Women’s soccer has been riding a wave ever since Carli Lloyd scored the goal to end all goals in the 2015 World Cup Final.
The NWSL has been selling tickets like never before, with more than half of the games played since the World Cup selling out, and a league-record-setting crowd of 21,144 gathering at Providence Park to watch the Portland Thorns play the Seattle Reign this past July 22nd.
The writing is on the wall: soccer has arrived. Abby Wambach knows this, and she has issued a rally cry to would-be sponsors, telling them to get a piece of the action early.
Speaking to Sporting News, Wambach had the following to say.
“The potential is huge. You see a little bit of a downtrend in some of these other major league sports in our country. So the corporate sponsors are going, ‘Alright, where’s the next Big Thing?’ And soccer is it. Soccer is the next big thing in this country.”
“You want to get in on the ground floor. Otherwise you're going to be paying tons of money. Like [how much] people pay for those advertisements for the Super Bowl and the NFL.”
“So get on it people. You guys are going to miss out if you don't."
It doesn’t take a Masters in Economics to see that Wambach has a point. Nailing down contracts for the right to advertise in the NWSL is much cheaper now, while the league is less popular, than it will be in the future, when the league grows into what we all hope it will be.
The NWSL still has a long way to go before it can command the kind of high priced advertising rights that the NFL commands; there is no guarantee it will happen. Furthermore, there is no gaurantee of preferential treatment in the future for sponsors that "get in on the ground floor." All that said, risk is inherent in much of business, and taking some could pay dividends should the NWSL establish itself.
The NWSL and Wambach mean business. The question is, does anyone else?
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