Top 3 Obstacles for WPS Success
On September 26, 2010 FC Gold Pride will host the WPS Championship game and the second WPS Champion will be crowned. For the second year in a row the best women’s soccer player in the world will be playing in the leagues championship game which will be shown live on Fox Sports Net.
With average per game attendance figures continuing to fall from 2009 to 2010 and having one of its teams (St. Louis Atletica) cease operations mid-season the focus is on how or if the league will survive.
The predecessor to the WPS, WUSA, completed just three full seasons before closing down shop. Even with the star power of the still popular Mia Hamm and her 1999 World Cup teammates the WUSA was unable to find the resources needed to be a profitable sports league in America.
Along with having much lower ticket sales than the WUSA, the WPS is facing three of the same demons that eventually forced the previous league out of the business of professional soccer in America. Other than PUMA the WPS faces a lack of major corporate sponsorships along with a lack of much needed television and media coverage. Combine the lack of much needed revenue from lowering ticket sales and sponsors and you can see how as a business the WPS may be in dire straits.
Already on the outside looking in, soccer in America is simply not as popular among professional sports as the ‘top three’ Football, Basketball, and Baseball. Although the participation numbers in youth soccer are near the top of any sport it has yet to translate to the numbers necessary to maintain a professional sports league. Major League Soccer has battled for recognition and respect as a league both in America and within the international soccer world. Even after 14 years in existence MLS struggles for its share of the professional sports market behind not just the three major sports but the NHL as well.
The obstacles are easily recognizable by all those involved in the WPS from the management level (GM’s) to the players on the field. I recently asked players, GM’s, and WPS employees past and present for the top 3 obstacles the WPS will need to overcome to become a financially profitable business and successful profession sports league. Not surprisingly most of them pointed out the following three areas the league will need to focus on immediately:
- Increased ticket sales
- The need for major sponsorship deals
- Increased TV/Media coverage
References:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/soccer/wusa/2003-09-15-wusa-folds_x.htm
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If each US Youth Soccer Player/US Club SoccerPlayer was asked to donate $1 to WPS when registering as a player, or even just adding it to the total cost, the league would have enough $$$ to operate for 3-5 years.
ReplyDeleteMathmatically that may work, but it is not a long term fix to a business model.
ReplyDeleteAttendance and sponsorships are massively important. And attendance drives what sponsors are willing to pay.
ReplyDeleteWPS teams (like MLS at its start) is completely dependent upon owners being willing to fund the teams/league for a significant amount of time.
What WPS employees and WPS fans need to figure out is how to get people to the games w/ very limited marketing budgets. Boston seems to be the shining star here. What are they doing right and how can other teams apply those techniques to their markets?
Personally I'm skeptical of the long-term outlook for WPS. If you look at England, where soccer is the dominant multi-billion dollar sport and geography is more travel-friendly for teams, the women's game just hasn't taken off professionally. A new semi-pro league is starting up next year there and only 8 teams are planned with the top 4 players being paid on each team. For the most part they are all sponsored by men's clubs similar to the NBA/WNBA.
ReplyDeleteA semi-pro league or tournament tied with MLS may be the way forward, but the way forward remains cloudy.
@Vu: Your example of women's soccer in England is a particularly bad one. There has never been much support there for women's football at all.
ReplyDeleteYou would do better to look at Germany, Sweden, and Norway for solid examples of the development of women's leagues over time. Even France is showing a bit more growth of the women's league than England.
Germany and Sweden are the top two leagues. The Frauen Bundesliga has excellent players, is increasing in visibility/attendance/sponsorships/etc, and a German team has won the last 3 UEFA Women's Champions League trophies. 28k attended the Duisburg home leg of the final.
http://tv.dfb.de/ has webcasts & highlights from some Frauen Bundesliga games. (click on frauen) They even have some highlights in English.
Admittedly, my knowledge outside England isn't very high. The 28K figure is quite good, but it's also from a European cup final versus average attendance for a league game.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've dug up on Germany though, attendance figures were still quite low. From FIFA, "...there were barely 200 fans on average at each match, but by the 2006-2007 season, this had gone up to over 700, and four-figure attendances are now commonplace even when the top teams are not involved."
The league has slowly consolidated compared to when it first started out. The growth of the league is definitely worth noting, but the country is also more travel-friendly for teams versus the U.S., where the FC Gold Pride have to fly over to play the Washington Freedom.
I'm not sure that any women's pro league right now is at the level that athletes can dedicate their full time to developing as a professional without financial worries.
You can't mention the WUSA and leave off the money issue. Yes, they got 8,000 fans per game in 2001, but they spent $100 million to do it. That's $150 per fan per game!
ReplyDeleteThe Freedom could easily get back to WUSA levels of attendance just by playing at RFK rather than out in upper Montgomery County, but it would cost twenty times as much to do it. It doesn't make financial sense.
If WPS can come up with a cost model that can run on 3k-4k fans per game, along with whatever sponsors they can muster, they'll make it. Otherwise, they'll be dependent on owner patience and generosity.
Allowing the LA Sol die was the worst move WPS made. They were the best team to watch on TV.
ReplyDeleteWUSA had no strategic plan, they did hire a CFO, they had no business scorecard, the had 100 Million in sponsorships that was supposed last them for five years, they went through it in three years, this is all from my research, I have not done the evaluation of the WPS, but may be the same thing, they need to treat it like a business - I do not get the impression they do that. Maybe wrong.
ReplyDelete