The Women’s Super League and Women’s Championship are on the verge of securing a record sponsorship deal, with Barclays set to double its investment in the two leagues.

Telegraph Sport understands the bank will pay roughly £9 million per season for the new title sponsorship rights alone. That is around twice as much as was paid for the existing 2022-2025 arrangement and more than four times the fee that was originally paid for the bank’s first three-year sponsorship deal between 2019 and 2022.

The new three-year deal will be seen as one of the first big boosts for NewCo [new company], which will take over the running of the top two women’s leagues in England from the Football Association this summer, and its bid to make the divisions commercially sustainable.

In 2021, when announcing the deal with Barclays running from the start of the 2022-23 season until the end of the 2024-25 campaign, the FA announced that the bank was making a “£30 million investment in women and girls’ football” overall, which included the title sponsorship of the top two leagues as well as the bank’s wider contributions to the governing body’s Girls’ Football School Partnerships, which aim to give girls equal access to football in schools.

At that time, the deal was hailed as a record investment of its kind for UK women’s sports, and praised as playing a “pivotal” role in the development of the women’s game in this country. On Wednesday, sources across the WSL have told Telegraph Sport the latest extension and doubling of the rights fee is another big moment for the sport.

It comes after an event last month, coinciding with International Women’s Day, that saw a record-breaking 465,000 girls from 5,000 schools across England take part in the FA and Barclays’ football session as part of their Let Girls Play campaign. Speaking at that time, Tom Corbett, head of sponsorship at Barclays, said: “Football teaches girls so many crucial life skills. Seeing over 465,000 girls set to play today, and over 19,900 schools offering equal access, shows just how far the game has come.”

Barclays has also been a sponsor of the men’s Premier League since the 2001-02 season.