A New Women’s
Soccer League Is Announced, Brings A Team To The DC Area. Yeah!
(By Richard Goodman, 25 November 2012)
My friend,
Elizabeth, just twigged me to the fact that a women’s professional soccer league
was being started and that there would be a team in DC. That was great news because I like soccer, I
like women and I like watching women play soccer but I was a little confused
about a couple of things. First of all, there
was already a professional women’s soccer league in existence wasn’t there? I was pretty sure there was because I have
souvenirs from the inaugural league game when Mia Hamm of the Washington
Freedom faced off against Brandi Chastain’s San Francisco Devil Rays.
Well, that
was actually the first league. The Women’s
United Soccer Association (W-USA!
W-USA!) folded after three seasons because the league ran out of
money. The live games were moderately
attended and broadcast audiences were negligible so sustaining operations chewed
up all the cash reserves. Still, those
three seasons, during which I was a season ticket holder, provided me some
great memories. I got ecstatic watching Mia
Hamm weave through opposing defenders like a shark moving through a school of
fish, the focus and determination to win plainly visible on her face. Then when Abby Wambach joined the team, the
competition just withered. Mia knifed
through the defenders and Abby trampled down those still standing after Mia’s
attack. For balance, there was Skylar
playing her little heart out for the Freedom’s backfield. Even off the field there was fun to be
had. The stadium music was sometimes
wildly inappropriate, with the best example being Motley Crue’s strip club
anthem “Girls, Girls Girls” getting heavy rotation and one game featured an appearance
and autograph session by the stars of the movie “Bend It Like Beckham”. Yeah, I saw Keira Knightley, back in the
day. In the third and final year,
Washington won it all- tearing through the regular season and then capturing
the championship. That was an
exhilarating season for me. It provided
many of my fondest soccer memories- I loved it as much as I hated last year’s crushing
Women’s World Cup defeat.
The second
league came about two years after the first one ended. Again, Abby Wambach was back with the
Washington Freedom, which was thrilling.
My only problem with the Women’s Professional Soccer league, aside from
the fact that the league name sounded more like a description than an
organization, was that they played at the spiffy new SoccerPlex. In Maryland.
How can it be a Washington team if they play in Maryland. Worse than that, it wasn’t a venue anywhere
near Metro. I had really enjoyed taking
Metro in to RFK and watching games there.
I didn’t see many WPS games as a result because I hate driving so go to
the Maryland suburbs to watch a game wasn’t that appealing and the broadcast
schedule was much worse than what the WUSA had so I pretty much gave up on watching
women’s soccer, aside from the World Cup and Olympics games and the qualifiers leading up
to those. To make matters worse, the “DC”
team packed up and moved to Florida to become the magicJack. Yeah, as in the phone service gadget. That’s the all-time stupidest team name and
yes, I know there is a team called the Red Bulls.
After moving,
the team ran into big problems with their owner who decided the team didn’t
need coaches or trainers or organizational structure or advertising revenue. When the WPS league owners booted him out, he
sued them and caused such a financial and administrative nightmare that the
league folded. Further down in this post
are two articles info about that fiasco.
So a second league folded although I hadn’t realized that the second one
was gone for good until I started looking for information about the new league
that was announced this week. Apparently,
the temporary hiatus that I was aware of for the WPS was actually a euphemism
for “So long and thanks for all the fish!”
This kind of killed my spirit for soccer, particularly since DC United
had been simultaneously going through a long stretch of disappointments and mediocrity,
so I kind of tuned out to the sport and focused on tennis instead.
Now there is
supposed to be a new league starting play next summer. This makes me a bit excited again. Who will be in the player pool? Will key players be assigned to teams or will
everything work through drafts? Can the
DC team get Abby Wambach, please? Will the
teams play in the same stadiums as the professional men’s league teams, which
has always been my hope. Since all the
announced cities have MLS teams, that would make sense and could help reduce
costs and marketing expenses. Men’s and
women’s doubleheaders! So I started
checking the news reports for details about the new league. There is not much info out there right now
but a lot of what is available is compiled below. It sounds like the lack of funding that sunk
the previous leagues will not be an issue this time around and hopefully they
can arrange for a decent broadcast schedule
because from the early reports, my big issue with the Washington DC team in this
league will be the fact that they won’t be in DC! They will be in Maryland, at the
SoccerPlex. Sigh…..
D.C. Will Have Team In New Women's
Soccer League
(By Baltimore Sun, 22 November 2012)
Undeterred
by two failed attempts in the past decade, soccer organizers announced
Wednesday plans for a first-division national pro women's league starting in
the spring. Washington is among eight teams, joining Boston, Chicago, Kansas
City, New Jersey, Portland, Rochester and Seattle. The league will feature
approximately 24players from the gold medal-winning U.S. national team, 16 from
Canada's program (2012 bronze medal) and 12 from Mexico, the third-best team in
CONCACAF. The Washington franchise will be overseen by the same group that has
operated D.C. United Women, a two-year-old second-tier club based at Maryland
SoccerPlex in Montgomery County.
