Great discussion (still in bitter Red Stars mode). Anyway, here's an interesting sponsorship model! The PDL Fresno Fuego is offering free tickets to the entire season in partnership with Univision Radio. I wonder how Univision values the sponsorship in terms of $$, visibility, and community. http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/yb/158615131 http://fresnofuego.com.ismmedia.com...op/News/FUEGO PRESS-New Attendance Record.pdf "a new attendance record had been set for a Fuego game. Almost 8,000 fans (7,853 to be exact) came to downtown Fresno to support their Fresno Fuego." Also: Question for New South- how does Santos sponsor their acclaimed women's team?? I know Flamengo has discussed copying the Santos model.
I definitely agree that the idea of U.S. professional female soccer players shouldn't be forced on people as a moral duty. The fact remains though to say women's soccer has no commercially valid future is crazy. It's not America, but instead Women's soccer that FIFA see's as the last big market left to try and milk. The current model for MLS will continue to hemorrhage money for a very long time, just like all leagues around the globe. It's only ever going to be a very small minority that actually make big profits from the modern global football economy. Internationally the women's game every 4 years gets better while showing how much quality really exists. WPS as a major pro league shows that when given the chance the level of club play can be just as entertaining as any men's match too. There is no skill or attribute within the men's game that women on a pro level vs the same sex couldn't reproduce. So maybe the fact that men just don't want to see women play football or be successful commercially because of it seems to be the elephant in the room very few will admit too. Is the thought of a future with a financially less demanding female pro league really that horrendous? Maybe it's still too early in the development of the female game for attitudes to shift enough to save leagues like WPS, but in the not so distant future the growth of the game will be too large to simply dismiss it as having no merit. Models for football success in most leagues are supremely flawed, and it would seem WPS as a female league is in the same situation. Convincing rich men to simply invest in a women's sport to inflate and fluff their ego's is a highly unrealistic practice to hope for in attaining any stability. All the major leagues of Europe and clubs in South America and Asia have women's teams that struggle with gaining anything like a serious pay structure close to WPS. In spite of this, while not always fully pro, many of the elite women's sides can now benefit from the increased levels of support from being thought of as serious parts of male club and national federations infrastructure. I feel U.S. pro female soccer went the wrong way when setting up it's first incarnation by severing all links to it's mens game. As Europe keeps putting things in place for a future with more female pro football teams, American women's soccer will have to go backwards before it can more forward again. I fear that if WPS does fail, the U.S. could seriously forget any ambitions at another serious pro league for a very long time.
I fear that if WPS does fail, the U.S. could seriously forget any ambitions at another serious pro league for a very long time. ________________________________________________________ Na. I Don't buy this at all. The writing is already on the wall. The MLS teams will get involved on the semi-pro level, at the very least, and when they are ready , they'll start up a ladies divisions with cost controls that WUSA and WPS never had. Ladies won't make much money but it will be the only game in town. Bonus that academy type development will have a huge payoff longterm for skill level and for the women's NAT team. I am thinking by the end of this decade. I dont consider that a very long time.
yea, yea, yea. how do you know this. nobody but the owners know what's in mls' books, and everytime they show their model/books to a new investor, these investors seem to jump at the chance to pay $40 million just to get in. maybe they're losing buckets of money but they're certainly getting investors which is more than wps can say. just sayin. few are dismissing the game as having no merit. the game has merit right now. that's not what brings the money men/women in. it's the number of fans it draws or potentially can draw. this is the u.s. and you keep talking about the rest of the world. they are largely irrelevant. in the u.s. for the most part you float as a legit business or you sink. has nothing to do with fluffing their ego. it has to do with convincing them that they won't be losing their $$ in perpetuity. that's what's not realistic right now. not really. if wps fails, there will shortly be a wmls run differently than wps. that's what i think anyway. ps:just saw dsirias post. i agree.
England already does this with Arsenal Ladies. Where are Kelly Smith and Alex Scott playing? I see they got out of town. If this model is good, I'm guessing England finally takes the WC. No, maybe France because Lyons and others fall under this model. Top 3 in the WC, USA (WPS), Brasil (Santos and a bunch under trained players and Germany (more or less their own women's league). MLS as a whole has no interest in developing women's soccer. They want the fan base.
The problem is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Women's pro soccer can't get going because no one will support it long enough to get going. If Hunt and Anschutz hadn't rushed to the rescue of MLS in the late 90's, it would have failed, and we'd be talking about it the same way we talk about the NASL and the WUSA. Give a women's pro league as much of a chance as MLS had, and then we can talk about facts.
