Stadium or not, they don’t want a women’s team. Which sucks.
And I don’t think it’s charity.
NYCFC Academy - General Discussion
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Stadium or not, they don’t want a women’s team. Which sucks.
And I don’t think it’s charity.
So, parents will pay for those tickets? Get to the stadium? Spend their summer days that way? Adding NYCFC2 & NYCWFC just makes people's economic and time decisions harder. I love NYCFC and MLS, but I need time for other things in my life as well.
2019 NWSL attendance per game average
Portland 18k
Utah 10.7k
NC 5k
Everyone else range 1.5k -4.7k
https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2019-nwsl-attendance/
The WNBA has existed for 22 years and has lost at least $10 million every year of its existence.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...new-president-profitability-in-2019/38809289/
Yes those figures are from the NBA and sports leagues lie about their finances but nobody disputes these numbers in any substantial way.
Portland 18k
Utah 10.7k
NC 5k
Everyone else range 1.5k -4.7k
https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2019-nwsl-attendance/
The WNBA has existed for 22 years and has lost at least $10 million every year of its existence.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...new-president-profitability-in-2019/38809289/
Yes those figures are from the NBA and sports leagues lie about their finances but nobody disputes these numbers in any substantial way.
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Yes, parents will pay, and transport to the stadium, and spend their summer days that way. You won’t ever understand this at your age or while single.
Exactly. It would be cool to have, but
How much will they pay for lower level soccer than MLS though?
WNBA the Portland NWSL team has an average ticket price significantly lower than the Male counterparts, even if attendance is close.
It would be nice to have one when we have a stadium to have a team, but it simply doesn't make business sense to run an expensive academy that's not pay-to-play, so it would be charity.
I've got two girls who I cant wait to be old enough to go to games regularly. I'd take them to a game here and there, but would go primarily to the main team.
LionNYC was right to say people will make choices with their outings, and a women's team game day revenue will be significantly lower because people will not pay the same price as the main team charges.Until a global women's system is developed in which we can sell our academy products to Europe, a girls academy is charity. It would be cool to have one, but you can hardly blame the club for spending their money elsewhere.
I've got two girls who I cant wait to be old enough to go to games regularly. I'd take them to a game here and there, but would go primarily to the main team.
Until a global women's system is developed in which we can sell our academy products to Europe, a girls academy is charity. It would be cool to have one, but you can hardly blame the club for spending their money elsewhere.
I can’t begin to explain how much I disagree with all of this.
Your target audience for a women’s team is not
LionNYC Your target audience is my wife. My wife doesn’t go to our games but once a year when I wrangle her into an Arthur Ave dinner beforehand.
But guess what. She’d buy a season ticket for a women’s team. She wouldn’t attend every match, but she’d buy a ticket. And Julie Ertz or someone recognizable played, she’d attend the matches.
The club doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a women’s team. But there is a market for one here.
This discussion has devolved into a series of "my anecdotal experience proves you wrong." I am outnumbered in my family by 3-1 women to men. I'm not going to tell you their preferences in this area or argue that their preferences prove anything.
The history of womens competitive sports leagues, NYC's history of attention paid to new teams in a heavily saturated market, and specifically domestic soccer, suggests something that is not positive for the possible success of a women's professional soccer team based in NYC. Passion for the USWNT has not so far translated to NWSL success outside of Portland or Utah. Please someone tell me why NYC is so much like Portland or Utah, and not like Chicago, Houston, Orlando, New Jersey, or Washington DC. I'm open.
Arguments based on people's family preferences are not in the least compelling.
The history of womens competitive sports leagues, NYC's history of attention paid to new teams in a heavily saturated market, and specifically domestic soccer, suggests something that is not positive for the possible success of a women's professional soccer team based in NYC. Passion for the USWNT has not so far translated to NWSL success outside of Portland or Utah. Please someone tell me why NYC is so much like Portland or Utah, and not like Chicago, Houston, Orlando, New Jersey, or Washington DC. I'm open.
Arguments based on people's family preferences are not in the least compelling.
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I'm hopeful, but quite skeptical, that a professional women's league can get off the ground and be sustainable over the long run.
Many have pointed towards the facts that there hasn't been much investment and other sports leagues (including MLS), began with losses that ultimately had to just be incurred until the league could pull through into the black. And those are valid points that I really don't have any response to, other than I just don't think it would work.
