NWSL needs higher attendance to make money: how to do it

Jessica Berman, the commissioner of the National Women’s Soccer League, understands that one key metric will drive success in every other area.

“I think we know, all of us who have worked in the sports industry for decades: The rocket fuel behind the growth of any sport league is attendance,” Berman recently told ESPN.

This year, the NWSL finally began filling the proverbial tank (and stadia) in earnest. A decade into its existence, the league surpassed 1 million fans in a season for the first time in 2022, marking 70% year-over-year growth. The final week of the regular season, which saw attendance leaders Angel City FC and the Portland Thorns each play twice at home, marked the first time the NWSL attracted more than 100,000 total fans in one match week.

This momentum has continued into the playoffs, which will culminate in the NWSL Championship on Saturday between the Kansas City Current and the Thorns. The four largest NWSL playoff crowds on record were all recorded over the past two weeks — first in Houston and then in San Diego, Portland and Seattle. The crowd of 26,215 for the first-round playoff game in San Diego on Oct. 16 is the new bar for a postseason game.

By any attendance metric at a league level, the NWSL is trending upward. That is a positive development in obvious ways, but it is also significant for teams whose bottom lines are still dependent upon ticket revenue, and for a league attempting to garner expansion fees and franchise valuations that are exponentially higher than even two years ago.

Exact percentages vary by team, but ticket sales still account for roughly half of an NWSL franchise’s annual revenue. That reality brings different consequences for NWSL teams figuring out how to attract fans, and for those…