Because you can see the exact same trend in European football every year. New owners keep coming into multiple leagues all the time, but nobody makes any money. It's foreign business opportunities that keeps bringing the money men in, not hopes of turning a profit though the actual football. Every league in football competes with similar standard international competition. It's one of the unique features of soccer. You may not like it, but football is a international game at every level. From the youth teams to the senior pro's, every football nation competes with the best from it's region, then the globe. WPS from day 1 has had international aspirations, competing for prestige against other international leagues by usurping their top players while still in mid season play. Acquisitions like Marta were seen as way's of identifying WPS as the best. Do you honestly think things like this were done because WPS had no competition other than itself? This is a very interesting point. The WNT girls are contracted to the USSF, and without a serious semi pro environment would most likely prefer to go back to a residency system. But in my mind WPS is the only thing that has kept the WNT from absolute stagnation. The players left behind would have to find a way to impress without the infrastructure to do so. This is where Europe and Asia then regain the advantage with well organised semi pro/amateur status leagues that have been in place for many years. The organised nature of the pro/semi pro/amateur status of various teams and leagues means national coaches still have a vehicle for player assessment, while young players have a place to develop. I still feel the revamped UEFA Women's Champions League will drive a select European elite of around 10 sides to match the levels of the WPS pay scale. This is the next big step forward in the women's club game, with a center piece final WPS could never compete with. Should WPS fail, Europe could give top U.S. girls a serious place to play again. Right now beyond WPS the elite team set ups don't exist domestically for the WNT vets and potentials to maintain or progress their game.
if it's north america or europe, the women's game is a lost leader. the value of a team plays in the marketing and advertising books of a company. lupo (underwear) and copagaz (energy) use santos women as a billboard/write off. it's no different than sahlen and magicjack except they dont have the billion dollar bank roll of the brasilian sponsors. if sahlen and jack see 10%-12% sales increase directly related to their ownership of a wps team, they have the teams around for the next 5-10 yrs. that's the future of womens soccer in north america. amazing, santos and copagaz has been doing this forever but no one took the time to look. are there 12-14 owners in america and canada who have companies they can tie a team into and can use a 1.5M-2M write off yrly but get eyeball exposure equal to 4-5M in advertising, marketing, and direct consumer sales?
Great points! There have got to be a bunch of companies, but I bet no-one has done the analysis of which companies might really benefit from exposure to WPS and women's soccer in general. A couple of companies come to mind, based on what you see with Swedish teams like Malmo, who have women's product companies as major sponsors and underwriters. Bear in mind I haven't done any research into these companies and how they are structured, but a few come to mind. - Lulumon Athletica - http://www.lululemon.com/about/. Apparently were local sponsors of DCFreedom last year in some shape or form. - Jamba Juice - http://www.jambajuice.com/. seems like everwhere you see a Starbucks or a Subway you see this healthy alternative.... - Apple - www.apple.com. Some of those Silicon Valley guys must have daughters and nieces playing soccer. Almost every kid in the world wants an iPad, iPod, iPhone, or a MacBook, unless they are total technogeeks. The list could go on and on.
Smoothie King had a good relationship with the Freedom, with a prominent place on their scoreboard. (The last time I saw Sonia Bompastor was when she was doing a publicity event at my local Smoothie King.)
England already does this with Arsenal Ladies. Where are Kelly Smith and Alex Scott playing? I see they got out of town. If this model is good, I'm guessing England finally takes the WC. No, maybe France because Lyons and others fall under this model. Top 3 in the WC, USA (WPS), Brasil (Santos and a bunch under trained players and Germany (more or less their own women's league). MLS as a whole has no interest in developing women's soccer. They want the fan base. ____________________________________________________________ Well to the extent you are saying Kelly smith would stay home all things being equal then you are right. She came here because WPS paid more money. But it's an amount of money that is not sustainable longterm. I would rather have a league that has a 50 K max yearly salary but lets the stars go sign whatever endorsement deals they can get than no league at all. Most likely a WMLS will neither European ladies nor stars from abroad. So be it. Game on. And I also agree, MLS wants a bigger fan base first and foremost, but all the indicators point to some MLS front offices realizing that developing talent will be part of that equasion. Maybe a few generations from now the women will get the wages they deserve. But to foreclose a survival option out of a sense of disrespect is....... well .......... nose meet face.
my earlier post: and i keep trying to tell you that europe is mostly irrelevant when discussing the business of soccer in america. mls is a different business model altogether. europe has actually made noises about trying to do soccer the mls way. you're wrong. i like it. i'm just trying desperately to get it thru your head that it's a global game not a global business model. euro soccer and mls soccer are run altogether differently. you're confusing yourself. i'm saying that mls is not competing businesswise on the same playing field as europe and has therefore found a way to show investors hope of making a profit while wps has not. wps' hiring of expensive internationals is just more $$ bleeding for investors to run away from.
