Drip drip drip So proud of this woman. Pregame w the only female owner in MLS right now, the amazing @MiaHamm. Here's to many more women joining her and joining @NWSL. Wink wink nudge nudge. pic.twitter.com/T08pKw0F87— Julie Foudy (@JulieFoudy) April 30, 2018
I think NWSL/Los Angeles is basically a formality, I think behind the scenes, they're dotting out the I's and Q's and waiting for the right time to announce (don't ask me how, just a gut feeling). On a lighter note, are they selling the flatbill hats with the full LAFC logo??? All I see are the hats with LA and the wing (sorry mods if this thread ends up getting hijacked ).
Maybe by midseason LA will be announced for NWSL. Vancouver is likely being kept on hold if Seattle's stadium situation isn't resolved in time.
Agreed. I'm about 98% sure that a LA team will be announced soon. I think something catastrophic has to happen behind the scenes for it not to happen this next year. I'm that sure not only because of all the rumors, but because apparently several LA-area media people expected it to be announced a couple of weeks ago. Now its expected to be announced in June/July. Plus, a NWSL owner has already said that at least two teams are expected to join next year. One of those has to be in Los Angeles.
Vancouver is reportedly the second MLS team wanting to join in 2019. But with Seattle currently without a home for 2019, they might get the Reign to move up north. This will bring the league back up to 10 teams for 2019.
I hope not, I would like the franchise to remain in Seattle, where it has a caring owner and a solid fan-base.
Completely agree about the Reign. Their fan base has increased and the owner is clearly committed. But if a new home stadium isn't available, what's the alternative? Suspend operations for one season?
I wouldn't say Seattle's fan base has increased... Their attendance last year was ranked third out of their five seasons so far (smack in the middle) and they're currently on pace to have their second-worst attendance this year unless things improve.
I sure hope they can pick things up. Their game location is great -- but the field is terrible, and the prognosis for the field as a soccer field may not be good. They need to figure something out. I believe Seattle could be a great city for women's soccer support, but somehow it hasn't happened so far. Something is missing there, I don't know what.
Yeah, something is missing... Maybe moreso in Seattle than in other cities that have/had independent teams, if only because there's clearly a demand for the Sounders that we don't quite see for SKC or DCU or NYRB... If I had to speculate, it's that WoSo in a lot of places has a really hard time of shaking off the "minor league" feel. How that settles in for a completely new team, I don't really know either. It's weird.
I've been watching some NWSL games this year and was surprised to learn that Seattle's game with Chicago drew only between 3K-4K fans, and that attendance generally hasn't been great for the Reign. I assumed that because Seattle is a cool city that appreciates soccer, and that because the team is good and plays a nice brand of football, that attendance would be robust. Certainly two big factors affecting WOSO are that, first, pro women's soccer is still a very young sport; and second, that the sport is competing in most cities with other, more established pro sports--in Seattle's case with pro baseball, football and men's soccer. Seattle is not a especially big city, and so it might be close to its ceiling with respect to the number of pro sports that the population can support. Having a better venue would help, of course--but even established sports struggle to obtain ideal stadium situations. I think the NWSL needs Seattle to succeed; it would be a big blow if it didn't given all the positives in the Seattle market generally--not to mention the rivalry with Portland (a city with only one other pro sport, by the way) which should always help stoke attendance. The league has just had two franchises fold (one permanently and one has moved), so it really needs to gel around the existing franchises. (I'd be a bit worried about New Jersey/Sky Blue as they play on a college field, attendance has been lackluster (hurt also by some terrible weather) and the team is the worst in the league). It's interesting that LA is supposed to be the next expansion city. Now there's a city with tons of entertainment options---so much so that it lost its NFL team for a long time. The demographics of LA should help with soccer.
You mean "this year", I guess; because before Boston folding and Kansas City moving, we had already had another franchise moving, although admittedly not as far away as Kansas City to Utah: Western New York Flash relocating as North Carolina Courage last season.
