The most powerful person in English women’s football takes a breath, looks around the room and seems to pause to think. Nikki Doucet, the chief executive of the new company that now runs the country’s two main women’s leagues, has just been asked how things are going and her look suggests she has a lot to say. “It’s a rollercoaster and it’s tough but it’s fantastic. It’s so tough but it’s so great.”

The former Nike director is at the national football centre in St George’s Park to face her first newspaper interview since taking the job leading the team that runs the Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship. That responsibility was legally given to her by the Football Association on August 15 but she has been in the post since November during the transition period. It’s a job she wanted to take “because it’s an opportunity to advance women’s rights through the power of sport” and she believes wholeheartedly in the future of football.

The new company, previously called NewCo and now temporarily renamed Women’s Professional Leagues Ltd (WPLL) until a longer-term name is found, will be under enormous pressure to perform. “The task is to create and build the most distinctive, competitive and entertaining women’s football club competition in the world,” she says. “That’s what we need to be obsessed with.”

The “we” is Doucet’s new four-person, all-female leadership team. “That’s because they’re the best people,” she says. “I don’t want to create a gender narrative, that’s not my goal. I’ve been fortunate to have great leaders of both genders. But I’ve also had bad leaders of both genders.”

“I believe in diversity of thought and a workforce that represents the population – I think our game needs to do more for diversity – but most importantly for me is getting the best people so I can empower them to do great things. (Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, ‘Why shouldn’t the Supreme Court be all women?’

“The qualities that characterise a woman are also qualities of a strong leader, be it emotional intelligence, empathy or compassion – my definition of leadership has changed since I became a mother. I want to create structures that reduce stress in the team so that they can develop.

“I was listening to a podcast this morning that said Google was struggling with having so many employees commuting from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, so they invested in buses with Wi-Fi – that’s the kind of thought leadership that inspires me. I ask myself, ‘How do I create a work environment that drives high performance, fosters retention, diversity of thought, and supports people?’ That’s important to me.”

It has already been a summer of ups and downs, and this is perhaps best summed up by a 24-hour period in late June: a day after London City Lionesses owner Michele Kang called a press conference in Mayfair and promised to invest in a world-class facility with the ultimate goal of winning the WSL, Reading requested to withdraw from the Championship for financial reasons, with the Berkshire club soon after being relegated three leagues down.

“It’s an incredibly devastating situation,” Doucet says of Reading. “This is a startup. At the beginning of any development, there will be some investors who believe in this future, like Michele Kang and some others, but then there will be other investors who say, ‘My risk profile is different in terms of what I’m willing to invest today. I can’t work out the numbers, so I’m not going to invest.’

“That’s just the reality. Providing the right infrastructure for players and staff is expensive and it’s an investment that goes beyond revenue – an investment in the next generation of the sport – and we need to find the owners who believe in that.”

With Reading’s withdrawal leaving an odd number of teams in the Championship for the new season, some are wondering if another club could have replaced them or if one of the relegated clubs could have been granted a reprieve. Doucet says: “It was about timing and governance. It was a super complicated situation and time was really tight. We had to make sure we had the integrity of the competition for next season and it was not an easy decision. It went through a rigorous governance review and discussions with all the key parties.”

The 23 remaining clubs in the WSL and Championship are shareholders in the WPLL alongside the Football Association and the company has secured a £20 million interest-free loan from the men’s Premier League. But all parties are clear that in the long term they need lucrative revenue streams and a broadcast deal that helps the leagues stand on their own two feet.

For 2024-25, the national television contract shared between the BBC and Sky Sports has been extended for a further year. Commercial deals are also high on the agenda, so how is it going in terms of attracting investment?

“It’s harder than I thought,” says Doucet, “because women’s football has to do more to prove the return on its investment. Although we have statistics comparable to other sports, other challenger sports and other challenger brands, we have to constantly prove that there is a market.”

“It’s different from men’s football. Today it’s easy to sell men’s football. So we need to invest and learn how to speak to a fan base that we don’t normally speak to and we need to create different content.”

Doucet’s teams have spent a lot of time understanding fans, and she believes they haven’t yet realized the full potential of the fanbase. Some of her data and research suggests there are three types of visitors, and one of them – which she compares to Swifties in terms of demographic makeup – she believes isn’t yet being fully served.

Doucet describes the core fans who come week after week as “arguably the most important – they are the visionary consumers who are ahead of all the trends.” Then there is a segment of fans who regularly attend men’s soccer games and take their children to women’s games because it’s family-friendly. She believes there is a huge third group that has transformative potential.

“In the middle you have a fan who came through the Lionesses and is not tied to the men’s game. They are not caught up in tribalism and they get to know us. They try to find highlights, they love the players and that is the biggest group that the football ecosystem doesn’t know enough about.

“That’s your ‘Taylor Swift fan base’ for that particular analogy. And I don’t think anyone speaks to them the way we should. We have a responsibility to do that.”

There is a huge difference in fan enthusiasm in the WSL. This season Arsenal will play at least 11 home games at the Emirates Stadium and will fill the 60,000 seats time and time again, but last season other clubs had fewer than 1,500 spectators.

This is perhaps symbolic of a sport that is changing rapidly. And there will be many more changes to come, as it is clear that Doucet’s team are comprehensively reviewing every aspect of the WSL and the Championship and are ruling nothing out.

When asked if the leagues could increase the number of teams, if a playoff system could be introduced and if it would be open to B teams like in Spain, Doucet gives almost nothing away. “Our independence will allow us to look at what structure is the right one that the fans want. What we are interested in is: are we creating a really competitive league? Is it dangerous? And are we telling the stories of the players and rivalries within the season? We have to look at what that allows us to do in the long term.”

Whatever they do, the entire sport will be watching very closely.