Yes, Mickey Mouse 2nd tier leagues that have absolutely no impact on any level of the international game. No I hear you, I just think the noble MLS goals of being something like Bundesliga are WAYYYYYYY off the mark. When the first oligarch, sultan, or prince, comes flashing the cash in a MLS club take over, we'll see just how financially literate the league really is. These supposedly visionary MLS owners need so many things to progress for that German Bundesliga type efficiency to occur, that the very idea of making money at the very least becomes a 40 year plan. If WPS could get 5 years we would think that's amazing, but supposedly the cash doesn't make sense to waste for even that short a period of time. The franchise model of MLS would never work for WPS without the help of MLS clubs. Expecting to make significant money just isn't a short term option with women's soccer, but no serious plan seems to have been in place for the long term either. If the U.S. with MLS are above the global business trends of internal club soccer, WPS is following the wrong lead in how it could be done. Was WPS simply a new idea for a money making exercise, or was there a plan to actually have a serious infrastructure and development tool for U.S. talent to progress. I mention Europe, Asia, and even South America at times because for all there domestic league faults, they actually have a path to develop and nurture talent beyond their national team programs.
i didn't know epl was mickey mouse 2nd tier. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=343442&cc=5901 who said that's their goal? even so, it's not bundesliga $$ but better stability going forward that is mls' aim. and they do have that stability. again, this is soccer in the u.s.a. it ain't euro football. the moment mls discards their salary cap, they're dead. they know that. there's too much history to it. oligarch billions will not fool them. they already have billionaires who are part of the slow growth, stable mls movement. the same joke mls that you say keeps bleeding cash? you're all over the place with your argument. now you're in agreement with what dsirias and i have been saying all along?
Is this league sustainable? After seeing attendance in opening weeks barely around 2,000, No. It is not, unfortunately.
I would think that the women's team gains more revenue-wise from the men's team in the short run than the other way around. They could use the attraction of the men's team to build a fan base for the women. All those who buy a season ticket or a multi-game package for the women could get the right to discounted men's tickets. I wouldn't think that many new fans to the women's games didn't already know about the men's team and I don't know how many would decide to attend the men's games as well. In the long run, of course you have the broadening of the club's brand. Soccer in the community becomes more closely identified with the club.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=343442&cc=5901 he said that it's a fact that blackburn and sunderland agree with him. they weren't shouting "no, we don't". the point is that some epl teams were talking about an mls-type model (i never said that it will actually happen), showing that there is some attraction for what this little 16 year old league is doing among more than 2nd tier mickey mouse league managers. no. the fact that earlier in this thread you laughed off that idea by saying mls is and will be bleeding money for a while. now you're suddenly agreeing with it.
SO! All the clubs that complain are Mickey Mouse clubs. It's not regular top 10 teams that can actually compete that complain, it's the duds that have no right to moan. When little clubs play in a league that gives them so much fairness in global exposure and money, they get dellusions of having to try and compete for things they can't afford. If they want a MLS situation they can get relegated and go back to the Championship where they don't feel obligated to have to compete with decent clubs any more. Who tells them to pay 40K and more a week to their top players? No team outside the top half of any domestic league would be held to ransom and pay that sort of money to the relegation rubbish they have. No look, I said all along that WPS should have shared MLS infrastructure, but MLS or more so the USSF couldn't realistically carry a whole league. The gap between college and challenging for a WNT contract is too wide without a WPS, and certainly without the serious development infrastrucer MLS clubs could have provided. At some point the future has to be a MLS/WPS partnership. I argue that MLS will hemorrhage money for decades while WPS can't get anything close to one decade, and that by copying the MLS model WPS would have been smarter to use MLS help. I don't think crowds should be the only factor which determines the life span of WPS, as healthy sponsorship models would have softened that blow. I don't think women's soccer knows it's potential audience, still believing that 99' era little girls can produce fan culture whilst forgetting we now live in a far more developed 2011 U.S. soccer environment. While for various reasons I also see Europe as the future premier female competition. I maybe controversially insinuated that the golden girls who set up the worlds first pro female league in WUSA, helped destroy any links to major commercial support partnerships WPS needed now (100 mil 3 years, dammmmm). Then also ask if the greatest player in the history of the women's game so far (Marta) can't capture little U.S. girls imaginations, maybe WUSA's success compared to WPS so far was due to celeb style popularity of the 99' WWC winners and nothing more. It's only when MLS gets brought up that folks here get all defensive, and this in turn creates new subjects that can go off topic. As you can see though, my main topics of argument are not that random or difficult to follow on there own, but the fact other posters made some really good point's throughout this tread also means I get involved with other opinions too. Without being a absolute freak and going back through each and every post, opinions can get lost and jumbled up with everything that's said.
