News: WPS Suspends Operations Permanently

It wasn't all bad while it lasted.

 

Well, they lasted 9 months longer than I predicted they would (albeit only technically, in a suspended mode)

 

Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe now what will work and what won't work has been learned.

For this year, folks turn your attention over to WPSL and USL-W. Some very good matchups in both leagues.

 

Well, with the WPSL-Elite this year and the W-League planning a pro league next year, it sounds as if women's professional soccer will build the way some people have wanted it to all along: from the bottom up rather than from the top down.

 

I repped you.

Also, maybe we can have a relegation system within women's pro-am soccer, that will not work in the MLS but could work in women's pro-am and can make the women's game sorta unique and interesting.

 

It is a nore stable model, at least in Europe but have that ever worked in USA?

 

Not been tried a lot, I don't think.

I mean, if you go back to the demise of the NASL in 1985, a couple of small leagues sprung up on the two coasts and eventually grew and merged and became the APSL/A-League. And USL's various leagues started as a small indoor league in Texas and grew to eventually merge with that A-League and form what was our second division for a time (while other divisions coalesced under that). In that case, no one sat and thought, "How can we create a second division?"

Right now you have a handful of core clubs and investors that might be willing to do something on a small scale that leads to something bigger over time. Probably too early to plot that out.

 

The end of Women's Pro soccer in this country... there may a be a few clubs that pay (WNY) but there will not be another Pro Level soccer league again for a LONG time.... IF these people could not make it work and no with with Deep pockets came in to prop up the league... this failure will be the last.... WPS now joins the WUSA in failed women's sports... both only surviving 3 years...

 

Certainly the end of Women's Professional Soccer. May not be the end of American women playing soccer professionally in this country. Just doesn't seem to be viable as a standalone, major-league, pay-people reasonably significant sums of money enterprise.

I would imagine that as long as the Women's National Team has its periods of intense popularity, with recognizable and personable players with star power, someone will at least try, though, yes, I believe it will take a while.

Whether you believe taking a low-level, semi-pro approach and growing it is the way to go, or making teams that are simply distaff versions of MLS clubs is the way to go, or waiting a few years and trying to capitalize on the 2015 World Cup and going full-bore with Division I again is the way to go, is up to each individual, I guess.

 

I'm inclined to agree. The interest at the pro level just isn't there to make it work. Not as a standalone league at any rate. Only way I see them coming back at a real pro level again is when/if MLS is big enough to want to blow money subsidizing an unstable women's league for a decade or more to get them going as was done with the WNBA. And self sufficiency may never be possible. As we saw with WUSA even having deep pockets wasn't enough to make it work, you need an existing support structure AND people willing to lose millions of dollars for a long time to make it work.

 

Well, Borislow had deep pockets and was willing to spend. Unfortunately it seems from what we read that he wanted to do it his way only and not compromise with the others.

If we look at both failings, WUSA and WPS, you can probably point to some instances of arrogance on both. Whether it be players saying they don't need the MLS's help, to owners being arrogant and not playing nicely together.

I believe there is a place for women's pro soccer in this country. It may not be in the same model as men's pro sports but it can work. If it means only a few "elite" players actually make a yearly living by playing soccer and the rest have to actually get part time jobs, then so be it. The Europeans seem to make it work.

Just hope some lessons have been learned.

 

We may see a new league arise fairly soon from the ashes. There are still 4 teams, I think, still in operation who were just waiting for things to shake out and, reportedly, other potential owner groups who were scared away by the lawsuit.

This is very diferent from WUSA. We were all initially afraid that a 2nd failure would doom professional women's soccer for many decades, if not forever. That may not be the case at all here.

As the news report which first reported the imminent end of WPS said, there could be something here in regards to the timing of the Olympics -- ending WPS now may give some of the clubs time to re-form a league in time for an announcement around the Olympics.

 

Been hearing that. Will be interested to see if it's actually true.

 

On one hand, I'm worried about the "other potential owner groups" story b/c the OC Waves were supposedly one of them... Sure, they were fully professional, acted it, and won a championship - then vanished. =-/

On the other, I'm still quite hopeful about the WPSL EL. Assuming this season goes well, I could easily see it expanding and potentially see it go fully professional, though I doubt they'd apply for official D1 status anytime in the near future. I'm not so hopefully about the W-League filling in the gap; they've talked the talk about being/going professional for a long time but have never acted on it (and I'm also somewhat biased against any USL-run league).