For reasons you noted above, I'm definitely skeptical. I also get the sense that this particular situation may fall a bit more into (though not completely the same) the Olympics side of things. Every four years people get super excited about beach volleyball, cycling, swimming, handball, skiing, and even (gasp) curling. But those events really only have special interests (CURLING!!!) outside of the Olympics and the bulk of interest that gets into it every four years mostly dissipates.
Perhaps the NWSL could do well in other smaller markets. Portland and Utah has worked out great. The other professional teams in those markets? The RSL, Timbers, Jazz, and Trailblazers. The NBA doesn't have any overlap, so the only professional sports options where schedule conflicts could exist is RSL and the Timbers.
I know there is a large push right now for people to watch NWSL games. And I do actually think that there are a lot of people that are interested right now. ESPN is picking up some games, but it still only leads to 14 being broadcasted, and that is via ESPN2 and ESPN News. Will this added interest hold in a non-World Cup year? I don't know. I think that will be more telling.
To bring this back to curling once again (because, why not), at the two different curling clubs I've been members of, there would be a trickle of new members every year as some may have had a friend introduce them, or moved from Canada or something. But every Olympic year, holy hell. The club would be overrun with people wanting to try it out, local reporters doing stories for their papers, or people just wanting to watch. That would result in a nice membership bump, but even then, a few of those filter back out to not playing and sure as hell aren't watching the World Championships, the Scotties, or the Tim Horton's Brier.
I do hope that it could have success, because if people want it, hopefully it will do well. I know personally, I don't have time to follow another team. If there were a NWSL team here, perhaps I'll go to a game or two every season, but between NYCFC, USMNT, USWNT, Steelers football, and Marquette basketball (and when I have time, curling
), I don't have any more space to become invested in sports.But perhaps others do. I'm just skeptical that enough people really do have the interest (especially outside a WC year), for it to really be sustainable.
Unfortunately your wife is not enough. The Liberty draw flies despite having ticket prices at a fraction of the NBA teams. It's the way of the world.I can’t begin to explain how much I disagree with all of this.
Your target audience for a women’s team is not
Your target audience is my wife. My wife doesn’t go to our games but once a year when I wrangle her into an Arthur Ave dinner beforehand.
But guess what. She’d buy a season ticket for a women’s team. She wouldn’t attend every match, but she’d buy a ticket. And Julie Ertz or someone recognizable played, she’d attend the matches.
The club doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a women’s team. But there is a market for one here.
Yes, I think when we control a stadium we could probably make a women's team work, but the cost of an academy is simply does not have a viable way of being recouped in any way.
The one sport that seems to garner similar attention, at least in the US because we have female champions, is tennis. If I'm not mistaken, women's tennis is generally competitive with mens, or at least at a high enough level to be high level tennis.
As great as the Women's Soccer team has been, they get smoked by mens college teams in scrimmages. So even the best 22 women in the world would likely be at a significant lower level to even an MLS match. It's hard to sell that 15+ times a year without national pride on the line.
Btw, I'm not trying to bash women's soccer here. I'd love to have the premier women's league in the world here in the US. I'd love to continue US dominance in the game, and I'd love to see the players get more than a couple days of attention every few years. I'm just pushing back against the assertion some were beginning to make that not having an elaborate girls academy was some sort of injustice, I think PC was clouding some people's judgment on that one.
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I'm hopeful, but quite skeptical, that a professional women's league can get off the ground and be sustainable over the long run.
Many have pointed towards the facts that there hasn't been much investment and other sports leagues (including MLS), began with losses that ultimately had to just be incurred until the league could pull through into the black. And those are valid points that I really don't have any response to, other than I just don't think it would work.
For reasons you noted above, I'm definitely skeptical. I also get the sense that this particular situation may fall a bit more into (though not completely the same) the Olympics side of things. Every four years people get super excited about beach volleyball, cycling, swimming, handball, skiing, and even (gasp) curling. But those events really only have special interests (CURLING!!!) outside of the Olympics and the bulk of interest that gets into it every four years mostly dissipates.
