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 suppose is essentially good for the expansion of the trade of ladies’s soccer.
Nonetheless, 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 because the mid-Nineties, now has 80 groups from coast to coast. However you probably 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 group for the Kansas Metropolis Present.
The map for girls’s soccer now has greater than 241 organized golf equipment in varied 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 deliver up a query: is that this sustainable?
I’m not so certain.
Enthusiasm solely goes up to now relating to the fortunes of athletic groups. It takes competent possession, advertising and marketing, and sponsorship to be able to create development in any league endeavor.
American soccer has had its share of disasters relating to possession and administration of groups. I’ve seen some groups which appeared to have been run like mom-and-pop grocery shops moderately than skilled franchises.
It’s a mannequin which by no means works. All you should 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 worry that the expansive development of those leagues isn’t at the price of due diligence and monetary competence.