Alert: WPS Suspended

Discussion in 'NWSL' started by SCCL, Jan 30, 2012.

  1. kolabear

    kolabear Member+

    Nov 10, 2006
    los angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Beau's answer is the best again. No one's overlooking that. But what's the philosophical solution then? To sit on our hands, keep quiet like good little children and do nothing but mind our p's and q's...

    The gloom-and-doom conclusions could well prove right. I simply don't see how now is a particularly good time to trumpet them. The league made it to the World Cup. It saw a spectacular boost in interest in the sport. No teams threw in the towel to stop the bleeding. If it wasn't for the litigation over MagicJack, we'd have a season 4 in 2012, outlasting WUSA. If USSF had the vision and foresight to do in 2011 what it eventually did in 2012 and not require a 6th team, we'd have a season 4 in 2012.

    (Not sure if it's fair to blame USSF for that but I couldn't resist anymore...)
     
  2. Law5

    Law5 Member+

    Mar 24, 2005
    Beaverton OR
    Absolutely right. It took MLS years, but they finally realized that their target market could not be kids who play. Too many D2 and PDL teams are still going down that road, unfortunately. It does not work! Nobody has made it financially by appealing primarily to youth players and their ticket buying parents. The NBA does not market to kids who play in high school. The NFL does not market to Pop Warner players. MLB does not market to Little League. You need 20 and 30-somethings from an urban environment, who want to go out for the evening, scream and shout for their team and drink beer afterwards, so they can brag about the team's success and complain about the refs and the coach around the water cooler all week. After a while, you get guys in suits who buy skybox seats to offer their clients a little more upscale environment. That's the way it works for the successful franchises in every sport.

    And the fact is that women don't do those things in large numbers, at least not large enough numbers that you can support a franchise with them. I know that at least some WNBA teams have targetted the lesbian community for ticket sales, but I don't know how that's worked out for them. If you don't put butts in the seats, sponsors and broadcast rights won't save you.
     
  3. billf

    billf Member+

    May 22, 2001
    Club:
    Philadelphia Union
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    MLS was in sort of a tough spot last year. It put out some pretty strict D2 requirements and was really gunning at holding the NASL to them. I think it would have been very difficult for the USSF to hold firm on the NASL and then make things much easier for WPS.
     
  4. Lloyd Heilbrunn

    Lloyd Heilbrunn Member+

    Feb 11, 2002
    Jupiter, Fl.
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    I'm going to drop it, because we are just going round and round. But I just would suggest we keep the elephant in the room somewhere in the back of our minds amongst interesting minutia such as medical treatment for broken noses.
     
  5. Lloyd Heilbrunn

    Lloyd Heilbrunn Member+

    Feb 11, 2002
    Jupiter, Fl.
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Seriously? You really think the failure of a women's sports team or league has absolutely nothing to do with the fact women's sports are much less popular than men's, in the US? And I can't point this out without being accused of misogyny?
     
    1 person likes this.
  6. Lloyd Heilbrunn

    Lloyd Heilbrunn Member+

    Feb 11, 2002
    Jupiter, Fl.
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yeah, despite my misogyny :eek: I can still remember starting coaching girls in 1980, and telling the Euro guys on my team that the US was going to win the Women's First World Championship in '90, and getting laughed at.......:D
     
  7. cpthomas

    cpthomas BigSoccer Supporter

    Portland Thorns
    United States
    Jan 10, 2008
    Portland, Oregon
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    MRAD12, except for some details, my history is the same as yours and my conclusions are too.

    I take LH's list a little differently than some do. In some respects, he is saying exactly the same thing the Nike marketers are saying. I take it as meaning that one can't think about building a professional women's soccer league the same way one thinks about building a men's football or baseball or basketball league. In all likelihood, the women's game will appeal to a different market and the approach needs to be based on identifying and building loyalty in that market.

    For example, I think one has to ask the question, "Is having players moved around from team to team going to have the same fan impact if the players are women that it will have if the players are men?" While some might say, "Well, it ought to have the same impact," I don't think that's particularly helpful if in fact the impact will be different. In marketing, a key precept is, "Know your customer." If the customers for women's soccer are different than for men's soccer, or men's football, then how you construct your league needs to be responsive to that.