That team
will continue to play in the W-League as a reserve team to the new pro squad.
Neither will use D.C. United in its nickname. (United had licensed its name but
didn't have a formal relationship with the women's operation.) The
first-division squad will play in the new league at the SoccerPlex. Season
tickets will go on sale next week. The U.S. Soccer Federation will operate the
unnamed league and receive financial assistance from the Canadian and Mexican
governing bodies. Stadiums and private investors were not disclosed. Each team
will play 22 regular-season matches.
Professional Women’s Soccer League To
Include Team From Seattle
(By Nick
Eaton, Seattle Pi, 22 November 2012)
On
Wednesday, the U.S. Soccer Federation announced the creation of a new women’s
professional league, which will feature eight teams including one from
Seattle. Seattle’s newest soccer club
does not have a name yet, but will be a founding member of the new professional
league, along with teams from Portland, Boston, Chicago, western New York, New
Jersey, Kansas City and Washington, D.C. It wasn’t immediately clear what the
new team would mean for Seattle’s existing semi-pro women’s soccer team,
Sounders Women.
Bill
Predmore, president of the Seattle-based digital marketing agency POP, will own
the Seattle team. “We are thrilled that
the (federation) has selected our club to represent Seattle in the new league,”
Predmore said in a statement. “In our proposal we articulated a clear mission:
to become one of the best women’s soccer clubs in the world. We believe the
fans in Seattle deserve nothing less and we look forward to earning their
support over the coming weeks and months.”
The preseason is expected to start in March 2013 with a 22-game regular
season kicking off in April. The season format will be triple-round-robin with
the league’s other seven teams, plus one bonus match and a fourth bonus match
against Portland. There are expected to be 11 home games for each team.
Even with
the city’s love of soccer soaring after Seattle Sounders FC reached its first
Western Conference Final this fall, the soccer scene could be getting a little
crowded here. The new club will be the third professional soccer team in
Seattle and the second professional women’s team including the Sounders
Women. The new women’s soccer league
will attempt to fill a void left by the dissolution of Women’s Professional
Soccer (WPS) in May. Predmore told seattlepi.com in August that the new Seattle
franchise will not be a rebranded version of the Sounders Women of the USL
W-League, as Seattle Sounders FC of the MLS was a rebranding of the old Seattle
Sounders of the USL. Predmore said he
has been a fan of women’s soccer “for a long time,” and when he heard rumblings
that a new league was in its infancy, he was eager to get involved.
The Sounders
Women made a huge splash this past season with the signing of U.S. National
Team superstars Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Sydney Leroux and Megan Rapinoe as they
trained for the London Olympics. But the Sounders Women will remain in the
W-League after the club’s proposal to join the U.S. Soccer league was denied. Over the past few months, Solo made clear her
displeasure at the lack of an elite professional league in the U.S. In August,
Predmore made it equally clear that the new professional league hopes to woo
Solo and the rest of the national team’s stars.
“Right now, there’s literally dozens of amateur clubs that are out
there,” he said then. “The idea is to get the best of the best together in this
new league, and I think the argument is that the best players are going to want
to play against the best.”
The new club
will have ties to the Sounders Women, however, in former Sounders Women general
manager Amy Carnell, who will join the new team in a senior leadership
position, according to a statement released by Predmore on Wednesday. “Congratulations to Bill with the new team
and league,” Sounders Women CEO Lane Smith said in a separate statement.
“Seattle is a fantastic market for soccer and the Seattle Sounders Women wish
them the best in the upcoming inaugural season. With this new team and the
Seattle Sounders Women’s continued representation in the long-established
W-league, Seattle soccer fans will be blessed with the opportunity to attend
many high-level women’s soccer matches.”
New Professional Women's Soccer
League Announced
(By Charles Poladian, International Business Times, 21
November 2012)
Another
important incentive for the professional women's soccer league's success will
extend beyond just monetary growth and the sport's growth, according to
ProSoccerTalk. PST notes the U.S, Mexico and Canada all need a way to train new
players for the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup. The U.S. is a women's soccer
powerhouse with Canada close behind. Mexico is developing its women's soccer
program and would definitely want a place to nurture talent.
The league
will kick off in March. The eight U.S. teams will be from Washington, D.C,
Boston, Chicago, New Jersey, Kansas City, Seattle, Portland and Western New
York, notes Reuters. The season will last
22 games, according to The Washington Post. There have been few details
released, including basics like the league's name, playoff structure, any
sponsors or investors, team names and stadiums. The Washington Post reports
that the D.C. women's team will play in the Maryland SoccerPlex, with ticket
sales starting next week.