No look, I said all along that WPS should have shared MLS infrastructure, but MLS or more so the USSF couldn't realistically carry a whole league. The gap between college and challenging for a WNT contract is too wide without a WPS, and certainly without the serious development infrastrucer MLS clubs could have provided. At some point the future has to be a MLS/WPS partnership. I argue that MLS will hemorrhage money for decades while WPS can't get anything close to one decade, and that by copying the MLS model WPS would have been smarter to use MLS help. I don't think crowds should be the only factor which determines the life span of WPS, as healthy sponsorship models would have softened that blow. I don't think women's soccer knows it's potential audience, still believing that 99' era little girls can produce fan culture whilst forgetting we now live in a far more developed 2011 U.S. soccer environment. While for various reasons I also see Europe as the future premier female competition. I maybe controversially insinuated that the golden girls who set up the worlds first pro female league in WUSA, helped destroy any links to major commercial support partnerships WPS needed now (100 mil 3 years, dammmmm). Then also ask if the greatest player in the history of the women's game so far (Marta) can't capture little U.S. girls imaginations, maybe WUSA's success compared to WPS so far was due to celeb style popularity of the 99' WWC winners and nothing more. It's only when MLS gets brought up that folks here get all defensive, and this in turn creates new subjects that can go off topic. ... ______________________________________________________ Most insightful post in a while. Little girls belonging to casual fan parents never should have been seen as the core future of the fan base. Many of these parents in the 99 era were suburban soccer parents. That era is over. The USA soccer market is now 1) soccer junkies ( dads, single guys, ladies attached and unattached to the guys, and their kids, born and not yet born) who live everywhere imaginable and root for teams all over the world including here; 2) MLS fans ( ultras, casuals, (mostly men but women too and the the kids they now and will have); and 3) the casual fans who only drop in during the World Cups and Euros--many of whom might one day fall permanantly into one of the other camps. There is Venn diagram intersection of course among these fans. Problem is WUSA and WPS seemed like they wanted to reach category # 3 only. But only those in categories # 1 and 2 will spend consistent money on ladies soccer , and only if the league is built and marketed for for them...... Who gives rats __ss that the next few dacades might have to be a sugar daddy model. In 20 years my grandaughters won't care. They will have a place to see women's pro soccer. And they might aspire to that. ( And the soccer junkie in me will be happy that teenage girls are getting year round professinal training--an absolute necessity if we are to compete with the Brazilians and Germans etc.)
WPS is cash starved. If it rebounds, it will have to do so via the social networking and free publicity (charity case). If the league can get a TIME Woman of the Year after scoring the winning goal in the world cup... it wouldn't hurt. The tabloid trash will continue to give the Yankees and the NYFootball Giants more publicity than they could ever need. The WPS doesn't even exist in the mainstream yet. And that's what playing on 5 college pitches and one minor league stadium on the east coast will get you... about the same amount of media coverage that the Big East women's soccer tournament would get (if it got any)!
Beau Dure wrote an article addressing the future of WPS. A few quotes from the article are below. http://www.sportsmyriad.com/2011/07/womens-soccer-boom-version-2-0/ "For the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen people ask aloud whether the Women’s World Cup will boost WPS. My rote response on Twitter: WPS has its own issues that no goal in Moenchengladbach can solve." "Big events usually don’t build leagues. The buzz always dies down quickly." "Will anyone be willing to spend the money to compete with someone who spends like the New York Yankees of WPS?" "Will some owners prefer the business models in the W-League and the WPSL?" "A few owners opening their wallets with starry eyes after another Wambach goal or Solo save in Germany won’t translate into a sustainable league."
Here's a nice article/blog from ESPNLA about WPSL, WPS and some interesting thoughts from former LA SOL coach Abner Rodgers who now coaches the OC Waves. Also some thoughts from Wave and former Red Star player Brittany Klein on differences in the leagues. http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles/soccer/post/_/id/9849/locals-waves-make-waves-in-womens-game According to this article some players in the WPSL still get payed, just not as much as WPS. How about a merging of WPS and WPSL to make a Pro League with different levels?