Jessica Berman is the commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League.
According to Berman, the rocket fuel behind the growth of any sport league is attendance.
The NWSL started filling the tank this year. The league surpassed 1 million fans in a season for the first time in 2022, growing 70% over the previous year. In the final week of the season, Angel City FC and the Portland Thorns drew more than 100,000 fans to their games, making them the first NWSL teams to do so.
The NWSL Championship will take place on Saturday between the Kansas City Current and the Thorns. The four largest NWSL playoff crowds on record were all recorded in the past two weeks. The first-round playoff game in San Diego had a crowd of 26, 215.
The NWSL is on the rise. It's a positive development, but it's also significant for teams whose bottom lines are still dependent on ticket revenue, and for the league trying to get expansion fees and franchise valuations that are much higher than two years ago.
Half of an NWSL franchise's revenue is from ticket sales. There are different consequences for NWSL teams figuring out how to attract fans, and for those that continue to struggle at the gate.
The game for the NWSL was changed by expansion. In its first year in the league, Los Angeles-based Angel City FC drew an average of 19,105 fans per game.
Even the rich and famous of L.A. can't miss Angel City's women's soccer game because they invested in the team.
Angel City did something that most other NWSL owners have not been willing to do, they invested in a robust, experienced staff. The payoff came in the form of a season-ticket membership of 15,000 fans before their first regular-season game.
The Banc of California Stadium has a variety of seating options. The L.A. market has an average ticket price of $42 per game, but exclusive suites run in the tens of thousands for the season, which means a higher potential revenue from games. Angel City's single-game gate revenue was over $1 million according to a club spokesman.
Angel City president and co-founder Julie Uhrman said that attendance was the most important indicator of success. If you can drive fans to a game and have them come back regardless of whether they are winning or losing, that shows you can create that connection.
After San Diego Wave FC moved to a new stadium late in the season, attendance went up. The sellout crowd for the first game at the stadium set a league attendance record.
In a lot of ways, attendance is the most important measure of a team's health and popularity. Fear of missing out is what makes a full stadium evoke the image of an important event. That impression that the NWSL is something lots of people want to be a part of helps drive other business interests for the NWSL.
The league's international and domestic media rights deals will end at the end of the current season and at the end of the following one. The NWSL's next media rights deal is expected to more than double from the $4.5 million committed by CBS in 2020. MLS, the NWSL's counterpart on the men's side, recently announced a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal with Apple.
Better attendance increases the appeal of the broadcast and streaming product. It means that growing attendance is what the NWSL wants to achieve.
"If you don't understand the relative dependency between each of these areas of the business, you can't really create goals from a business perspective," Berman said. From a media perspective, attendance will also be driven by distribution and viewers. Engagement from sponsors and brands is going to be driven by all of that.
Berman and company have set lofty goals for the NWSL.
Two expansion teams, one of which will be located in Utah, are expected to be announced in the coming months. The Kansas City Current replaced the Utah Royals in December 2020 and locked in Utah's return price of $2 million.
Dozens of groups have signed non-disclosure agreements to enter the formal bidding process for expansion According to multiple sources, the winning group's expansion fee is likely to be over $20 million.
Valuations are going up for existing teams. The Washington Spirit sold for $35 million earlier this year, 10 times the amount OL Reign sold for. NJ/NYGotham FC raised funding at a valuation of over 40 million dollars. Berman wouldn't confirm certain valuations or expansion fees.
They need to see signs that the NWSL is headed in the right direction in order to arrive at those numbers. The interdependence of attendance, media rights, and sponsorship means continued growth at the gates is crucial.
As attendance increases, dependency goes beyond the major buckets and into some of the smaller revenue streams that are more important.
"Attendance drives significant revenue for the clubs, not only in your ticket revenue, but the additional revenue streams of merchandise, concessions, parking." To be able to see a full stadium will make other people want to go to those games.