Perhaps the NWSL could do well in other smaller markets. Portland and Utah has worked out great. The other professional teams in those markets? The RSL, Timbers, Jazz, and Trailblazers. The NBA doesn't have any overlap, so the only professional sports options where schedule conflicts could exist is RSL and the Timbers.
I know there is a large push right now for people to watch NWSL games. And I do actually think that there are a lot of people that are interested right now. ESPN is picking up some games, but it still only leads to 14 being broadcasted, and that is via ESPN2 and ESPN News. Will this added interest hold in a non-World Cup year? I don't know. I think that will be more telling.
To bring this back to curling once again (because, why not), at the two different curling clubs I've been members of, there would be a trickle of new members every year as some may have had a friend introduce them, or moved from Canada or something. But every Olympic year, holy hell. The club would be overrun with people wanting to try it out, local reporters doing stories for their papers, or people just wanting to watch. That would result in a nice membership bump, but even then, a few of those filter back out to not playing and sure as hell aren't watching the World Championships, the Scotties, or the Tim Horton's Brier.
I do hope that it could have success, because if people want it, hopefully it will do well. I know personally, I don't have time to follow another team. If there were a NWSL team here, perhaps I'll go to a game or two every season, but between NYCFC, USMNT, USWNT, Steelers football, and Marquette basketball (and when I have time, curling
But perhaps others do. I'm just skeptical that enough people really do have the interest (especially outside a WC year), for it to really be sustainable.
NWSL attendance did apparently bump a bit this week in every game.
https://lastwordonsoccer.com/2019/0...lina-re-takes-first-place-attendance-goes-up/
It might continue to grow but has a long way to go to be sustainable. The US Women's Olympic basketball team has won 8 out of 10 possible Gold medals and the last 6 running. Yet the WNBA, playing a sport that is much more popular in the US than soccer, with the power of the $7 billion annual revenue NBA marketing team behind it, generates double digit million dollar losses annually. The NY Liberty were averaging about 10k per game at MSG before they were sent off to a 5K max venue in Westchester last year. They were sold in January to Joseph Tsai who owns 49% of the Nets. Maybe they will move to Barclays in Brooklyn. The league as a whole averages between 5k and 10k per game after 22 years. A NYC based women's professional soccer team that drew 10k every game would be massively successful when measured by its peers, but I'm not sure it would profitable.
The one, somewhat counter-intuitive but also somewhat plausible, argument for why the NWSL might do what the WNBA could not, is that women's soccer will benefit by playing a less popular and less well understood sport. People compare the WNBA to the NBA and can immediately see the differences, and apart from a small minority who prefer slower play with shorter leaps and fewer dunks, and another group who prefer to support women's sports for non-sporting reasons, the consensus is the WNBA is an inferior product. Much of the US public does not know enough about soccer to have an informed opinion as to how the women's game compares to the men's. For the last 3 weeks I've seen numerous people on both sides who haven't watched 20 soccer games in the last 5 years argue about one game where the USWNT lost to a HS boys team in a friendly a few years ago, and whether that single result proves anything, because none of the people arguing can actually say anything informed about the general topic of how women's soccer compares to the men's game. And hardly anybody watches MLS (especially compared to the NBA) so there is probably a meaningful contingent who think the US women win and the US men don't so the women are simply better so let's watch the women. I have my doubts whether that is enough to make the league independently profitable but that's the best argument I have for why it might succeed where the WNBA has not.
But more importantly, until then, who is going to shoulder multi-million dollar losses to sustain the NWSL until it can, maybe, possibly, become profitable? MLS is barely profitable itself without expansion fees which are a finite resource.
I too would love to see NYCFC create a women's team, draw 15k, and all that. But I'm not confident it could happen and can't fault our ownership for not going that route, especially with the Sky Blue FC complications.
This is interesting. I personally think that the only way professional women's sports would be sustainable (in terms of profitable and not subsidized) at the club level would be if women, generally, made the commitment to fandom as a matter of gender equality. At this point even in the U.S, a nation that is sports-crazy in general and has a lot more gender parity than most places not located in Northern Europe, the percentage of men who describe themselves as sports fans vs women who describe themselves as such is, I would think, much larger. On top of that, once you become a real fan of any particular sport except maybe tennis, you will realize the men's side has much better quality than the women's side. And to top it off, nobody has time to be a fan of multiple sports and do it both for men's and women's competition. There just aren't enough hours in the day, what with the NBA, and La Liga, EPL, MLS, etc.
