Genevieve Shore: “We’ve made real progress, but we’re not standing still”

Genevieve Shore: “We’ve made real progress, but we’re not standing still”

As Premiership Women’s Rugby publishes its 2025/26 Fan Engagement Report, Executive Chair Genevieve Shore reflects on a year of significant growth, a new era of fan engagement and why the league is determined to go further again next season.

To read the full 2025/26 JAECOO PWR Fan Engagement Reporting click here

It’s been another year of encouraging growth signs for the now-named JAECOO PWR, after a record breaking 2024/25 season provided a hard act to follow, and the League has today published materials designed to show transparency and accountability in the pursuit of fan-centred growth for the league.

In 2025/26, average attendances for the 9 Clubs increased by 23.4% year-on-year. The JAECOO PWR’s social following grew by 132%, while its database increased by 310%. More than 111 million views were recorded across YouTube, Meta and TikTok during the season, up 174% on the previous season, while the league launched its official app and, for the first time, every game was broadcast live.

But for Genevieve Shore, Executive Chair of the JAECOO PWR, the most important story is not any individual number, it is what those numbers say about the direction of travel.

“It’s been a really encouraging year for the League. We can see growth across so many different areas of the business, and that gives us confidence that the work we’re doing is truly connecting with fans.

“But I think it’s important that we are also honest about the context around those numbers. We had an unusually high starting point coming into this season, and so we are especially pleased that we can continue growing at this scale.”

The 2024/25 season was transformed by the arrival of Ilona Maher, whose profile and popularity created an enormous spike across several of the PWR’s key audience and engagement measures in the build-up to the 2025 Rugby World Cup.

That meant 2025/26 was always going to be a challenging year in which to demonstrate further growth.

“Ilona’s impact was extraordinary. It brought a huge amount of attention to our league and to our players, and we should absolutely celebrate that. It was brilliant for PWR and brilliant for the wider women’s game.

“But it also meant that we were comparing this season against a very unusual baseline. So, when you look at the fact that we have continued to grow from there, post-World Cup and after that incredible spike in interest, I think that is particularly encouraging.”

Building a business, not just an audience

For Shore, the JAECOO PWR’s ambition now is about much more than generating bigger numbers on social media.

Over the past year, the League has been putting structures in place to turn increased interest in women’s rugby into sustained engagement.

The launch of the PWR Fan Forum was one of the most significant steps. For the first time, representatives from all nine clubs, alongside a supporter simply of the League, were brought together to provide direct feedback on issues ranging from broadcast coverage and scheduling to ticketing, digital content, matchday experience and the PWR Final.

The League also introduced its first official Fan Survey and carried out tailored matchday experience audits across every club, examining the entire fan journey - from social media and ticket purchase through to the experience inside the ground and post-match communication.

“That’s one of the things I’m most proud of.

“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about putting fans at the heart of what we do, but this year we’ve started to put some real mechanisms in place around that goal.

“The Fan Forum gives us a direct, regular conversation with supporters. The surveys give us a much broader perspective. The matchday audits give clubs something tangible that they can benchmark themselves against.

“And importantly, we’re not doing that exercise simply to produce a report. We want the feedback to change what we do.”

That process has already highlighted areas where the League and Clubs can improve.

After a series of matchday experience audits – performed by Fanfare Sports - for every club, the average score across the league was 69 out of 100, with scores ranging from 59 to 80. Clubs performed particularly well in areas including social media content, ticket purchase, refreshments and the final impressions of a matchday, while pre-match communications, retail and merchandise, and post-match communications emerged as common opportunities for development.

Not to leave itself out, the JAECOO PWR also commissioned Fanfare Sports to audit its own Final, the June 28th clash between Saracens and Trailfinders, and were scored a creditable 76/100.

For Shore, publishing these findings is part of the point.

“You can’t say you want to improve the fan experience and then only talk about the things that are going well.

“We want to be transparent about where we are. We are happy we have a solid starting point, but now the challenge is to improve it.”

From listening to acting

The next phase is already defined.

The JAECOO PWR will retain the same overall fan engagement strategy for 2026/27, but the lessons from the past season have led to some very specific targets.

