The National Women’s Soccer League championship became the most-viewed game in league history Saturday, averaging 915,000 viewers for the first primetime NWSL title game on CBS.
The viewership smashed previous numbers, increasing 71% from the 2021 championship, according to CBS Sports. It was also the most-streamed NWSL game for the company’s streaming service, Paramount+.
The numbers are due in part to increased investment by sponsors. Ally, a league partner who funded moving the championship to primetime, recently extended its contract with the league another five years. Other sponsors are also upping their investment, saying the key to success with the NWSL is overinvestment.
“We knew we had to overinvest to start to grow the league,” the chief marketing officer of Ally, Andrea Brimmer, said Friday during a Title IX event held by the NWSL. “You have to do a little bit of a different valuation when it comes to women’s sports because there isn’t parity yet. And if we as brands don’t overinvest, we’re never going to get to that parity.”
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Ally became a national sponsor of the NWSL in March 2021 and was the first banking partner in the league’s 10-year history. The company has a league-wide jersey sleeve sponsorship. The deal also delivered a portion of Ally’s sponsorship fees directly to players, and got the company involved in Diversity, Equality and Inclusion initiatives.
Since the initial agreement, there’s been a league-wide reckoning following reports of abuse involving multiple teams as recent as this year and extending to the inception of the league in 2012.
Former NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird, who was in place when the sponsorship deal began, resigned. Several coaches were removed from their positions. And the league and U.S. Soccer began independent investigations into the abuse reports and allegations of player concerns being ignored.
Ally could have cited a morality clause in its contract and walked away but instead doubled down and supported the players. Following the inaugural collective bargaining agreement between players and the league in February, Ally became an official partner of the NWSL Players association. The partnership included investing in The Players National Emergency Trust (NET), a fund created to assist players with financial hardships.
“Ally’s support for the NWSLPA at this moment in time is vital to the sustainability and longevity of players’ careers, which is linked to the growth of the league,” executive director of the NWSLPA Meghann Burke said during the February announcement.
Another official sponsor, Mastercard, joined the league in 2021 and became an NWSLPA partner in 2022.
Nationwide stayed on, too. The insurance company expanded the league’s community initiatives, including an additional $25,000 to this year’s Community Impact Leader, a title used to honor a team annually for their local service projects.
“We are invested in a kind of dangerous point, to explicitly grow the women’s game,” Vice President of Enterprise Marketing at Nationwide Brad Barnett said. “So, we looked at it as an enduring, long-term opportunity in partnership for us.”
NWSL sponsorship risk, reward
While the return on investment for partners won’t be clear for multiple years, the NWSL continues to draw improved viewership and fan involvement.
CBS forged a deal with the league in 2020, and it weathered well through the COVID-19 pandemic. The inaugural NWSL Challenge Cup, one of the first team sports competitions to return to play in a bubble that year, averaged 572,000 viewers for its opening game.
The current NWSL media rights deal with CBS is worth $1.5 million per year, according to the Washington Post, with the contract expiring next year. CBS has rights to an exclusive negotiating window to renew, which opened after the conclusion of Saturday’s final. For comparison, Major League Soccer and Apple agreed to a 10-year partnership earlier this year worth a reported $250 million annually, according to Sport Business Journal.
The NWSL surpassed one million fans through the turnstiles this year, viewership — in partnership with CBS — was up almost 30% year-over-year, and the four-game playoff averaged a league-record 21,000 fans across four cities, according to first-year NWSL commissioner Jennifer Berman. Saturday’s final recorded the second-highest attendance for a championship with 17,624 fans at Audi Field.
And despite the widespread reports of abuse, including the release of a damning independent investigation from former Attorney General Sally Yates ahead of the final, the league’s sponsorship revenue is up 90% year-over-year.
“I’m fortunate that I haven’t had to have — and I really can say this, honestly — a single hard conversation with a single sponsor at the league,” Berman said Friday. “Obviously, people have seen the news, there’s been a few exceptions to that at the local level. And to the extent that I’ve had any conversations directly or indirectly with them, the only thing we can do is be honest and transparent.”
Thorns owner Merritt Paulson was among the offenders named in Yates’ report. As a result, Alaska Airlines redirected its sponsorship funds from Portland to the NWSLPA’s Support the Players Emergency Trust. Racing Louisville’s sponsor, Sherman-Williams, made a similar move when the team’s former coach was named in the report.
The investigations aren’t the league’s only issue.
Barnett and Mastercard Senior Vice President of Global Sponsorships Michael Robichaud said their biggest surprise when partnering with the NWSL was how understaffed the league office was.
But Robichaud said he’s seen improvements even in the last six months. The league is in the process of adding a chief financial officer and head of people and culture.
“If this scares a partner, they’re not the right partner for us,” Berman said. “Because you can look at the global industry of sport and the corporate world and pretend these issues don’t exist, but they do.
“We actually want to be honest that those are hard issues, and we’re prepared to tackle them. So if you want to be part of creating a best-in-class solution that can be leveraged not just for the NWSL, but for all of them in sports and all industries, join us, there’s plenty of room in the bank for people to invest in the league.”
Team investment pays dividends on field
In addition to the league’s national partners, each NWSL team has a unique set of investing quandaries.
Paulson, for example, was a leader in this area. He provided top facilities for the Thorns, as he did his men’s team, the MLS’ Portland Timbers. The Thorns have been perennial contenders as a result and Saturday took home their third title, a league record.
Other clubs make the most of what they have. Many team employees worked multiple jobs and players sometimes had only mobile trailers as dressing rooms.
It was not until recently that expansion clubs — such as the San Diego Wave, Angel City FC (with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian as an investor) and KC Current — joined the league with deep pockets and quickly became top performers.
The 2022 NWSL runner-up has owners looking to strike the perfect balance. Angie and Chris Long took control of the Current in December 2020. The franchise, which started in Kansas City in 2012 before moving to Utah in 2017, has a marred past. The Longs acquired the team from businessman Dell Loy Hansen after he was forced to sell following reports of racist behavior and sexism in the office.
In less than two years, the Longs moved the team back to Kansas City, opened a privately-funded $18 million training facility and broke ground on the first stadium in the United States specifically built for a woman’s team.
“(Players) want to win. How else can they do that if they don’t have an elite environment built just for them?” Chris Long told CBS Sports before Saturday’s final.
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Right around the time of the new training facility opening, the Current went on a 13-game unbeaten streak. And after finishing a league-worst 10th-place a year ago, they became a championship finalist.
“It makes you want to play for something bigger,” veteran goalkeeper Adrianna Franch told USA TODAY Sports. “There’s an investment that the players put in, there’s an investment that the coach puts in, the club and the ownership and the front office staff, all of those things. And you can see that everybody’s invested together. And that’s allowed us to grow and set a standard and hopefully it’ll continue to grow and push other teams.”
Now, the question is: Will the stadium be big enough for the quickly accelerating success?
“I think one thing we have to go back and replan is, we only set it for 11,500. And look at the last three games, over 20,000 (fans),” Current midfielder Lo’eau LaBonta said. “The future is so bright.”
