Are you ready for some Women's Futbol?

When the WUSA started, they actually had hopes of getting some crowds similar to what they pulled for the 1999 Women's World Cup. They did not bother to partner with MLS in an NBA/WNBA arrangement, since at that time, MLS was on very shaky ground, with AEG owning more than half the league. It was floundering, and the WUSA honchos thought they could recapture the summer of 1999.

And while a couple of cities enjoyed solid five-figure attendance (including Atlanta) for a year, the WUSA never came close to matching that. Some would say there just isn't enough of an audience for women's sports to sustain a professional women's sports league unless someone like the NBA is willing to hemhorrage money to keep it afloat. The WPS will partner with MLS teams, but I don't think there's enough interest in soccer to sustain what will soon enough be an 18-team men's league, much less a connected women's league. Diluting the MLS talent pool further will only give wannabe Eurosnobs another reason to save their money.

MLS attendance figures:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/stats/attendance?league=usa.1&year=2008&&cc=5901

Inflated by Beckham, exaggerated by the teams. The league is on solid footing, but is not as healthy as these (largely bullshit) numbers indicate. For instance, Home Depot Center capacity is 27,000. That's with the berm open and full. And in Beckham Year Two, was that a somewhat regular occurrence? Yet now, this league thinks it will not only ADD four more teams, but also partner with a women's league spearheaded by U.S. players few people have heard of?

Attempting to sustain an entire women's league WITHOUT a large group of household names will be a tough sell. This time, the WPS And make no mistake: the group that just won the gold medal isn't Hamm/Foudy/Chastain, etc. Good players, yes.

But saying signing Marta is like signing Beckham is absolute hyperbole to the nth power.

 

The answer, to the thread question, at least in Los Angeles, is 'no'.

http://goal.com/en-us/news/1698/womens-soccer/2010/01/28/1766168/womens-pro-soccer-discontinues-los-angeles-sol

LA Sol discontinuing.

 

That first post made me think of this from the Simpsons:

"You'll see all your favorite soccer stars...

Like Adiaga! Adiaga two! Badiaga! Aruglia! And Pizzoza!"

 

You forgot to add one more factor: The league started during a depression.

That isn’t the reason one of the marquee teams are folding, but it is a factor.

Well, when you are paying a player $500,000...

 

The league was a women's soccer league. I don't know how many more factors you need to get into than that.

 

Our local paper covers the local WPS team like a pro beat. Daily coverage in-season, sometimes multiple stories per day, regular off-season coverage. What's funny is the team doesn't actually play within their coverage area, and it draws only a few thousand per game. We can never figure out why they spend so much ink on this team. And the reader comments on the stories online are hilarious, blasting the paper for wasting so much space on something nobody wants to read. Oh well. Not my problem, but still funny/curious.

 

Well, he got that part right.