Putting aside the fact that Seattle won't have Memorial next year, Seattle's current venue is actually a really good one. Yes, it's turf and has gridiorn lines on it, but in terms of attendance you probably couldn't choose a better stadium. It's smack in the middle of downtown, a great size capacity-wise for WoSo, and (I though) had great facilities (e.g. food, restrooms) - but an actual Seattle fan should correct me on that if I'm mistaken. In hindsight, I think it might have been a mistake for NWSL to pick the Predmores' bid over the Sounders Women's bid for one of the original 8 teams. I'm sure that the Sounders Women ownership (which was not connected to the Sounders MLS ownership, it was name-sharing only) didn't have as much capital as the Predmores did, but it might have created a permanent rift between the NWSL team and the MLS team, when they could have done more to leverage the Sounders name. (Indirectly, since MLS is Adidas and NWSL is Nike, but you get the idea.) That said, it's the same thing that happened with the DCU Women (not officially affiliated with DCU) who became the Spirit, and their stadium is in a horrid location but consistently drawing more than the Reign, so who knows? There are a ton of sports already there, but LA has a history of being a strongly-drawing location relative to other cities when WoSo is concerned, at least in WPS when the Sol were far and away the best-drawing team of the league. Also, there will be a lot of hype considering the LA NWSL team will be backed by the new kids in town, LAFC.
Dunno... Apparently the was supposed to be an announcement mid-April, but something pushed it off - see the two Tweets I shared from a page or so back. In one of the replies to those Tweets, it sounds like the announcement was pushed back to late summer/early fall.
These people better not be playing with my emotions. I want our LA women's team back!!! I've waited almost 10 years for this!
I'm not sure if I should be laughing or be questioning gender norms: four new trademarks for "Miami Freedom" were filed the other day, and despite being a revival name from the APSL (the de facto top men's league immediately before MLS) there are a ton of people saying "no way it's the new MLS team, that's an NWSL name".
Depends on what you call "expansion talks". The expected LAFC/FCB announcement was, as previously mentioned, pushed back to "late summer/early fall", so any murmurings of it happening aren't expected for another month at least. On the flip side, FCB is going to be playing SoCal FC (an LA-area WPSL team) in a friendly match just this week, so that's certainly an interesting coincidence if there was nothing going on behind the scenes. Similarly, VWFC recently Tweeted about one of their academy players who's being called in for the ICC, which is also kinda fun and teasing at the same time.
Alright, so, for anyone who subscribes to Equalizer Extra, here's the link for a big article that isn't about expansion but has a ton of expansion tidbits at the end: https://equalizersoccer.com/2018/08...-expansion-utah-royals-portland-thorns-model/ For those who don't subscribe, here's a rundown of some of the more notable expansion-related points: --The Vancouver Whitecaps no longer seem like like they'll ever join NWSL. Apparently they (somewhat fairly, I'll admit) wanted a rules change so they could field a predominantly Canadian team without needing to allocate every single Canadian player - i.e. altering what players are considered "international" for the non-allocated spots. They still don't have a semipro team to replace the one they folded a while ago. --The LAFC/Barca effort that was rumored to be for 2019 now looks like just an LAFC effort for 2020. Barca is still (as recently as last month) expressing interest in joining NWSL, but league officials expect that they'd want a predominantly Spanish team and thus could pose the same problem VWFC did. The article is much more vague about Barca than VWFC, though, and to me it seems like the owners are just wary of having cross-Atlantic ownership at all. --Chris Canetti (of Houston) has talked with "a handful" of MLS owners about their interest in NWSL, which is good, but it seems that most of said owners are viewing Houston (and Orlando) as what to expect if they were to join NWSL, which probably isn't incredibly appealing. Success in UTA - and fixing HOU and ORL - would greatly improve the likelihood of future expansion. The league, for this current offseason, seems focused on shoring up existing franchises instead of looking toward expansion.
Since I don't subscribe to Equalizer, I don't quite follow the VWFC and Barca issues... VWFC *would* have different rules as to what constitutes an international player as they are based in a whole different country. They could use the MLS definition and get away with it, but NWSL would have to have different rules because of different labor laws. And Barca couldn't have a predominantly Spanish roster without buying up all the international roster spots and learning how to get players a Green Card quickly. Not sure why that would come as a surprise to owners in a men's league that is especially strict on non-EU players. Now if they managed to get the players subsidized, that's a different story.
They're based in Canada but would be playing in a US league. Joining NWSL now would mean VWFC would be joining a league that follows US labor laws, and the league roster definitions that follow. That is, VWFC joining NWSL would mean they would still have to work with the "domestic = American" definition, and non-allocated Canadians would count against their international slots despite the fact that they're on Canadian soil. It seems that whatever compromise MLS eventually reached with their Canadian teams, NWSL is either unwilling to make or somehow rule-bound against making the same compromise. Well, as I said earlier, there seems to be less certainty about the Barca situation, but the EqEx staff make it sound like the league is worried that Barca would request an exemption for Spanish players similar to the exemption VWFC would ask for Canadian players, i.e. some or all on that particular team count as domestic instead of international, allowing the team to be as picky about allocated and other international slots as the other teams are.