Third Time The Charm? Another Women’s
Pro Soccer League To Launch After 2 Previous Failed
(By Associated Press, 21 November 2012)
WUSA folded
in 2003 after three seasons, failing to capitalize on the success of the 1999
World Cup. More recently, Women’s Professional
Soccer folded this year, also after three seasons. With a vested interest in ensuring national
team players have somewhere to play in the years leading up to the 2015 World
Cup, U.S. Soccer is stepping in this time to seek to create a viable economic
model. The teams will still be privately owned, but the federation will pay for
the salaries of 24 national team players.
U.S. Soccer also will fund the league’s front offices. “We are subsidizing the private sector here
to try to make it sustainable, to try to make the investments necessary by the
private sector smaller,” U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati said on a
conference call.
The Canadian
and Mexican federations also will pay the salaries of some of their players,
with the same goal of ensuring their national teams are well-prepared for the
World Cup. That means each club won’t have to spend on salaries for up to seven
players. “We won’t start off with the
sort of deficits that we started the last two leagues with,” Boston Breakers
managing partner Michael Stoller. The
league will try to save money compared with the WPS in other ways, as well.
Gulati said teams might sign fewer elite international players. Clubs will play
in smaller stadiums to lower operating costs and do less marketing. “What we need is a sustainable model: less
hype, better performance,” Gulati said. “The hype will come if we have the
performance.” U.S. Soccer could have
held a residency program for its national team players, as it has done at times
in the past. Gulati said new coach Tom Sermanni and other officials believe the
best way for players to improve is by competing in a league. The federation’s involvement will also allow
it to make sure the league’s schedule doesn’t conflict with national team
activities.
U.S. Soccer
has a handshake agreement with one national sponsor and is looking into a
potential television deal, Gulati said. He expected some players would
essentially be semi-pro, joining a team while working part-time or going to
grad school, saving the squads more money on salary. But with star power guaranteed from players
on the Olympic gold medalist U.S. team, Stoller insisted: “This is a true
professional league and standard of play.
The one thing that has absolutely not changed is the teams’ commitment
to professional training and professional environment for the players,” he
said.
WPS Shutdown Might Mark The End Of
U.S. Women’s Pro Soccer Efforts
(By Steven Goff, Washington Post, January 30, 2012)
Well, it
happened again: Just as American women’s soccer was enjoying the limelight, it
was jolted by another major setback on the professional front. In the fall of 2003, with the Women’s World
Cup weeks away, Mia Hamm and the sport’s greatest generation were sidelined by
the demise of the three-year-old Women’s United Soccer Association. On Monday,
the day after the U.S. national team celebrated an Olympic berth by hammering
Canada by four goals in the CONCACAF regional final in Vancouver, Women’s
Professional Soccer announced it was suspending operations after three
seasons. Two strikes and you’re out?
Perhaps.
League
officials and investors say they will reorganize and hope to relaunch in 2013,
but with each failure, the prospects of a top-tier women’s league succeeding in
this country dims. WPS closed shop less
than two months after the U.S. Soccer Federation granted it provisional
sanctioning as a Division I pro league. The USSF agreed to it even though the
league didn’t meet D-1 standards. The federation was inclined to reject the
request, but in the best interests of women’s soccer, threw the league a
lifeline. (Without sanctioning, a league doesn’t have access to game officials,
among other issues, and imperils the standing of its players.) So things seemed on course for a five-club
league this summer and, under terms of the agreement with the USSF, a six-team
circuit in 2013 and eight the following year.
But soon
there were signs WPS might not even make it to opening day. The Insider reported
last week that several U.S. national team players, including Hope Solo, were
not going to play in the league this year. WPS believes it has plenty to offer
fans beyond Solo, Abby Wambach and others, but realistically, the foundation of
support isn’t strong enough in the league’s fragile development to thrive
without marquee American players.
WPS was also
hampered by legal action – and the subsequent financial strain – brought by Dan
Borislow, the notorious MagicJack boss, who went to court after being booted
from the league last season for violating terms of ownership. “I’ve only been onboard for four months, and
the bulk of my time has been spent on addressing a lot of these other negative
issues regarding termination of MagicJack and the sanctioning issue with U.S.
Soccer and resulting issues with sponsors and such,” WPS chief executive
Jennifer O’Sullivan said during a media conference call Monday afternoon. “It is unfortunate that the attention and
focus that needed to be on the business, growing the business and developing
the game and the sport just hasn’t been able to be there. Until this
[MagicJack] situation is resolved, I don’t believe we can fully put our
attention to it. It would’ve been unfair to put together a season while we
would’ve still had this hanging over our heads.”