    It's interesting because I've experienced the "Well, it ought to be the same" from the other side. I'm a University of Portland women's soccer fan and would not consider missing a women's home game and go to plenty of their away games. I go to the men's home games once in a while, and I go the the men's games a lot more than most of the women's fans go. The women have a whole lot more fans (a steady fan base of about 1800 exclusive of students) than the men, and we had a blog discussion last year in which the men's fans were arguing that the women's fans "ought" to be just as much fans of the men, as if there were something wrong if they weren't. To me, they're two different "products," and there's nothing wrong with being rabid about one and only luke warm about the other.
     
  8. Norsk Troll

    Norsk Troll Member+

    Sep 7, 2000
    Central NJ
    That said, I think WPS (or new league) would be wrong to ignore the youth soccer clubs. Not necessarily as a ticket-generating resource today (though certainly they will remain a part of it), but (a) as a potential lucrative side business of using the professional players for youth player training, and (b) as a ticket-generating base down the road. The barriers to catching the 20-30 female ticket buyer will be lower if that female remembers fondly her teenage years playing the game, and training with or at least getting autographs from, the prior generation of professional players.
     
  9. Beau Dure

    Beau Dure Member+

    May 31, 2000
    Vienna, VA
    Yeah -- no one totally ignores the youth market. Baseball teams advertise and make partnerships with local Little Leagues. It's just not something you want to do exclusively.
     
  10. sitruc

    sitruc Member+

    Jul 25, 2006
    Virginia
    Other than debatably agreeing that no successful leagues are appealing primarily to youth, I disagree with much of the rest.
     
  11. Morris20

    Morris20 Member

    Jul 4, 2000
    Upper 90 of nowhere
    Club:
    Washington Freedom
    You haven't really pointed out much of anything else, and once you've seen women's teams at all levels build large fan followings (UCONN b-ball anyone? <fill in the blank w/ Portland, UNC, Maryland women's> soccer?), I think there's the discovery that the barriers to a successful women's pro league have a lot more to do with barriers to new leagues than the gender of the participants (heck, I coached a girls high school basketball team that sold games out in advance). If you build it and reach your market, you'll sell.

    My point is that the crap you spout was said about the WNT, about women's tennis, etc. I don't really see the fact that they are women being THE barrier, and I'm not sure what you can do about it. So yeah, whatever word you want for repeatedly blaming gender where the evidence points to a diverse set of challenges that HAVE historically been overcome.
     
  12. Lloyd Heilbrunn

    Lloyd Heilbrunn Member+

    Feb 11, 2002
    Jupiter, Fl.
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Exactly. Maybe I should just rephrase the list to be less emotional, how does a league ensure viability without taking into consideration it is catering to:

    1 a niche market.
    2 a niche market.
    3 a niche market.
    4 a niche market.
     
  13. Ace38

    Ace38 Member

    Jun 15, 2006
    Tulsa, OK
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  14. cpthomas

    cpthomas BigSoccer Supporter

    Portland Thorns
    United States
    Jan 10, 2008
    Portland, Oregon
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Norsk Troll, the part about the spring/summer difference I can't comment on, but I think the first part of your post is not right.

    I tracked women's college Division I attendance this year and have tracked attendance at the University of Portland for a number of years, since that's "my" team. The evidence I've seen is not that the athletes and their parents won't go to games because they're actually out playing themselves. The question is when the WPS games are played. My analysis of the women's college data this year was that the best time to get attendance at a women's soccer game is Friday night at 7:00 pm. The young rec and club players have no school on Saturday and they aren't playing club soccer on Friday night. And, 7:00 pm is not too late for young soccer players. And, most important, it works for their parents.

    Portland has been at the top of Division I women's attendance for a number of years, averaging in excess of 3,000 fans per game. The vast majority of their fans are not students. They have an active program of encouraging rec and club players to come to games, and virtually every game is attended by at least several rec and club teams, from U-8 up. The young athletes, however, are not the fan base. The fan base largely is parents who came once with a rec or club team and kept coming back for more, plus people they've brought with them to see the Pilots play for the first time. And, these are not predominantly women. I'd hazard a guess that the male/female split is at least equal, if not being slightly weighted towards the men's side.