The only way an inferior product would find both viewership and attendance would be if women who like soccer, or could be made to like soccer or to want to support soccer as a goal, committed to pay more attention to NWSL than to EPL, MLS, La Liga, etc. And that could only be a political, social justice, equality, etc. stance. And it would have to be massive and widespread, to the point that they drag children and pliant husbands to the stadiums or to sit in front of the TV. It's a long road, but it's a battle that cannot be won on quality grounds alone (because of Dallas U-15 beating the USWNT, etc) even if a longer run under Title IX makes that gap slightly less.
The only way an inferior product would find both viewership and attendance would be if women who like soccer, or could be made to like soccer or to want to support soccer as a goal, committed to pay more attention to NWSL than to EPL, MLS, La Liga, etc. And that could only be a political, social justice, equality, etc. stance. And it would have to be massive and widespread, to the point that they drag children and pliant husbands to the stadiums or to sit in front of the TV. It's a long road, but it's a battle that cannot be won on quality grounds alone (because of Dallas U-15 beating the USWNT, etc) even if a longer run under Title IX makes that gap slightly less.
Counterpoint - women’s basketball is the worst sport ever invented. It’s like watching my 5 year old play in the driveway.
Women’s soccer is entertaining.
I know the English top league was semi-pro until 2018-19. I doubt it's profitable at this point. My guess is women's leagues can become self-sustaining in Europe more easily than here, due to what I think is a less crowded sports market. But that's a guess. And I don't really know how things stand in other countries.
OK, did a small amount of research on this. 12 teams in the top tier, each scheduled for 22 matches starting in September. The top level is the FA Women's Super League, and there's also an FA Women's Championship (11 teams, 20 matches starting in August) with pro/rel between them.
Things I'm not sure about:
- number of pro/rel teams, but I'm guessing two based on absolutely nothing
- pro vs semi-pro: I think as of last year it's now pro, with full-time players who are paid but that's only my best guess from the wikipedia article at this point
More info as it becomes available.
Also, just noting that the NWSL has nine teams and plays a 24 match schedule (plays each team three times) with the top four teams getting into the playoffs. According to wikipedia there's a minimum of 20 players, maximum of 22(+4), salary range is from $16,538 to $46,200. To explain the "+4," players 23–26 get the minimum and don't count towards the cap, which this year is $421,500. Also, national team players are paid by their respective national teams and also don't count against the cap. I think. The Wikipedia article somewhat oddly says that only US, Canada, and Mexico national team players are counted this way (but maybe not Mexico any longer) so oddly that would leave out players like Marta (Brazil) and Sam Kerr (Australia), for example, so not really sure about this. And the article kind of contradicts itself a couple of times so really, take this with a few grains of salt. But although the details about the salaries are maybe a little questionable at the moment you get the idea.
Wow! That salary range is miserly and horrible, and shows how financially non-viable the NWSL remains if it were left to its own devices, especially since that only applies to non-national team players from North America. If I am reading it correctly, it means that anybody in the league who is not in the NT for Canada, US or maybe Mexico is either a scrub who is being paid very little or a foreign star acquired by the team to supposedly bring butts to the seats. Also, as it applies to the Equal Pay debate, it seems US Soccer is paying the monthly salary of the USWNT members who play in NWSL, which is something I never heard mentioned before in the debate and it is not its "duty" since they are not representing the USA at that particular instance. Or am I reading it wrong? It obviously wouldn't need to, and plainly couldn't do it for lack of $$$, for the USMNT members at their clubs. It is all sad and complicated.
I don’t know how it’s connected to NWSL, but yes, all of the USWNT players get a yearly stipend/salary that seems to be the one associated with the wages for the league. They agreed to a CBA that had more guaranteed money and as such more NT appearances for their multiple tours. It reminds me of the USMNT situation prior to 1994 when Bora insisted the players in the pool that didn’t have euro clubs had to be in Chula Vista at the NT training center playing together full time as a de facto club and as such receiving a constant wage.
OK. Maybe I misread Seth's post as stating that USWNT members were paid monthly by the federation instead of their NWSL teams, rather than on top of their NWSL teams. Or maybe I'm just totally lost...
