Odds on WUSA white knight?

CUS · Sep 17, 2003

Originally posted by voros
I'm not convinced Anschutz has written off pro women's soccer, just the WUSA specifically.
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Or the people associated with the league.

truthandlife · Sep 17, 2003

Originally posted by voros
See, again, the problem is that I think you're much better off starting a new league at this point then trying to patch holes in the hull of the WUSA. It just isn't worth the expense to prop up this three year old league whose structure appears to not be conducive to a sustainable league.

I'm not convinced Anschutz has written off pro women's soccer, just the WUSA specifically.
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I know the WUSA had a horrible business plan but I really do believe the WUSA was great test marketing for the MLS and they saw that it was a huge failure.

I don't think MLS takes a chance on a women's league. At least not right now. The MLS would be even more in the red then they are now.

Marcus Lindroos · Sep 18, 2003

Hi guys,

Originally posted by kyledane
This may be a radical idea to some, but I've always thought that the women could be good for MLS in that they could provide extra revenue on days that MLS was NOT playing. MLS plays saturday, the women could play Sunday. If MLS owns both leagues, they have two separate revenue streams with only one set of stadia. This obviously only works if they also control the revenue streams at those stadia, which might be the current problem/reason MLS won't bail WUSA out.

I've never felt that MLS/WUSA doubleheaders meant double the attendance. On a few rare occasions, yes, but generally it didn't work that way. The fan bases contained far too much crossover to double the revenue with doubleheaders. But they could do so if they worked it right.

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Assuming every MLS team had a WUSA counterpart in the same city, wouldn't it be smarter to play *every* WUSA game as an MLS doubleheader...? That way, all costs and resources would be shared. I.e. same team doctors, P.R. staff, team officials, regular season schedule etc. as for the MLS team. The additional cost brought by the womens team would then be restricted to player salaries, plus additional air tickets + hotel accomodation whenever the MLS side plays an away game (=the WUSA girls travel with the MLS guys). It seems to me as if the relatively high fixed cost of maintaining a separate league could be avoided in this manner.
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Would MLS benefit from it? I agree with kyledane that the impact on paid attendance might be quite small -- but at least the WUSA core audience would be retained.

MARCU$

Jose L. Couso · Sep 18, 2003

Hopefull someone steps in.

Having a woman team associated with a MLS team and playing doubleheader seems like a reasonable approach.

Mr. Bandwagon · Sep 19, 2003

Honestly, while I'm sure that there's a financial advantage to starting fresh with a new women's league (and avoiding all of the bad debt, etc.), what is even more important is the chance to start over with new team names and logos.

Seriously, CyberRays? And the weird Freedom logo? They all sucked, each and every team's name and logo. Let's hope that they are all gone for good (*exception made for Loney's columns).