By reasonable accounts, this current World Cup has been an unmitigated success for American women's soccer. Beyond the obvious success on the field, where now the only thing between the Americans and a World Cup is the winner of tonight's match between Japan and England, the team's run has sparked considerable interest amongst Americans, with well over 5 million of us watching the quarterfinal match against the rival Chinese team. Sunday's final will capture the fancy of far more than that, likely eclipsing the 18 million viewers that watched the 1999 Women's Cup final against China. Thus far, viewership has been considerably up from the past several cups, likely influenced because the event's location in Canada, allowing for prime time American viewing.
It's nowhere near the amount of attention the US Men's soccer team received in their most recent World Cup run, where they lost in the first game of the elimination round against Portugal after surviving the group of death. That loss attracted some 24 million American viewers, far more than will watch their female counterparts play for much higher stakes. Still, progress is progress, regardless of the relative gender comparatives.
That may or may not be true for the entirety of this event, where games have been played often in largely vacant stadiums. Canada did sell a lot of tickets, well over a million in fact, but perhaps didn’t quite get the return on investment they had fully hoped, although the government is quite tight lipped about how much was made or lost on these games. Clearly, the expenditures are nothing like lavish riches spent on an Olympic Games or men’s cup, but still, Canadians would like to know if their investment did pay off.
After the final game of the Cup, players on the American women’s team all have an American club to return to, all except team veteran Abby Wambach who chose to sit out this season. All the rest play for the somewhat fledgling National Women’s Soccer League, which currently has nine teams. The maximum salary per player is $25,000, including star talents like Hope Solo, who makes that for the Seattle Reign. Lesser players can make downwards of $6000 per season, a fraction of what their scholarships were worth in college. And you can probably get game attendance by eyeballing the stands, with average attendance for most teams between 2 and 4 thousand, not counting soccer crazy Portland where they get over 13,000 per home game.
This stands in contrast to the MLS, which now has created a viable home for male soccer players in the US. While it may not be NFL money, or even NHL cash, soccer players can now earn a real living without heading overseas, something unimaginable a mere generation past. Men’s soccer teams fill their right sized stadiums, playing to over 90% capacity of 20,000 seat stadiums. Where soccer fans in the US used to talk about American soccer like it was fake purse, it’s now a Toyota in NASCAR – not a traditional power, but acceptable none-the-less.
It’s hard to know whether this women’s World Cup will escalate their game on the same trajectory as the men’s. The largest growing contingency of soccer fans in this country are under the age of 25, a group that perhaps doesn’t carry the aged gender stereotypes of sport and physicality. Perhaps they may accept, even appreciate women’s soccer like they do men’s, something less likely for those of more hardened perspectives.
But I’ll say this. When I was at a Mets game last night, they continued to show highlights of the women’s victory over Germany. And after each American goal, a relatively small number of fans would cheer U-S-A, U-S-A. And that, unfortunately, is not enough to grow a sport or a movement. For women’s soccer to thrive in the US, it has to be more than cursory nationalism, a feel good moment under the summer sun before NFL pre-season begins. There has to be more than 18 million people coming and going, as if the there is nothing beyond the World Cup. There has to be genuine interest in the game itself, one played in this country as good as anywhere, even if its professional finances don’t reflect that. The ratings spike for this year’s World Cup is great, impressive even, but as for the future of the women’s game, it’s findings are inconclusive at best. Might women’s soccer grow after the summer of 2015? That measure of success remains to be seen.
Keith Strudler is the director of the Marist College Center for Sports Communication and an associate professor of communication. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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