This yr noticed the launch of the United Soccer League’s Superleague, which is a gaggle of eight skilled ladies’s soccer groups which has attained U.S.S.F. Division professional standing, which places the league on the identical degree of the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League.
The eight-team league, as we famous earlier than, has 5 groups which function in the identical media/geographical markets as groups within the NWSL, one thing which I don’t assume is essentially good for the expansion of the business of ladies’s soccer.
Nevertheless, there’s a USL division, the W-League, which has seen development the likes I’ve by no means seen. The W-League, which has been round in some type for the reason that mid-Nineties, now has 80 groups from coast to coast. However if in case you have a take a look at Twitter, you’ll see that there are a dozen new W-League franchises that are deliberate from Annapolis, Md. to Santa Clara, Calif.
The jumble of possession for subsequent yr contains model identities that are from different males’s groups (Indy Eleven, Annapolis Blues) or from different ladies’s groups (Racing Louisville, N.C. Braveness).
On the identical time, the Ladies’s Premier Soccer League, a league with 141 groups already, is including eight groups by itself, together with a feeder workforce for the Kansas Metropolis Present.
The map for ladies’s soccer now has greater than 241 organized golf equipment in numerous leagues the place there had been a mere 13 within the authentic U.S. Interregional Soccer League in 1995.
As nice as this development is for the world of ladies’s soccer right here within the U.S., this brings convey up a query: is that this sustainable?
I’m not so certain.
Enthusiasm solely goes to date on the subject of the fortunes of athletic groups. It takes competent possession, advertising and marketing, and sponsorship so as to create development in any league endeavor.
American soccer has had its share of disasters on the subject of possession and administration of groups. I’ve seen some groups which appeared to have been run like mom-and-pop grocery shops slightly than skilled franchises.
It’s a mannequin which by no means works. All it is advisable do is take a look at the collapse of AC St. Louis, the Hampton Roads Mariners, and the Maryland Mania as cautionary tales.
I severely concern that the expansive development of those leagues isn’t at the price of due diligence and monetary competence.