    This relates to my previous post, which partly had to do with identifying and marketing to your fan base. If your likely fan base needs the games to be on Friday night at 7:00 pm, then that's when you should play them if you want to build your base. I suspect a major problem with this comes from the desire simultaneously to have TV coverage -- although FSN will cover women's games on Friday night, although 7:00 pm might be early for them. (I know this because FSN does some women's college soccer games on Friday nights in the Fall.) If WPS can't get TV coverage on Friday night, but instead needs to play weekend afternoon games for TV, then you may be right that the youth/parent audience won't attend (although I suspect this is not true for Sunday afternoon, since the Pilots have a lot of rec and club players attending on Sunday afternoons, typically at 2:00 pm). I have felt from the beginning that WPS had it backwards, emphasizing TV coverage more than building their fan base, probably due to starting with an overly grandiose vision. But, I'm convinced that if they want to build their fan base they can, so long as that's their primary objective.
     
  15. MRAD12

    MRAD12 Member+

    Jun 10, 2004
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    This story fits right in to what we are talking about. It's about how LA lost it's SOL.

    This is a great read and gives insight into the shutting down of the LA SOL and other things going on in the league. It talks about how there was a deal with the Firestone ownership to buy the SOL untill in the 11:00 hour they pulled out. It also talks about how the league was planning on dealing with Marta's contract after the SOL folded, and more.

    http://www.funwhileitlasted.net/2012/02/09/89-los-angeles-sol/

    An excerpt from the story:

    It cost LA SOL $75,000 to rent Home Depot Center, per game?? Wow!!
     
  16. Lloyd Heilbrunn

    Lloyd Heilbrunn Member+

    Feb 11, 2002
    Jupiter, Fl.
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    That's weird, I would have thought the worst time to get fans to a college sport is Friday night. But if your fans are not students......
     
  17. Beau Dure

    Beau Dure Member+

    May 31, 2000
    Vienna, VA
    But I don't think anyone is

    1. forgetting that.
    2. forgetting that.
    3. forgetting that.
    4. forgetting that.

    Sure, they don't lead their press releases with it -- "The Boston Breakers, in an effort to appeal to the intersected subsets of those who like soccer and those who like women's sports, have announced plans to return to the field." But it doesn't mean no one's not aware of it.

    College parties don't start at 7.
     
  18. cpthomas

    cpthomas BigSoccer Supporter

    Portland Thorns
    United States
    Jan 10, 2008
    Portland, Oregon
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    For Division I college women as a whole (as well as for Portland specifically), Friday night had the best average attendance.

    Most DI teams play a game Friday and Sunday each week. The Atlantic Coast Conference, however, which is the strongest conference, plays Thursday/Sunday. Looking at all of last season's games with an attendance over 2500, there were 42 games. Of these:

    Friday 29
    Sunday 7
    Thursday 3
    Monday 1
    Tuesday 1
    Saturday 1

    Think "Friday Night Lights."
     
  19. Norsk Troll

    Norsk Troll Member+

    Sep 7, 2000
    Central NJ
    I don't think you and I are disagreeing - naturally, if the WPS game does not conflict with their own playing schedule, then youth players are available and often excited to go.

    But the reality is that most of the scheduled WPS games in 2011 between opening day and Mid-June fell on Sundays (15 out of 26), then Saturdays (8), with only 3 games on Friday evenings (all in Rochester). And here in NJ, at least, Sundays are the generally designated game days for travel leagues (Rec games often being on Saturdays, though more and more of the elite travel games are shifting to Saturdays), which cuts into the ability to commit to every game. And those youth games are often scheduled for afternoons to accommodate travel time (as well as the historically entrenched accommodation of church-goers in the morning).

    Don't get me wrong - every Sky Blue still managed to have several girls teams in attendance for each game - but those youth teams were picking one game to attend all season, not coming to all games. And I imagine Sky Blue would have preferred to have those players commit to season tickets (which they might have done if they could have made more games).

