The NWSL Had A Record Breaking Year With More Growth Expected

The National Women’s Soccer League concluded its 2023 regular season with a flourish. The league announced record breaking attendance and is adding two new franchises in 2024, with more planned for 2026. Also, the NSWL recently negotiated a record- breaking media rights agreement. The championship game, aired in primetime on CBS and Paramount+ was highlighted by the last game of soccer legends Megan Rapinoe and Ali Krieger and was the second most watched game, to date, in league history.

For its regular season, attendance to NWSL games exceeded 1.2 million, a year-over-year increase of 26%. (In 2022 attendance had grown by 50% compared to the previous season.) Megan Rapinoe’s final regular season home game for OL Reign set a league record for attendance with over 34,000 spectators at Seattle’s Lumen Field. Furthermore, ten franchises reported an increase in total home attendance compared to the previous season. NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman noted the number of matches with an attendance over 10,000 spectators had doubled.

With attendance increasing, last week, the NWSL announced a new four-year media rights agreement involving four partners; CBS Sports, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video and Scripps Sports. As a result, next season there will be 118 games on television and/or streamed across four national distributors. This is nearly a fourfold increase from 30 games in 2023. The remaining regular-season games will be produced and distributed by the NWSL and streamed. The new media agreement starts with 2024 and finishes in 2027, coinciding with the next FIFA Women’s Soccer World Cup. The United States is one of the locations bidding to host the tournament.

The value of the contract is $240 million, or $60 million per annum. The previous media rights contract had been a three-year $4.5 million agreement ($1.5 million per annum), with only CBS. Hence, the new media rights agreement is a multiple of 40 times greater. It is also reportedly, the most lucrative media rights agreement for any women’s sports league to date. In 2023, NWSL games on CBS reported a year-over-year increase in viewers of 41%, the streaming audience on Paramount+ grew by 83%.

Under the new agreement:

· The NWSL will begin every regular-season weekend with a Friday night game on Prime Video.

· Each Saturday night the Scripps-owned ION will televise a studio show at 7 p.m. (ET) followed by a double-header with games starting at 7:30 p.m. (ET) and 10 p.m. (ET).

· A package of regular season matches will air on CBS and streamed live on Paramount+, with additional matches airing on cable’s CBS Sports Network.

· ESPN will air a package of games across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes (Spanish). All NWSL matches on ESPN platforms and on ABC will also be streamed live on ESPN+ in English and Spanish. The ESPN package also includes English, Spanish and Portuguese-language rights in Latin America.

For the 2024 season, the NSWL will expand to 14 teams with the addition of Bay FC and the return of Utah Royals FC. With the additional two teams, the league will also expand its postseason from six teams to eight teams qualifying. Hence, there will now be four quarterfinal games (instead of two). For 2024 the expanded postseason media schedule will be:

· Prime Video and CBS will have the rights to one quarterfinal each. ESPN/ABC will air the remaining two quarterfinals.

· CBS and ESPN/ABC will each televise a semifinal game.

· Once again, CBS will televise the championship game in primetime. Under the previous contract CBS has televised the three previous NEWSL championship games. The game will also be streamed on Paramount+.

NWSL said CBS will air at least 21 games, ESPN/ABC will total 20 games, Prime Video will have 27 games and Scripps will air 50 games. ION will televise the league draft in January.

In a press release, NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman, noted, “These partnerships fundamentally change the game for our league and the players who take the pitch each week. On behalf of the NWSL, our owners and players, I want to commend CBS Sports, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps for investing in our league and affirmatively declaring to the marketplace that this league is exciting, valuable, and important.”

Commissioner Berman also said the league is committed to further expansion. In 2026, a Boston based franchise will become the 15^th NWSL franchise, with an unannounced 16^th franchise anticipated. Boston (along with the Bay Area) will be paying a $53 million expansion fee.

The 2023 NWSL championship game featured NJ/NY Gotham FC and OL Reign and was played in San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium. Megan Rapinoe’s illustrious career ended early, the 38-year-old, left the game in the third minute of play with a non-contact injury. In a wild finish, Ali Krieger’s NJ/NY Gotham FC prevailed by a score of 2-1.

In the final minute of play, Gotham goalie Mandy Haught was issued a red card for touching the ball with her hands outside the goalie box. Since Gotham had run out of substitutions, they were forced to rely on midfielder Neely Martin as the substitute goalie. Gotham held on for the victory. In 2022, the NJ/NY Gotham FC finished in last place.

The attendance of the NWSL championship game was 25,011, the largest crowd of any of the 11 NWSL championship games. The contest also averaged 817,000 viewers, in primetime on CBS and Paramount+, the second highest of any NWSL game. Surpassed only by last year’s title game, also in primetime on CBS and Paramount+, with an average audience of 915,000 viewers, a 74% increase from the 2021 championship game of 525,000 viewers.