CARDIFF played host to Europe’s top football competition, the Champions League final recently and hosted the women’s match on the Thursday preceding the men’s. This has been the norm for a few years now and all credit to Uefa for initiating this.

The game itself ended with a shoot-out as Lyon and Paris Saint-Germain played more than 120 minutes before Lyon were crowned champions and retained the championship after winning 7-6 on penalties.

Yet, for me, what was more important than this international spectacle was the fact that Uefa, the European governing body for football, had launched a major campaign across all of their 55 member nations to coincide with the final. The campaign, which focused predominantly on players in the 13-17 age bracket, aims to show young girls how “cool it is to play football” (#WePlayStrong). The campaign, which was launched on May 31, follows some in-depth research commissioned by Uefa which was carried out by the University of Birmingham’s School of Sport, Exercise, and Rehabilitation Sciences. While the study focused on the impact football can have on a young girl’s life, it clearly showed that any sport can help young women navigate the difficult ages and stages of growing up.

The study identified three particular reasons that young girls move away from sport in general, and football in particular. The first area was a loss of self-confidence which impacted on their participation in sport, as they felt that their peers didn’t think it was cool for a girl to be involved in football. The second area identified was they felt there had to be a choice made between playing football and having fun with their girlfriends – so if they want to spend time with their friends, football would has to go. The last area was the lack of strong role models as sport has very few, unlike in the music scene, which is because women in sport are currently not branded in this way.

It was a huge investment in terms of finance for this wealthy organisation and I am sure it was a decision that provoked a lot of discussion, debate and division. While I don’t have the figures for this particular campaign, I do know that #ThisGirlCan – another strong campaign that focused on getting women and girls active – and the brainchild of Sport England, cost around the £25 million over its two main phases.

The hope for Uefa, however, is that by changing the perception of the sport, by identifying the barriers to participation, and by raising awareness of the changing the face of football for girls and women, they will create a much more attractive proposition for commercial sponsors to get involved.

Despite the many positive moves and changes in all areas of sport for women and girls, this is one area that still evades most sports. It was also one of the main discussion areas at our recent conference, and one which elicited the most passionate response. How can we convince organisation to invest in women’s sport? What is attractive to a potential sponsor? How can we break down these barriers? We still don’t have the answers!

There are many different reasons why the women’s side of sport currently lacks the same level of commercial investment as its male counterpart. However, when we see a large organisation such as Uefa investing in the future for girls and women in football, I think we can take a bit of comfort from the strong message, that change is picking up pace.

What we need is for commercial organisations to understand that they can impact change. We need organisations to understand that they can, and should, ensure that there is strong parity in their investment in sport. Look at the change in the Boat Race, which came about from a decision by Helena Morrissey, chief executive of Newton Asset Management, to put conditions on their sponsorship of the Boat Race which ensured parity for the women.

That’s how we can effect change. So, any companies out there that want to talk sponsorship of women’s and girls’ sport, we are here ready to work with you, to make a different to make a change for, as our conference hashtag said: #WeMeanBusiness