    If WPS changed their scheduling choices it might open up more potential season ticket buyers from the youth ranks, and perhaps Friday evenings are a good solution. But I'm not sure they can or want to do that, given all the other variables (availability of the facility, TV coverage, etc.). This was debated back in the early years of MLS as well, and they moved to put as many games on Saturdays and Sundays as possible, where they got the biggest turnout - in adults, though, not necessarily the youth market. Given the long commute time to games in NJ, adult fans always had trouble making weeknight games, and attendance suffered.

    Out of curiosity, can you estimate the average commute time for those attending the U. of Portland games? I visited once when my parents lived there, and everything seemed fairly short distances. That also plays a big role affecting each team's particular fan base - what are the specific barriers they face to get to a game. If it's a 15 minute drive, Fridays really would be great - plenty of time to get there after work and still have time afterwards for some fun. If it's a 60 minute drive, though, the calculations change.
     
  20. Norsk Troll

    Norsk Troll Member+

    Sep 7, 2000
    Central NJ
    But that was simply AEG paying AEG, so the number is not necessarily meaningful or market-driven.
     
  21. newsouth

    newsouth Member

    Nov 20, 2010
    Club:
    Santos FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ptKtIEGtk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ptKtIEGtk[/ame]

    how much does it costs this german team to put a couple thousand people in the stadium? why does it cost the wps $20k on avg a game, which dan complained about? wps shouldnt cost more than a women's college game. and for people crying about MJ selling stuff from tables, i see they do it in germany. :rolleyes:
     
  22. cpthomas

    cpthomas BigSoccer Supporter

    Portland Thorns
    United States
    Jan 10, 2008
    Portland, Oregon
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Regarding the travel leagues, most of the youth teams I see at Pilots games are not the travel league teams. Those players tend to come more individually with parents. The youth teams typically are pre-travel league, i.e., U7-U10. And, they typically come once or maybe twice a year. It's their parents who become repeat customers and buy season tickets for themselves, not for their kids. It may sound strange, but that's how I've seen it working.

    Your question about travel time is a good and relevant one. I'd say the maximum travel time to the University of Portland in the Portland metro area is about 35 minutes, maybe a little more at the extremes. This is different than in many large metro areas. I live five minutes from the center of downtown Portland and can get there, on a good night, in 10 to 15 minutes. (The maximum time to Jeld-Wen Field, where the Timbers play and a WPS team likely would play if we had one, probably would be in the 25-minute range since it is more or less in the center of downtown.)
     
  23. Lloyd Heilbrunn

    Lloyd Heilbrunn Member+

    Feb 11, 2002
    Jupiter, Fl.
    Nat'l Team:
    United States

    Yeah, but check the beginning of this thread. I don't recall any emphasis about the underlying problems, just bitching about how is is all DB's fault. I just thought we might get back to those a bit. I don't think either of us believes getting rid of DB would have effected the long term viability of the WPS.


    You went to the wrong college.....:cool:


    So, how do we market the niche product?
     
  24. cpthomas

    cpthomas BigSoccer Supporter

    Portland Thorns
    United States
    Jan 10, 2008
    Portland, Oregon
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I suggest we start out by defining the likely customer. I'll suggest a couple of groups:

    1. Those who think women's sports matter. Others can add, but in this group I'm thinking particularly of adults with daughters who are athletes and especially with daughters who are soccer players no matter how serious. I'm sticking to adults because I think they're more likely present customers than their daughters are, especially if the daughters are young.

    2. Those who have played soccer in high school and/or college. In this group, I include both men and women. For the men, I'm not so sure about those who have played high school/college soccer recently, but am thinking of those who played it maybe 20 years ago or more. I suggest this subset of men because I think the current women's game is more akin to the soccer that subset of men played than is the current men's game. Because of that, they're likely to be able to relate well to the women's game and not to compare it to the men's game. Also, spouses of those men and women.

    Who else?
     
  25. MRAD12

    MRAD12 Member+

    Jun 10, 2004
    Chicago
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Here we go guys. Boston Breakers, WNY Flash will join the Chicago Red stars and FC Indiana with a few more teams added to join an Elite Professional division within WPSL for 2012.
    Awesome.

    http://www.wpsl.info/news/index.php/?cat=1&id=1403


     

Share This Page