In strategic shift, NWSL aims to be a great sports league first, women's league second

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — For years, the global debate around the NWSL’s on-field product has centered around whether it is the best women’s soccer league in the world.

Recently, however, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman and an ever-expanding league office have mulled a more provocative question: Can the NWSL — a women’s soccer league that is barely a decade old — be one of the best sports leagues in the world? More bluntly: Can it be relevant and compete with MLS and the NHL? Or even the NFL or the NBA?

The answers to those questions might be less important than the fact that they are being asked. That line of thinking suggests the NWSL might finally be embracing that its core ingredient is the most important to the success of any league: it is, above all, entertainment. And the NWSL has an abundance of entertainment.

Saturday’s NWSL Championship between the Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit in Kansas City, Missouri, is a battle of the league’s top two teams. Orlando set a record for points (60) and unbeaten games to start a season (23), while both teams won 18 games in the regular season, jointly setting a league record.

Both Orlando and Washington narrowly prevailed last weekend in the most entertaining round of semifinals the NWSL has ever seen. It wasn’t just that all four teams played good soccer, and no, it didn’t matter that it was women’s soccer, either. The two games were sport at its most dramatic, captivating height.

Berman noted as much when she spoke at Audi Field on Saturday. The semifinal sold out in 72 hours. The Spirit’s quarterfinal also sold out despite overlapping the Washington Commanders NFL game being played in the area. “There was a time when that wouldn’t be in the realm of possibility,” Berman said.

What she said next matters more: “To really experience the energy of what I think is the emergence of an NWSL fan that really loves the game; they’re not just here for the environment or the experience, or to support women or women’s soccer players, but [they are] really enjoying the fact that the game itself is competitive and these are the best athletes in the world.”

For a league that for years emphasized its role as a women’s platform, it’s a shift that the NWSL is now positioning itself more simplistically: as a sport worth people’s attention, no strings attached about supporting a good cause.

The semifinals were must-see TV for the most casual sports fan. The Spirit won a penalty shootout over defending champ NJ/NY Gotham FC after Washington goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury stopped all three shots she faced. It was a tense, heated game in front of a raucous sold-out stadium in the nation’s capital — a crowd of 19,000-plus that erupted when the Spirit tied the score in second-half stoppage time.

A day later, the top-seeded Pride defeated the Kansas City Current behind an unforgettable, viral goal from six-time world player of the year Marta. That was the artistry before the drama: Orlando survived a late surge from Kansas City to win 3-2.

The league’s diehards know this well: Chaos is the ethos of the NWSL. And chaos is often entertaining.

This is the league where last-place teams win championships the following season (as Gotham did in 2023), results frequently change in the final minutes (the term “NWSL After Dark” was coined years ago to recognize the league’s unpredictable games), and just about anything weird can happen, including a player flipping the double bird to a referee on broadcast TV (yes, really).

Previous iterations of NWSL leadership too frequently failed to embrace the totality of the league’s gripping cinema. They also did not have the luxury of media rights deals that showcased the league’s product to the masses.

This season was the first of a four-year rights deal that the NWSL struck with ESPN, CBS, Amazon and Scripps (ION). The agreements meant that the majority of NWSL games were on TV this year and in places where sports fans already are.

ESPN calls itself the worldwide leader in sports, CBS is a major home of professional and college football, and both already broadcast several other soccer leagues, meaning the NWSL could (in theory) meet soccer fans where they already were. Amazon’s Prime Sports is a growing player in the space, and ION already successfully broadcasts WNBA doubleheaders as it now does for the NWSL.

Compare this to 2017, when the NWSL announced a historic media rights deal with A&E (including giving up equity in the league to A&E) that placed a weekly featured national TV game on Lifetime, the home of murder mystery romance movies on a loop. The league simultaneously launched the “Pass The Ball” campaign with celebrities talking about NWSL athletes as role models, which sounded more like an appeal for charity than an advertisement for an exciting product.

The partnership between the NWSL and Lifetime seemed great at the time, but the bar was low. The league had come from the depths of being broadcast on sketchy YouTube streams and a handful of games on cable. The message of going all-in on Lifetime was also clear: Women are the primary demographic of that channel, so of course women’s soccer would be a hit, right?

In retrospect, the thinking — of the Lifetime deal, but more so of how the league positioned itself, and what it thought to be its target demographic — was self-limiting. Fast-forward to today and the NWSL’s slogan is in its second year of a marketing campaign called “We Play Here,” which clearly positions the league as the home of world-class athletes.

The league’s front office has multiplied from a handful of hard-working folks in Chicago in the early years to approaching 100 now stationed in Manhattan in New York. Multiple senior executives at the league came from the NFL, and Berman joined from the NHL in 2022.

The billionaires buying up teams come with a wealth of sporting experience, too. Laura Ricketts, of the Ricketts family that owns MLB’s Chicago Cubs, purchased the Chicago Red Stars last year. The struggling franchise has a lot of work to do, but this year’s NWSL record crowd of nearly 40,000 at Wrigley Field represented an ambition and execution previously unthinkable in that market and, in large part, within the league.

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett was confirmed as an investor in and the new governor of Gotham FC days before the team’s championship win last year. The Tisch family has part-owned the New York Giants for the past three decades.

Earlier this year, Tisch Blodgett told ESPN that she treats Gotham as the same long-term investment as the Giants. She also sees a pathway toward making the club a globally recognizable brand, something other team owners have echoed.

“I’ve been really clear with my team that my vision is to build one of the best global sports franchises, period,” she said earlier this year. “That’s across men’s and women’s, that’s across sports, that’s across continents. When you think about the best global sports brands out there, there are no women’s teams on that list, and it’s just a matter of time until it is.”

One of the teams playing in Saturday’s NWSL Championship is attempting a similar trajectory. The Spirit are owned by Michele Kang, who also now owns French power Olympique Lyonnais and second-division English side London City Lionesses. Kang has been vocal about the need to invest in more infrastructure in the women’s game, and just this week she announced a $30 million investment in U.S. Soccer’s women’s and girls’ programs.

The key to a great sports product whether women’s soccer, American football or any other sport is entertainment. The NWSL is full of that, and it will be on display again Saturday in what might be the most anticipated final in league history.

Can the NWSL be a great sports league? There’s still growing to do, but at last, the league might finally be asking the correct questions.