So what, exactly, is the status of all of our WPS teams? Some are easy:
LA, STL, BAY, WSH - gone
CHI, BOS, WNY - playing in WPSL EL
Others, I'm still rather confused about:
NJ - recently announced a "partnership" with W-League Wildcats, but that was all while WPS was still suspended "indefinitely". Everything I've read talks about how the Wildcats are profiting this year, but I haven't seen any mention of what Sky Blue's plans are.
PHI - it seems like everyone except owner Halstead is now with the WPSL EL Fury, so where does that leave the Independence (which has NO association whatsoever with the WPSL EL Fever)?
ATL, mJ - Silence, so who knows?
Hofstetter (sp?), Johnson, and Borislow have all been quoted recently, but more about the league itself than about what they plan on doing with their teams. Anyone have more insight?

 

It's optimistic on my part, I know. But it's not like the teams were trying to bail out to stop the bleeding. They were fighting to keep going.

They timed the announcements together - the settlement and the disbanding of the league, which clearly leaves the impression that they wanted the two to be tied together in peoples' minds. What they have here, I believe, is a window of time in which a new league could form that would reinforce that statement that WPS folded, not because a women's professional league is unviable, but because of the lawsuit.

 

Like any aspirational league, they're going to have growing pains. Some of their teams have come together rather quickly and aren't - from an organizational perspective - prepared yet to think about the next level. Chesapeake drew an estimated 400 for its opener (on a Thursday night), but Western New York - who has some experience at this - only drew 1300 for theirs (to be fair, the whole uncertainty cut short the sales season and groups are hard to bring together early in the season).

You're not alone, but, to their credit, their leagues have been around for a while, which is more than most can say.

The W-Pro announcement was supposed to be last summer. I would think recent developments might give the project some impetus, but you still have to find enough people willing to go all-in. The W-League has some stable organizations of its own and the benefit of infrastructure (evil as some may consider it) that others who might try this do not.

The problem is that, too often, people aren't drawn to the table to talk about how to work together until one or more of the parties is in a desperate situation. If a few of the WPSL Elite clubs find even this "tweener" level of play to be beyond their capabilities, the Bostons and WNYs may end up talking with the Vancouvers and DC United Women and the Sounders Women and have to join the W-Pro or W-League, whether you have that bias or not.

 

Which I don't believe, personally, but the trick is actually convincing investors - who now have two leagues and six years worth of data - that it is viable. And whether or not that convincing can be done, I don't really know who's going to do the convincing. T. Fitz Johnson? Joe Sahlen? Is one of those guys going to pick up the torch and start beating the bushes looking for D1-level investors? I guess it's too early to tell. But at least those people have skin in the game and can speak from experience, which some other random person with a plan would not be able to bring to the table.

 

From Beau Dure's follow up article on ESPNW:

Currently no word from Philadelphia's David Halstead.

 

Halstead has always seemed to be very optimistic about this. But surely he can't do it alone.

 

Also from that:

"The Borislow lawsuit was the coup de grace, but to say that was what sunk the league is disingenuous," former Breakers general manager Andy Crossley said. "The league was down to five teams on paper. Puma (sponsorship) was gone -- there was no one to supply the teams with the necessary gear. The league office and a couple of the teams were ghost ships by October. There was no meaningful activity happening."

 

Athletics68, you mentioned a women's league would lose millions while it's developing and maybe longer. Well MLS has lost HUNDREDS of millions of dollars since they started. They just had billionaire owners who took the hit.

MLS could've easily folded early on and they are still ignored by the mainstream and the ratings are still HORRIBLE!

I'm sorry to see WPS go but if a new women's pro league arises they can count me as a fan!

 

And why do you think they did that? Because they had confidence it could eventually be done, based on history that showed you could at least draw a crowd for this on more than a sporadic basis. The women's pro game has yet to prove that in this country. The fact that billionaire owners took the hit for men's soccer and not (yet) for the women's game should tell you something. When someone builds a soccer stadium for a women's team, let us know.

To be fair, neither MLS nor its fans should really give a hoot whether or not the mainstream notices them at all at this point. Enough actual fans of the game - and not the long sought-after and completely overrated "casual fan" - are on board now. And TV ratings are what they are. Our domestic outdoor league, no matter what it's been called, has never been a ratings-grabber.

And it's not a matter of MLS getting theirs out of yours, so your vitriol is misplaced. MLS isn't going anywhere but up in this country, while the women's game has nowhere else to go.

 

Atlanta Beat! Sort of. I guess it's now pretty much one of the nicer college soccer facilities around.

But yeah -- a couple of people are willing to lose some money on women's soccer, but not THAT much money.