This could be the answer to women soccer in this contry. Read this article http://www.soccertimes.com/wagman/2003/sep17.htm
I don't see how you come to that conclusion after reading the article. His "Is there a WMLS just over the horizon?" was just a throw-away line after a paragraph saying that if Anschutz wants a women's league, he should let WUSA go away then start a new one. But I don't see that being a jump to saying "WMLS" is just moments away.
Phill could use MLS SSS for the "new women's league. This way, WMLS will not have to pay for high lease, stands, parking, etc... I dont think it's a bad idea at all. We will see
If you had the teams in the same cities as MLS & had them play the same schedule (all doubleheaders). You would be paying additional salary & travel expenses but, other addtional expenses would be saved. These costs could be made up by additional ticket sales, merchandising revenue & TV revenue -- in theory.
Phil Anschutz made his fortune by putting his money where he believed there was a sound business opportunity. He's on the way to proving that he was right with MLS, especially with the Galaxy this year approaching profitability. I'm not sure evidence from the past lends towards this tendency and I can't imagine that St. Phil will be involved in a cause. It's just not sound business.
Dude no one gives 2 sh!tes about women's soccer. You can blame the sponsors all you want but no one showed up to games, no one watched, no one cared. No one was even going to care because there are much better products out there. THe only reason to go watch a WUSA game was so that you can GO "Ra-Ra" for women's sports. The level of play itself sucked. It was a complete waste of 2 hours out of your day.
Funny, if you asked three-quarters of the US population to name an American soccer player, the most common answer would probably be Mia Hamm. A close second would be Brandi Chastain. Third? Maybe Pele.
Yeah but atleast there decent interest even tho most people dont care about MLS/Metros either. There wasnt even a decent enough core fanbase for WUSA.
Wrong, dude. Put it on its head. Many didn't know. But people cared enough. Let's read my last paragraph real slow. "Many didn't know." Aside from a number of female anchors and knowledgable male anchors, people in the press froze out the WUSA. ESPN never had highlights of Founders Cup I on SportsCenter, and had the score wrong on its ticker. WUSA also didn't market itself a-la NBA in packaging halftime features outside of "goals of the month." In only a very few places did teams market its non-LFPs. It took a year for Washington, for example, to put anyone other than Mariel Margaret Hamm in its advertising. And, of course, the major error was the PAX time-buys. "But people cared enough." Ever see tape of the league semifinal in Year 2 between Philadelphia and Washington? More than 500 bussed up from DC and took over two entire sections. We kicked @ss. There were enough female athletes from other endeavors to make the opening game of WUSA, including the likes of Jenny Thompson and Billie Jean King. Your "nobody cares" is shortsighted. And wrong. WUSA2 coming soon. Beware. Ha.
oh well then it must be true... if YOU doubt it and all actually most of the WUSA fans aren't old enough to drive or have disposable income, but i know they care because my nieces are among that group and they were heartbroken when the news came - the obvious problem was that the league spent way too much money - if they had scaled down and not wasted by purchasing PAX time, they'd still be in business
I don't think the fact that the WUSA failed as a stand alone organization necessarily means that a WMLS would also fail. As others have pointed out, there are significant cross-marketing/branding and potential cost savings in running the two organizations as one. Also, if our ultimate goal is SSS for each team, there needs to be other events to help underwrite the cost of the stadiums. I would have think that if you play the majority of games as double headers, share marketing, etc., you could potentially scratch out some sort of profit. There doesn't seem to be significant amount of crossover between the fans so you wouldn't be cannibalizing your audience. However, in this view, the WMLS would be a significantly scaled down operation and probably would not regularly be on tv. All that said, I don't want to see the MLS do that right now. I think that they need to focus on building their own product and not worry about getting another league off the ground. I also think that there is an inherent problem in running a women's league and a men's league under the same banner in that the women are inevitably going to say, "how come we are not paid as much/treated as well as the men." Since the concept of gender equity has been driving the growth of women's sports at the amateur level (not saying that is good or bad by the way), I think people have the ingrained mindset that there should be some parity on the professional level. The economic realities of that, however, makes it impossible. For whatever reason, there seems to be a lot of undeserved hostility towards the WUSA and women's soccer in general on these boards. I personally do not really watch women's soccer or, for that matter, any women's sports. However, I don't take satisfaction in the WUSA failing. The ultimate test for every soccer fan (including those who are only interested in men) should always be this: is it good for soccer overall in this country and will it create more interest in the game? From that respect, I can't see how anybody can think that the lack of a women's league is a good thing.