It is more exciting for potential media rights partners who want to get these rights because you are seeing the level of attachment to these games. Not to mention how it motivates these players to play their best on the field.
There is a lot for other clubs to learn from the success of the expansion sides.
The worst stadium situation in Kansas City in 2021 was a converted baseball field that drew the ire of players from home and away teams. It's expected to open in the year twenty four.
The Current moved to Children's Mercy Park, home of MLS'Sporting Kansas City, this season and averaged over 7,600 fans, a 63% increase from the previous year.
The club president said that ticket revenue accounts for a third of the total revenue. opening their own stadium will increase revenue for the Current and create a destination they hope is a sellout for each home game, but the expectation is that the move will skew revenue even more towards sponsorship What's the reason? A major sponsorship deal for naming rights to the stadium is expected by the club.
The Houston Dash, who have historically struggled to draw fans, made strides in attendance in their first season under majority owner Ted Segal.
Angel City and San Diego are no longer included in the equation. The teams struggling at the gate are not as far apart from the success stories as the other way around. Four of the league's 12 teams averaged less than 5,000 fans per game, including the Chicago Red Stars and the Chicago Fire.
In Bridgeview, Illinois, where the team plays well outside of the city, there are questions about the viability of the situation. The future of that market will be tested soon as the owner gets pushed out of decision making power. The club's board removed him as chairman and players demanded he sell the team after details of abuse in the NWSL were published. According to the report, the former head coach of the team was accused of mental and physical abuse of players throughout his coaching career.
There were a couple of Wednesday night games at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview that barely passed the 2,000 mark for attendance. The numbers are bad, but they depend on a number of factors. After the Fire left for Soldier Field, SeatGeek Stadium is assumed to be cheap to open, so poor ticket sales may not mean a big loss. Multiple teams in the NWSL pay six figures per game in expenses just to open the stadium, between rent and staffing.
In an interview prior to the Yates report, the former Red Stars chief business officer said that SeatGeek Stadium was a very economical place to go. She said a crowd of 5,000 could make a difference.
Even if the team's break-even number on tickets is below 5,000, the games still look like ghost towns.
The two largest media markets in the country, Chicago and New York, are among the worst attended in the NWSL, which is a problem for the league as a whole.
Sharing practices is one solution. The league office in New York will be used as a consulting practice to support teams in certain business areas. The league will be able to achieve economies of scale and sell leaguewide partnerships on behalf of teams by sharing best practices. The circulation of an internal league document in which clubs share their attendances and gate revenues is an example of this happening on an informal level.
The San Diego Wave advanced to the NWSL semifinals after defeating the Chicago Red Stars.
Howard said that all of them are in women's sports. Some of the markets that are struggling have league calls. We are helping each other out on our own. Here are some ideas that may work in your market to get you up another 500, a thousand. You attempt to be methodical.
Berman was the deputy commissioner of the National Lacrosse League. Teams met in person at an annual business summit after sharing strategies on weekly calls. There is a chance that something similar will happen for the NWSL.
Julie Haddon is the new chief marketing officer. The new director of strategy is a former NWSL player named Carlin Hudson. Berman will be reporting to her.
Getting the stragglers up to speed with the rest of the league will be a central part of the strategy. Berman believes that it's a way for the league to look at how each team sells and how others can learn from it.
There will always be discrepancies in how much an ownership group invests in a market. Some of the teams that are successful in metrics invest in different areas.
"The key to this strategy from a league perspective is going a layer deeper and really understanding what they are doing, what they've chosen to invest in, how they are measuring the successes of those investments, and then we analyzing all of that data and bringing it to particular markets where we
The word investment is being used in the NWSL. There is an urgent need to continue proving an upward trajectory as valuations rise.
Television and social-media engagement are positive, but there needs to be more people in seats.
"COVID really proved to all of us in this industry that, at the end of the day, the foundation of professional sports is that we are a live events business, and that you can do made-for-TV events, but the enthusiasm that you feel when you are at a I think that piece is the center of the pyramid.
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