Fan Forum summaries will be published after every meeting rather than annually. There will be two official fan surveys during the season, rather than one. Every club will continue to have a matchday experience audit, with the league targeting an average score of 75/100. The League also plans to increase the volume of fan-first content, particularly around its broadcast output.

“We’ve got a much clearer sense now of where we need to go.

“And I think that’s the exciting thing. We’re not starting again next season. We’re building on what we’ve learned.”

That includes the League’s approach to digital content.

PWR rolled out its Fan Cam across the league in 2025/26, increased fan-focused content on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, and began experimenting with interactive features such as polls and live chat during streamed matches.

The official PWR app, launched in March 2025, has added another important piece to that digital ecosystem.

“The app is an important development because it gives us another direct relationship with our supporters.

“We want fans to be able to follow the League in the way that works for them, whether that’s coming to matches, watching broadcasts, following us digitally or engaging with our content.

“The more ways we can make the JAECOO PWR relevant to people throughout the year, rather than just on a matchday, the stronger the business and all of our Clubs become.”

A bigger opportunity after the World Cup

The post-World Cup environment also presents a different challenge from the one PWR faced a year ago.

The 2025 Rugby World Cup brought unprecedented attention to women’s rugby in England. PWR benefited from that wave, but now the task is to convert that attention into long-term supporters.

“We always knew that the World Cup would create a huge moment for the women’s game.

“The opportunity now is to make sure that people who discovered women’s rugby through the World Cup, or through players like Ilona, have somewhere to go next.

“That means making PWR competitions even more compelling. It means giving people reasons to come to matches. It means making the broadcast product engaging. It means having brilliant digital content. And it means listening to fans and continually improving their experience.

“That’s the business we are building.”

It is why Shore sees the growth figures from 2025/26 as encouraging rather than simply impressive.

“Yes, the percentages are big. But we must understand what sits behind them.

“We’re growing from a very high base. We’ve retained a significant amount of the attention that came into the League last season, and in some areas we’ve grown considerably further.

“That tells me that this is not just a World Cup effect. There is an underlying appetite for PWR and for women’s rugby, and our job now is to keep developing the product and the experience around it.”

The work is only beginning

There is also a sense that PWR is becoming more confident in understanding itself as a business.

The growth in audiences, the development of digital platforms, the expansion of broadcast coverage and the increasing sophistication of the fan-engagement programme all point in the same direction.

But Shore is keen not to overstate how far the League has come.

“We’ve made real progress. But I don’t think anyone at PWR would say that we’ve finished the job.

“In fact, I think the opposite is true. The more we learn, the more we understand the opportunity in front of us.”

That opportunity extends beyond head office. One of the notable features of the 2025/26 programme has been the collaboration between PWR and its nine Clubs.

All nine Clubs took part in the matchday audit process, while the Fan Forum has created a mechanism for league-wide discussion and shared learning. Fanfare Sport has also highlighted the willingness of clubs to raise standards and improve the supporter experience.

“PWR is a League, but the fan experience is delivered by clubs.

“We have to work together. The League can set standards, provide insight and create the framework, but ultimately, we know every club is thinking about its supporters and how it can make that experience better.

“That’s how we create momentum.”

And long term, continuous growth is ultimately the ambition.

The 2025/26 season has shown that PWR can continue to progress even after an exceptional year of attention. It has also given the league better tools for understanding its fans and a clearer idea of where improvements are needed.

Now comes the harder part: doing it again.

“Next season is about going further.

“We want more fans coming through the gates. We want to engage more people digitally. We want to make the broadcast experience better. We want to keep listening to supporters and acting on what they tell us.

“And we want the fan experience to be something that people associate with the JAECOO PWR - something that feels open, welcoming, exciting and genuinely built around them.

“We should be proud of what we’ve achieved this year.

“But we’re not going to stand still.”

The JAECOO PWR were assisted in formulating and executing their Fan Engagement Strategy by Gemma Avery and Fanfare Sport. To learn more about FanFare Sport, please visit fanfaresport.com

The official JAECOO PWR Fan Survey was powered by InCrowd, who collected and collated all data and provided the below summary. To learn more about InCrowd, please visit incrowdsports.com