Earlier this year, we announced our partnership with Crystal Palace, becoming the front-of-shirt sponsor. This support has always been about backing the club in its entirety rather than just one team. It's why Crystal Palace Women will now take the pitch wearing our name too, and why the work won't stop there.
Two gaps that look a lot alike#
Women's football in England has grown fast in recent years. The number of women and girls playing football in England has tripled in the last 10 years with the efforts starting young: 77% of schools in the UK now offer girls equal access to football programs.
Despite this growth, there's still a long way to go until opportunities are equal for women.
Women's teams get less investment and far less broadcast time than the men's games. Girls who want to play, coach, or build a career in football are met with more hurdles and fewer pathways to their goals.
There's a similar problem in the world of tech. In the UK, a mere 20% of software engineers and 21% of senior tech leaders are women. This gap starts early, showing itself in subtle ways, like who gets encouraged to try coding in the first place.
Once we saw how closely those two gaps mirrored each other, sponsoring only the men's team didn't sit right anymore.
What's changing#
This is a commitment to the whole club, and the thread running through all of it is access, widening the door for people who've historically had a narrower way in.
On the football side, that means backing the areas that determine whether talent actually gets a chance to develop: the performance and sports science that let players train and recover like professionals, the data and recruitment work that helps the club find talent wherever it is rather than only where it's easy to look, and the everyday effort of bringing more supporters and families into the stands so the team plays in front of the crowd it deserves. These are the fundamentals that turn potential into a career, and making sure they're fully there for the Women's side is exactly the point.
The parallel to tech is what is personal. Access works the same way in both worlds. Talent is everywhere, but the encouragement and the early opportunities still aren't evenly spread, and the people who get a real chance early are the ones who get the runway to show what they can do. Football and technology are further apart than they look on paper, but the opening is the same in both, and so is the fix: put real resources behind people who've had less of it, and let them show what they do with it.
That's why this reaches beyond the pitch. We're introducing Palace Women to our own Temporal community through content and matchday experiences, so more people in football and in tech alike have a reason to show up for this team. And it's why Palace for Life carries on doing what it does best, with more attention on the girls who come through the door.
Two teams, one belief#
Crystal Palace fans have shown up through relegations even through seasons with few wins to celebrate. This unwavering belief and tenacity is why conditions improve, and it's the lifeblood of causes like this as well.
Women in football and women in tech are both working with less than they should have, and both are proving what's possible despite it. Backing Palace Women is one way to put resources behind that belief that women deserve the same opportunities.
We're glad to have this opportunity, and we're planning to stick with it for the long haul.
Keep an eye out for what's to come.
— Clair