Guide to UEFA Women’s Champions League

DAZN holds the global rights to the UEFA Women’s Champions League from 2021-22 to 2024-25. The 61 matches in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons will be streamed live for free on the DAZN UEFA Women’s Champions League YouTube channel. Women’s Champions League 2021-22 will feature a stage in the 16-team UEFA Women’s Champions League. Each participant will receive €400,000 (approximately five times more than the round of 16 participants received in previous editions).

Visa became the first dedicated sponsor of UEFA women’s football following UEFA’s sponsorship rights for men’s football. The UEFA Women‘s Cup was launched in the 2001/02 season to grow interest in women’s football. The UEFA Women’s Cup was a football competition for European clubs.

With this new format, the group stage – a group of four – allows eight teams to reach the quarter-finals at home and away, after which the games will be the same as before. The UEFA Women’s League has been redesigned to look more like the UEFA Champions League format than before. The competition itself features an Italian-style two-player group stage in the Women’s Champions League era for the first time. The most notable changes from 2001-2009 were the inclusion of runners-up from the top eight countries in the rankings, a one-off final compared to the double-finals of previous years, and until 2018  the hosting of the finals was done in the same city. 

Sixteen teams are divided into four mini-tournaments of four teams. Forty-three clubs have entered the Champions League, including all-league champions that did not qualify directly for the group stage. Seats from these countries are allocated to each country’s first team in a bilateral tournament. The following year, the top leagues of Belgium and the Netherlands merged into a single bi-national championship.

Lyon holds the most titles in the competition, with seven, five of which came in consecutive seasons between 2016 and 2020, also a record in the competition. Lyon, for excellent reasons, is considered the best women’s team in Europe by a margin. Lyon is committed to what is called Fivepeat in social media jargon. FC Barcelona made this decision in recognition of the outstanding achievements of the Women’s Barça over the past year, winning the league and double cup in addition to their own. Over the years, Lyon has promoted and practised gender equality in the game, using the same training facilities, stadium and infrastructure for both men and women.

In this edition of  Women’s Champions League, the quarterfinal round consists of FC Barcelona vs Real Madrid, Bayern vs PSG, Arsenal vs Wolfsburg, Juventus vs Lyon. These matches will be played between 22nd March to 1st April. The Semifinal round will start on 23rd April.