
Experiences
Player meet-ups, training-ground access, events
49%
Practical value
Ticket discounts, merch discounts, early access
40%
Competition-based
6%
Emotional recognition
4%
89% The combined share of fans who rate experiences or practical value as their top motivator. The strongest single signal in the entire loyalty section of the research.
Top 3 specific reward types when ranked: (1) discount on match tickets, (2) player meet-ups or experiences, (3) early access to match tickets. Ticket access is dominant, and aligns directly with the league's commercial interest in driving attendance.
Which behaviours fans would do for loyalty points
Attendance dominates. The rest are all in-suite.
80% of Core fans selected attending matches as a top action
1
Attending women's football matches
77%
2
Watching highlights or clips
57%
3
Completing trivia quizzes
56%
4
Making match or player predictions
53%
5
App or web engagement
52%
6
Participating in fan forums
18%
7
Inviting friends to sign up
13%
8
Completing football skill challenges
10%
Trivia and predictions sit alongside passive viewing as the highest-rated point-earning actions. The formats fans most want to play are also the actions they most want rewarded. The two questions answer themselves together.
71%
The premium reward tier
71% of fans rate signed merchandise or match-day-worn draws as the most valuable player-focused benefit.
68% of Core fans value meet-and-greet opportunities. 77% value merchandise discounts. Real-world, tangible, scarce-access rewards are the gravity well of the entire loyalty system. Digital collectibles barely register: 48% rate them most valuable in the digital tier, but only 11–13% rate them most valuable as sponsor benefits. They are a delivery mechanism, not a destination.
09What we're asking from Monterosa
Phase 2
Working through it together.
This isn't a pitch. The insight base sits above; what we'd like to align on next is a focused, deliverable plan for embedding gamification natively into the WSLF app for the 2026/27 season. The four parts below are how we'd like to structure that conversation.
01
What to build first
A curated set of experiences, sequenced and mapped against the format ranking and fan segment data above. We don't need to ship every format. We do need to ship a coherent set that delivers something for Core, Free and Secondary fans alike. Trivia and predictors are the obvious leads, with mini-games, player spotlight challenges and missions as strong candidates for the connective layer. We'd value Monterosa's view on which combination delivers the strongest signal across all three groups without overstretching the build.
02
Native to the app, where fans already are
The WSLF app is the priority surface, and experiences need to feel completely native. Not embedded inside article bodies, not requiring fans to leave the screen they're already on. The natural surfaces are match centres, fixtures pages, player pages, push moments and the home feed: wherever fan attention is already anchored. Dedicated gaming sections are an open conversation for the future, not the v1 shape, but we're keen to hear Monterosa's thinking. Assume limited or no hard restrictions on what's technically possible; we'll work out the route. The preference, all else equal, is lightweight integration over heavy build. For each proposed experience: where it appears in the app, what the entry point looks like, what the flow feels like for the user.
03
Sponsor inventory inside each experience
Sponsor work can sit later in the process, but framing it now helps prioritise the experiences themselves and the conversations we'll have with partners. For each experience proposed, where sponsor inventory naturally sits and how it feels additive rather than imposed. Aligned with the sponsorship findings above (78% acceptance, with specific conditions). Recommended partner categories per format, what's deliverable for season launch vs later, and how each piece of inventory maps to the prize-funded, branded quiz or mini-game, discount, experience or cause-linked formats identified as the highest-permission shapes. A guardrail worth setting early: don't dilute sponsor exposure across the app. Concentrated, distinctive placements work harder than ubiquitous low-impact ones.
04
From May to December
A working roadmap with two delivery milestones, alongside a plan for how Monterosa's uplifted bespoke dev resource will be deployed across the May to December window. Core points we'd want to see covered:
What ships for the start of the 2026/27 season (target: late August or early September 2026). The first wave of native experiences, ready alongside the season opener.
What ships by the end of December 2026. The second wave, capturing the first half of the season's learnings and broadening coverage across fan groups.
Resource deployment plan. Plan of how we use Monterosa's uplifted resource between now and the end of the year to deliver the roadmap.
Honest scope. We'd rather ship two experiences that feel completely native than four that feel forced.
How this brief was made All insights and analysis in this brief have been curated by humans at Two Circles as part of the Phase 1 Research & Discovery work. This page is a consolidation of the original 153-page Phase 1 document for relevance, structured with Claude using context from the recent gamification surveys.