KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For years, the global debate around the NWSL’s on-field product has centered around whether it is the best women’s soccer league in the world.
Recently, however, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman and an ever-expanding league office have mulled a more provocative question: Can the NWSL — a women’s soccer league that is barely a decade old — be one of the best sports leagues in the world? More bluntly: Can it be relevant and compete with MLS and the NHL? Or even the NFL or the NBA?
The answers to those questions might be less important than the fact that they are being asked. That line of thinking suggests the NWSL might finally be embracing that its core ingredient is the most important to the success of any league: it is, above all, entertainment. And the NWSL has an abundance of entertainment.
Saturday’s NWSL Championship between the Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit in Kansas City, Missouri, is a battle of the league’s top two teams. Orlando set a record for points (60) and unbeaten games to start a season (23), while both teams won 18 games in the regular season, jointly setting a league record.
Both Orlando and Washington narrowly prevailed last weekend in the most entertaining round of semifinals the NWSL has ever seen. It wasn’t just that all four teams played good soccer, and no, it didn’t matter that it was women’s soccer, either. The two games were sport at its most dramatic, captivating height.
Berman noted as much when she spoke at Audi Field on Saturday. The semifinal sold out in 72 hours. The Spirit’s quarterfinal also sold out despite overlapping the Washington Commanders NFL game being played in the area. “There was a time when that wouldn’t be in the realm of possibility,” Berman said.
What she said next matters more: “To really experience the energy of what I think is the emergence of an NWSL fan that really loves the game; they’re not just here for the environment or the experience, or to support women or women’s soccer players, but [they are] really enjoying the fact that the game itself is competitive and these are the best athletes in the world.”
For a league that for years emphasized its role as a women’s platform, it’s a shift that the NWSL is now positioning itself more simplistically: as a sport worth people’s attention, no strings attached about supporting a good cause.
Compare this to 2017, when the NWSL announced a historic media rights deal with A&E (including giving up equity in the league to A&E) that placed a weekly featured national TV game on Lifetime, the home of murder mystery romance movies on a loop. The league simultaneously launched the “Pass The Ball” campaign with celebrities talking about NWSL athletes as role models, which sounded more like an appeal for charity than an advertisement for an exciting product.
The partnership between the NWSL and Lifetime seemed great at the time, but the bar was low. The league had come from the depths of being broadcast on sketchy YouTube streams and a handful of games on cable. The message of going all-in on Lifetime was also clear: Women are the primary demographic of that channel, so of course women’s soccer would be a hit, right?
In retrospect, the thinking — of the Lifetime deal, but more so of how the league positioned itself, and what it thought to be its target demographic — was self-limiting. Fast-forward to today and the NWSL’s slogan is in its second year of a marketing campaign called “We Play Here,” which clearly positions the league as the home of world-class athletes.
The league’s front office has multiplied from a handful of hard-working folks in Chicago in the early years to approaching 100 now stationed in Manhattan in New York. Multiple senior executives at the league came from the NFL, and Berman joined from the NHL in 2022.
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Bonmati slams Liga F for failing to market itself like NWSL & WSL
Barcelona’s Ballon d’Or-winning midfielder Aitana Bonmati says the Spanish Liga F is far behind the NWSL and WSL when it comes to promoting itself to potential fans.
The billionaires buying up teams come with a wealth of sporting experience, too. Laura Ricketts, of the Ricketts family that owns MLB’s Chicago Cubs, purchased the Chicago Red Stars last year. The struggling franchise has a lot of work to do, but this year’s NWSL record crowd of nearly 40,000 at Wrigley Field represented an ambition and execution previously unthinkable in that market and, in large part, within the league.
Carolyn Tish Blodgett was confirmed as an investor in and the new governor of Gotham FC days before the team’s championship win last year. The Tisch family has part-owned the New York Giants for the past three decades.
Earlier this year, Tish Blodgett told ESPN that she treats Gotham as the same long-term investment as the Giants. She also sees a pathway toward making the club a globally recognizable brand, something other team owners have echoed.
“I’ve been really clear with my team that my vision is to build one of the best global sports franchises, period,” she said earlier this year. “That’s across men’s and women’s, that’s across sports, that’s across continents. When you think about the best global sports brands out there, there are no women’s teams on that list, and it’s just a matter of time until it is.”
One of the teams playing in Saturday’s NWSL Championship is attempting a similar trajectory. The Spirit are owned by Michele Kang, who also now owns French power Olympique Lyonnais and second-division English side London City Lionesses. Kang has been vocal about the need to invest in more infrastructure in the women’s game, and just this week she announced a $30 million investment in U.S. Soccer’s women’s and girls’ programs.
The key to a great sports product whether women’s soccer, American football or any other sport is entertainment. The NWSL is full of that, and it will be on display again Saturday in what might be the most anticipated final in league history.
Can the NWSL be a great sports league? There’s still growing to do, but at last, the league might finally be asking the correct questions.
