It is a shame. The timing is unreal - before the WWC. What if lightning strikes twice - was WUSA in such a shambles so as not to be able to get some real, tangible benefit enough from the WWC to maintain ops for another year or two. I guess not. I don't know if St Phil can step in and re-form WUSA into MLS cities - and play WMLS games 3 hours before the men's game. But from maxing out the SUM TV contract, I imagine they will be talking about it.
we still got the W1 and W2 in the USL leagues, I believe some of the A-League teams got Women's team,
Didn't MLS propose operating a women's league ("WMLS") before WUSA got started, but for some reason many of the players wanted to go on their own? I wonder if MLS will re-visit the proposal. With more SSS coming down the road, this maybe more viable especially if we can relocate some of the WUSA franchises to MLS cities (e.g. Atlanta to Dallas, Philadelphia to Columbus, etc.)
As opposed to the league that is still around, and growing, after 8 years. One that was spurred by over 100,000 in the Rose Bowl, and the best attended World Cup ever?? People need to quit tying the fortunes of the WUSA to MLS...it's almost like tying the fortunes of the NBA to the WNBA, except the MLS has no money invested in the WUSA. If anything, this is a great chance for MLS to appraoach some of thes I/O's from the WUSA and sell them on men's soccer. Namely in markets like Atlanta, where there is no Division I team. Considering that Herndon Stadium is far and away nicer than any of the "temporary homes" MLS has come up with over the past few years. Anyway, that last part is just blind speculation, but MLS has a few more people with money floating around that they probably couldn't have approached a few years ago. Companies like Comcast and Cox.
According to the Soccer America e-mail I just got, the WUSA owners invested $100 million in the 3-year old league.
I can't remember what poster it was, but it was a well respected one around these parts who said that the MLS "proposal" to USSF for a woman's league was only one page, so not really much of a proposal at all.
Sorry to see the WUSA go down like that. I wonder how long it will take before we see another proffesional women's soccer league on the scale of the WUSA? I could see it happening down the road, but I really doubt the MLS will be in a rush to pick of the WUSA currently. Even though the MLS has gained some momentum I don't think the MLS is at the point yet where it can sponsor another league like the NBA does for the WNBA.
Is it me or did WUSA just have a completely flawed business plan? It appeared they were content to rely on TV ratings and corporate sponsorships to fund the league. It seemed they didn't care about attendance or stadium revenues. Once they saw the original plan wasn't going to materialize, they didn't change their efforts. Undoubtedly, had MLS not redone its business plan with a focus on stadiums and ancillary revenues, it would probably be close to gone now too. It seems WUSA was arrogant and stubborn, thinking that they knew companies would pony up and viewers would flock to watch it on TV after WWC '99, and when it didn't happen, they weren't smart enough to change the business plan to survive.
A theory. Just a theory. While I agree with the sentiment that WUSA's fortunes are unrelated to MLS, when I read between the lines I hypothesize that SUM may have had something to do with WUSA's downfall. Not that they are to blame for doing business. 1. You read that Hendricks was hoping for more corporate sponsorship that never came. 2. The week before you read that SUM stands to reap a profit on the Women's World Cup because of increased ad revenue. 3. Hendricks admits that he thought the success of the World Cup would carry over to the regular season, and it did not. This leads me to believe that SUM may be capturing sponsorship dollars for the Cup that WUSA simply could not get. SUM certainly is not to blame for advertisers finding the one-off event to be a better product than the WUSA. There's nothing unfair in SUM's actions. Still, one wonders whether SUM helped accelerate the folding of WUSA by capturing the market of corporate sponsors.
