NWSL seeking more fans after Cup victory

Megan Rapinoe, the lavenderhaired icon of women’s soccer, maintains that green is the key to her sport’s sustainability.

“For me, it’s about the Benjis,” she said.

Women’s soccer engages the U.S. every four years, then disappears for most fans like a comet leaving the solar system. In the wake of the Americans’ record-setting fourth World Cup title Sunday, the hard part remains: the weekly work of boosting the National Women’s Soccer League, where average attendance remains at a minor league level.

Fans have not handed over a sufficient supply of $100 bills displaying Benjamin Franklin’s portrait, and sponsors and broadcasters have not made enough of the six-, seven- and eight-figure agreements needed for the NWSL to rise to the level of men’s Major League Soccer.

“On the men’s side in MLS, they have owners with extremely deep pockets,” defender Crystal Dunn said. “If the women’s game is going to grow, it’s going to come down to us not kind of penny-pinching on things and really putting a lot of resources in.”

The Women’s United Soccer Association, launched as the first fully professional women’s league, folded in 2003 after just three seasons. Women’s Professional Soccer started play in 2009 and also lasted only three seasons.

NWSL took the field in 2013 and has a management contract with the U.S. Soccer Federation, which has listed nearly $8.5 million as expenses attributable to the league. The USSF pays the salaries of 22 allocated national team players, providing the NWSL a subsidy and the ability to market the top American players.

NWSL launched in 2013 with eight teams, increased to nine the following season and 10 in 2016, then went back to nine in 2018 — of which four share owners with MLS.

“When the league started, no one expected the league to survive seven seasons,” Utah Royals coach Laura Harvey said. “I think the biggest battle has already been overcome a little bit in the U.S. that a lot of women’s soccer faces across the world, is that people are willing to pay a ticket price to watch a game.”

MLS, which started with 10 teams in 1996, expanded, contracted and now has grown to 24 teams this season, with plans to expand to 30. MLS average attendance has risen from the 14,000 range at the turn of the century to about 22,000; the NWSL is from 5,000 to 6,000.

Women’s Cup final TV ratings surpass men’s from 2018.

The United States’ 2-0 victory over the Netherlands in Sunday’s FIFA Women’s World Cup final averaged nearly 15.6 million U.S. viewers on English- and Spanish-language television.

It was the most-viewed match this season, but a decrease from the 2015 final.

The match averaged 14.27 million viewers on Fox, according to the network and Nielsen, and peaked at 19.6 million. It was a 22 percent increase over last year’s FIFA World Cup men’s final between France and Croatia, which averaged 11.44 million.

The CONCACAF Gold Cup final between the U.S. and Mexico averaged 2.9 million on Fox Sports 1, making it the mostviewed non-World Cup match in the network’s five-year history.

The Copa America final between Brazil and Peru averaged 3.1 viewers on Telemundo.