Even without
the Borislow distraction, one has to wonder about the lasting power of women’s
pro soccer. In the big picture, women’s soccer is still an “Olympic sport” –
meaning it captures the attention of the general public every few years for
major international competition (in this case, the Olympics and World
Cup). It’s the same for Olympic swimming
and speed skating: The public cares very deeply and genuinely when national
pride and gold medals are at stake but otherwise isn’t captivated. Wambach and
Solo, meet Michael Phelps and Apolo Anton Ohno.
America
celebrates her Olympians, and the absence of an affiliation with a pro team or
league doesn’t diminish their accomplishments. Solo and Wambach are as popular
(more popular?) in this country as Landon Donovan, who performed World Cup
heroics and has won four domestic pro league titles in MLS. Clint Dempsey is
American soccer’s most accomplished export, scoring goals regularly for Fulham
in the English Premier League, but he only wishes he were as well-known here as
overseas in order to secure an invitation to “Dancing With the Stars.” (No, not
really. He’s couldn’t care less. But you get the point.) On a daily-weekly-monthly basis, women’s
soccer struggles to find an audience and sustain a business. To repeat, this is
not a reflection of the the individual players, who are some of the most
committed, caring and community-oriented athletes I’ve ever covered. It’s more
a reflection of women’s soccer’s inability to bust out of the “Olympic sport”
genre.
So what
happens now? It’s unclear where the U.S. national team players will land this
spring. Most are under contract with the USSF and could enter into long-term
residency of sorts to gear up for the Olympics. Some could head to Europe. Some
might play for Borislow’s barnstorming team in Florida. When asked if that were
in the works, he told me: “I don’t want to speak for any of the players.
Getting [t]hem happy and to the Olympics should be all of our goals.” Said USSF President Sunil Gulati: “We have
had discussions with the [U.S.] coaching staff and will be increasing our
programming over the next six months.”
A gold medal
would help the WPS’s cause in attracting new sponsors and investors for 2013 –
or so the theory goes. After all, the buzz created by last year’s Women’s World
Cup in Germany offered only short-term dividends. So after watching franchises in Los Angeles,
St. Louis, Chicago and the Bay Area fold within two years, the Washington
Freedom move to Florida, MagicJack implode and then Monday’s punch in the gut,
it’s unclear whether Solo, Wambach and Co. will have the opportunity to perform
in a top-level U.S. league ever again.
While that would be disappointing to aspiring players and American soccer
in general, it reinforces the fact that pro sports are a business, not a cause.
And if the business isn’t working, the broader cause will suffer.
WPS Shuts Down Magicjack Franchise: A
Brief, Tortured History
(By L.E. Eisenmenger, National Soccer Examiner, October 27,
2011)
Borislow
purchased the Washington Freedom in November 2010, moved them to Florida and
rebranded them as magicJack after his Internet telephone device. The
commercial, oddly capitalized name immediately jarred the sensibilities of
soccer fans and the move offended longtime Washington, DC supporters. Borislow paid his players more than the other
teams could afford, but failed to hire a staff or trainer, maintain a
functional website and eventually released his coach and began to act as coach
himself, without an assistant. After he failed to meet WPS contractual
obligations by not displaying sponsor field boards, allowing post-game press
access to players or submitting match video to the League, on May 14, WPS
sanctioned Borislow for breach of contract and inappropriate conduct. The
magicJack had a point deducted from the standings and was billed for the League
arranging vendors to conduct the necessary work.
In an
infamous email to Jenna Pel at All White Kit, Borislow responded by referring
to WPS executives as "infidels" and the vendors as "organized
crime." On August 3, WPS attempted
to terminate magicJack at the end of the season for failure to meet contractal
obligations and Borislow responded by asking a Florida court to bar the League
from that action. "Mr. Borislow has
failed to honor his commitments to the detriment of the League, our players and
our partners, said the League statement. From unprofessional and disparaging treatment
of his players to failure to pay his bills, Mr. Borislow's actions have been
calculated to tarnish the reputation of the League and damage the League's
business relationships. Mr. Borislow's
many contractual breaches more than justify any decision by the League to
terminate his franchise." Borislow
responded with inflammatory rhetoric.
After the
formal complaint from players, Borislow was banned from the sidelines. Abby
Wambach, returning from Women's World Cup Germany, stepped up to the role of
player-coach and led magicJack to the WPS Semifinal, where they were defeated
2-0 by Philadelphia Independence. Seven
prominent U.S. Women's National Team players - Hope Solo, Jill Loyden, Christie
Rampone, Becky Sauerbrunn, Shannon Boxx, Lindsay Tarpley and Abby Wambach -
were rostered by magicJack and now will be looking for new teams.