Ok let's look at the two leagues and compare: MLS: A Men's Professional Soccer started in 1996 after the successful 94 World Cup. League tried to adapt soccer to American tastes but, when realizing it wasn't working, changed to more traditional rules (except SEM). Used itself as league for developing young American soccer players. Attracted many corporate sponsors like Pepsi and Honda. Use sound business techniques and is approaching profitibilty. WUSA: A Women's Professional Soccer league started in 2001 after the successful 99 Women's World Cup. League tried to market itself as the leader in the Women's Sports revolution by marketing to young girls and their parents. Failed to attract many corporate sponsors and still spent large amounts of cash (i.e. they spent what they didn't have). League fell into finanical crisis and asked players to take paycuts to keep the league alive. Ran out of money and ceased operations after third season. I feel bad for the players, they are victims of bad business management and poor marketing. I hope something comes up for them. Preferably something with MLS.
WUSA dead A lot of their problems were caused by the same sort of poor decisions behind the "dot com" collapse. Relying WAY too heavily on revenue projections as opposed to actual sales numbers. Basing decisions only on (in retrospect) best case scenarios, rather than devising a structure capable of adjusting to alternate realities occurring (this is where I think the PAX mistake happened). We _don't_ like to talk about this a lot here, but the reality for a women's sports league is to what extent it decides to sell sex as part of its product (the only tried and true model women's sports has of generating a male audience). The scale goes from say Women's Pro Beach Volleyball on one hand (the uniforms for the entire tour can be washed in a single laundery load and the sport is currently churning out soft-core porn video games) http://insidermedia.ign.com/insider/image/doax_080503_yellowbikini_GAME_480.jpg to Women's Pro Bowling on the other. Problem is that it's probably dead wrong for a man to make those sorts of decisions for the league. On the other hand, it may also provoke a biased and unrealistic response from the women who are put in charge. I think there's a respectful, fair and yet open-minded solution to be worked out on that score. Again, as a man I'd be in no position to fairly make those kind of choices, but I do think it's worth suggesting a look at the issue. Clearly there's a point at which it should and would work (I think Brandy Chastain is a data point here), but there's also the issue of whether crossing that sort of line is worth it (they argue about this in Women's Tennis constantly). I think it probably isn't for the most part, but subtle changes may be able to help the bottom line a touch without being particularly exploitative.
It's very difficult to mock someone or some entity for being arrogant in a manner which isn't itself arrogant. And you, too, have failed to rise to the challenge.
Do you think SUM cashed those checks for the WUSA commercials? This could mean a very real hit in terms of commercial dollars for the WWC, the timing is absolutely bizarre. I'd imagine that they informed MLS & SUM HQ about this before hand? I would hope so, because it's not like you can round up a whole lot of advertisers for an event that is going off in 5 days?
All this unfortunately was pretty much written on the wall when they dismantled SEM. People like Andy said that at the time it was a smart and nessicary idea, and it might have been. But still the timing of this is amazing... I would serverly doubt anyone is going to pick this league right back up, I would hope that someone does and runs it a little bit better, and not up against MLS, but lets just remember how long it took to get top flight mens soccer back after the NASL folded.
I was thinking about LMoroney's report just now and it dawned on me what WUSA biggest failure was: they failed to learn the lessons of the NASL. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying their problems were identical and they were certainly of a very differnt scale but the resemblance is there. They spent themselves into oblivion. But perhaps just as MLS learned from the failing of the NASL maybe a future women's league can learn from the failings of WUSA.
In my view... the biggest error WUSA commited was putting the majority of their marketing dollars to get the "kids" interested. They failed to market to adults in any meaningfull way. Almost to the point of alienating them. It got to the point that only adults with a serious love of the game and of the league could stomach it. That and putting too much inexperiance in the front office.
I think this Foudy quote suggests that you may be right: "The Women's World Cup will provide a platform to generate additional interest in women's soccer that could be the catalyst to more sponsor support to revive the WUSA," Foudy continued. I don't have the media attribution. I got it from jgoal5's post on https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=72320&perpage=15&pagenumber=2
The way the Courage marketed themselves last year wasn't "almost" to that point, it was waaay past it. Then this year they did a 180, and marketed only the soccer. For me, I might have given them a chance in a year or two, but the 2002 ad campaign really turned me off.