The history of professional women's sports in this country is relatively short and chock full of basically unsuccessful teams and leagues and organizations supported by small but enthusiastic fan-bases. Some of them, like the WNBA, are supported by their money-making brother organizations (see National Basketball Association). Others, like the 4-team National Professional Fastpitch league seem to be passion projects of owners who don't mind losing money in the name of sport. It is yet to be seen what the legacy of the NWSL will be.
In 2000, following the huge and unprecedented success of the 1999 Women's World Cup, the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) was formed. It was the first women's league in the world in which all the players were paid as professionals. And paid they were. The WUSA folded in 2003 following the finish of its third season and posted cumulative losses of around $100 million.
When the Women's Professional Soccer league started play in 2009 the conventional wisdom was that the lessons of over-spending had been learned during WUSA's run. But similar issues, and some wack-a-doodle owners (see Dan Borislaw and MagicJack), doomed WPS, which closed up shop following its third season and the loss of a few teams along the way.
Having never seen a WUSA game in person and not being a fan of the WNBA, I was skeptical of the need for and entertainment value of, a women's pro league here. Surely with our varied levels of intense competition at the college level, the huge success of the National Team, and the opportunity for American players to play overseas in Europe and Japan, we didn't need to go down that rabbit hole again. But when it was announced in late 2008 that Chicago would have a team in the WPS I found myself excited and wanting to support the league. It helped that I knew some rabid Chicago Fire fans who were buying season tickets for the Red Stars. It helped that they were going to play in the same soccer-only stadium that the Fire used. It also helped that my other go-to summer team--the Chicago Cubs, are consistently terrible and hard to watch. Soccer was just the thing.
Fast forward a few years to the start of the National Women's Soccer League...Here we are again. Putting huge amounts of time and money into an unproven venture. Is this worth it? Is it worth watching? Is it worth investing our limited free time in yet another team?
Having seen most of the the Red Stars home games from field-level as a game-day volunteer, getting the opportunity to witness the players behind the scenes, talking to fans young and old, and seeing the leaps and bounds that international players have made in catching up to the play of the United States National Team, I am more convinced than ever that we NEED a pro league. It doesn't have to play in front of 60,000 people in huge football stadiums, but we need it.
Girls need sports in their lives--or at least the CHANCE to have sports in their lives. And they need heroes and goals and things to aspire to and champions who look like them. And as a side-benefit, the National Team members will have the chance to play year-round in a domestic league. Newly graduated college players will have a chance to hone their skills alongside some of the best and get seen by National Team coaches. The quality of the USWNT pool improves immensely with a domestic league.
This time around, the structure is much more minimal than with the previous two leagues. The eight teams all have small front office staffs. The national soccer federations of Canada, the United States, and Mexico have agreed to pay the salaries of their participating national team players, thus removing the biggest salaries from the books of the individual teams. The league front office is scaled down from what it was with WUSA and WPS. The Chicago Red Stars, instead of having to pay for the right to play in the beautiful but too large Toyota Park, are starting smaller by having home games in the stadium at Benedictine College.
We'll see if it works. Mostly, the Foresters are happy to hear that team favorite Ella Masar is staying in Chicago to continue her career with the Red Stars.
To check out the league and find links to the eight teams--the Boston Breakers, the Chicago Red Stars, FC Kansas City, the Portland Thorns, the Seattle Reign (sweet logo), Sky Blue FC, Washington Spirit, and Western New York Flash, head here. I highly recommend Twitter as a way to follow the league, the teams, and the players. And if you're looking for independent journalistic commentary on women's soccer your best sources are All White Kit and The Equalizer.
