A Twitter discussion on the Liga MX Femenil "enthusiasm" (attendance at the final match was 36k with 34k for the 1st leg): Sometimes people ask me why I wonder how much tapping into the existing fanbase and infrastructure of MLS would have helped women's pro soccer (WUSA rejected partnership deal). The success of Liga MX Femenil is part of the reason why I wonder. https://t.co/0L4Y4NtUg8— Andrea Canales (@soccercanales) December 21, 2021 Average regular season attendance for the opening half of the season was 1745.
Nice 2021 NWSL retrospective from the Athletic: https://theathletic.com/3029782/202...s-from-a-important-year-in-u-s-womens-soccer/
Back in WUSA days (2001-03), MLS was struggling to stay above water itself. How much help could it have been to women's soccer?
Ya, Foudy said she didn't want MLS "riding on the women's coattails." How many leagues ago was that? And, she went to Stanford?
Like, an audio link? IDK if any of those exist. But it's a pretty oft-repeated factoid. The exact wording may be more soccer lore at this point, but an ESPN article at the time includes: https://www.espn.com/soccer/s/2000/0218/365926.html The statement is usually attributed to Foudy, and she usually skirts around the issue of the WUSA/MLS relationship if it ever comes up in conversations recently. To be fair, if you were comparing the 1999 MLS attendances to the 1999 WWC attendances, you'd probably be pretty confident too... Of course, that's not an apples-to-apples comparison, as WUSA soon found out. Well, hindsight is 20/20... From some of the current partnerships, we've learned that two teams sharing overhead benefits both. If MLS could've afforded to partner with a new women's league, (and the affording part is another huge issue that MLS wasn't going to be able to do at that time anyway,) it probably would've helped both leagues.
A related Twitter thread that casts a little shade toward NWSL: The stadium. The support. The quality. The fans. 🙌🏼⚽️ 🇲🇽. Hoping that the @NWSL can grow towards this 🙏🏼. @LigaBBVAFemenil pic.twitter.com/7nYjn76qac— Sabrina Flores (@Sflores317) December 22, 2021 Sabrina's not wrong, but the fact that the NWSL needs to grow towards this when the NWSL had years on Liga MX Femenil should be kinda shameful for NWSL. https://t.co/VqmPrDKqiB— Andrea Canales (@soccercanales) December 23, 2021 But it would be interesting to know what drives the occasional high levels of Liga MX Femenil attendance. The men's clubs obviously have much deeper support compared to MLS clubs, which may contribute to the high numbers. It's a bit knee-jerk to say that big crowds at the finals means Liga MX is ahead of NWSL.
SiberianThunder spelled it all out. Only thing I'd have done differently would have been to ask you first "before I do all the legwork for you, do you agree that this would have been an idiotic statement to make?" Otherwise what's the point of proving it up for you? You'll just divert/deflect.
Okay, so remember that the splash of LA's dispersed ownership group caused several other teams (NC, DC, CHI) to also bring in a number of famous minority "owners"? And how some discourse over the past tumultuous season noted that all of these minority owners have been largely silent? Well, that seems to *finally* be changing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/12/27/washington-spirit-steve-baldwin-michele-kang/ For whatever reason, the Post let me read this article for free, so in case anyone else can't read it, here's the gist: a handful of the Spirit's minority owners are threatening to sue Baldwin if he takes Todd Boehly's $25m offer for the Spirit instead of Y. Michelle Kang's $35m offer.
News from the BroSo side: Real Salt Lake finally has a new owner. Two, actually: https://www.mlssoccer.com/news/davi...inment-group-to-purchase-real-salt-lake-x9626 https://www.rslsoapbox.com/2022/1/5/22868785/blitzer-group-rsl-purchase-sportico-report https://theathletic.com/3053301/202...enzo-insignes-toronto-fc-salary-mls-notebook/ The Athletic article is the only official piece I've seen that even mentions the Utah Royals, and even it admits that there's no indication whatsoever if the new RSL owners are interested in taking the NWSL expansion clause they have available. So I'm not holding my breath.
https://www.rslsoapbox.com/2022/1/5...new-ownership-plans-to-bring-back-utah-royals Earlier today the league announced that an ownership group with Ryan Smith and David Blitzer have purchased Real Salt Lake. For fans of the Utah Royals, the first question that came to mind was if the new owners would bring the Royals back. After the franchise was relocated to Kansas City in the wake of Dell Loy Hansen’s actions, the RSL organization retained the rights to the Utah Royals branding and could restart the team as early as 2023.
Hold your breath. New RSL owner David Blitzer on ownership’s option to bring back the Utah Royals:“I think the best way to say it is that from our perspective, that’s a function of when, not if… we’re very excited to bring a NWSL team back to this marketplace.”More: https://t.co/4Eze3TMAOK— Andy Larsen (@andyblarsen) January 6, 2022
As the NWSL is at 12 teams (and not 26+) "good seats (expansion slots) are still available" as the radio announcers like to say. The NWSL is not going to artificially sunset a return to Salt Lake at this point. That said, it will eventually get to the "shit or get off the pot" stage, but given the "feel good" return to KC last year, and all the bad press the league has had, I can see holding out the return to Salt Lake as a positive bump the league won't want to arbitrarily nip in the bud. I'm not expecting a 30 team NWSL. I'm not sure I'll ever see a 24 team NWSL. But the league doesn't have more suitors than potential expansion spots. And given that some of the current ownership groups are probably going to need help if the league continues to grow its financial turnover.
Sounds like it probably won't be 2023, but considering NWSL wants to stay at an even number of teams and there isn't an obvious expansion partner yet, holding out until 2024 seems reasonable.
I can see the league pausing on expansion for 2023 and using the World Cup to build up their current 12 teams. Hopefully the Royals are back by 2024 with a 14th team also joining (Cincinnati? Austin? Oakland?).
I should probably ask one of the sports industry/labor lawyers, but I'm wondering if some of the groups on the expansion sidelines are waiting to see how the USSF/USWNT lawsuit plays out. Especially those that own a men's professional soccer team. It's one thing to expect publicly funded universities to spend the same resources on women's college athletics as they do on men's athletics. And I definitely believe that professionals working at company should not discriminated against salary-wise in a given job based on gender. But where do we draw the line. Portland Timbers players get paid a lot more than Portland Thorns players. If the USWNT wins its lawsuit (which at this stage it doesn't look like they will), will that be a problem for the organization? If it is a problem will FC Dallas players sue Hunt Sports Group because they don't earn the same as the Kansas City Chiefs players for essentially the same job (professional team athlete). On the other hand, I'm pretty sure at this point the NC Courage player wage bill is higher than the NCFC player wages (though one could point out that the former is first division soccer and the latter is third division). I can definitely see some folks taking a wait and see attitude with regards to ongoing litigation. Especially given some of the lawyers out there who seem motivated to find things soccer-related to sue about. You can win a lawsuit and still lose a ton of money. Plus we're still in a pandemic and all knock-on economic effects of that.