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- BEHIND THE PLAY #15
A: Yes, but…
I was going to do a bit on the Messi no-show debacle this past weekend but will let that sit for awhile. Instead, now that Halifax has been announced as the fourth franchise and there’s teasers for announcements on their social media, here’s a totally overhauled version of a bit I wrote a year ago about the emergence of Project 8’s plans for a Canadian women’s professional league. Apparently two more teams will be announced soon and the league still plans to launch in spring of 2025. Apologies in advance. This is a long, somewhat scattered BTP today.
Occasion to habit to priority
I’ll start with this. I would love to see a professional women’s league and would put my money behind that sentiment. I have been engaged with girls’ and women’s soccer in Canada for decades now going back to attending and getting my daughter’s team to be ball girls for a women’s national team game vs the Netherlands at UBC Thunderbird Stadium in 2006. I coached girls’ and women’s teams from 2000 through to 2013. I wrote many articles covering the women’s national team going back to the qualifying tournament for the 2012 Olympics at BC Place.
But a professional league for women is a very difficult task and needs to be done right. If it’s done wrong in its first attempt it will likely be at least another decade before another attempt is made.
For me, a successful league needs to be fundamentally premised on the idea of moving the popularity of women’s soccer in Canada past being an “occasion” like the Olympics and the World Cup through to becoming a “habit” that is taken up more naturally, often and excitedly until it becomes a “priority”; something that is sought out, is felt personally and has personal resources ready to be committed to it.
How do you persuade tens of thousands of people to make this journey? Through a consistently and naturally evolving narrative and identity.
The ‘occasion’ has always been the Olympics and the World Cup. For the overwhelming percentage of CanWNT supporters this has asked little of our time and even less of our wallet. Games are on TV and aside from the 2015 Women’s World Cup held in Canada, we have seldom been presented with the suggestion of buying a ticket aside from the odd exhibition game in Canada and perhaps women’s university soccer or League 1 games in BC, Ontario and Quebec. Anyone who has been to the last two and seen attendance numbers knows those games are not examples of rampant support for a women’s professional league.
Our primary resources as people are time, money and emotions. Our emotions push us to allocate the time and money in particular directions. Long term support for a professional women’s soccer league will require a re-allocation of these resources. For that to happen, people have to be given a reason to do so.
The most passive, non-committal application of one’s personal resources to the game is to watch it on TV, diminished further only if it is not watched live and on CBC which virtually all Canadians have free access to. This would be the lowest form of engagement with women’s soccer yet it is by far the most prevalent.
One step up from that is to watch the game on a channel that requires a subscription such as OneSoccer or FuboTV. Next is to attend women’s soccer games in person that are free and easy for you to get to. Then add having to purchase a ticket and maybe buying a scarf or a jersey. Then add travel until you reach the highest level of engagement: flying to another country and paying scalpers multiples over face value for a ticket to see your team. At this point you are fully committed time-wise, financially and emotionally.
So it has been low barriers to this point through which most have declared their support and allegiance. In essence, wake up a bit early and turn the TV on. In recent years when supporters of both the women’s and men’s teams were asked to subscribe to OneSoccer to watch games as the CSA finally found someone willing to give them money for broadcast rights, we saw pushback. Temerity on social media ran high as people expected to get the things they liked and that were important to them for free and in the convenience of their own home.
But then the Canadian women’s national soccer team won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and before the medals were around their necks a familiar battle cry was launched across Twitter, “We want a professional league for women in Canada!”
But how and how many of those demanding a professional women’s league can be persuaded to make the jump from the lowest level of engagement in the women’s game to a much higher level? How many will put their own money down to make it happen rather than demanding others do so at an exponentially higher dollar value?
There also seems to be an inverse correlation between the stridency of these demands and the awareness of the very real reasons why it is so difficult to get a Canadian, male or female, professional league off the ground. Too many want to write off the difficulties and just say rich people should pay for it. We as Canadians are exceptionally good at telling other people what they should spend their money on.
NWSL vs Canadian demographics
Increasingly the NWSL’s recent success in the States in increasing attendance at games and in improving broadcast terms has led many in Canada to point to it as a proven model that Canada can and should follow.
This is highly speculative.
Canada is a string of average sized cities strung across a distance the equivalence of going from London to Istanbul. And back. The NWSL is now in its 12th season. They have 14 teams. The league started with nine in 2013. Three have folded, one re-located and six new franchises have joined starting in 2014 and most recently with teams coming on board in San Diego and Los Angeles. Boston will join in 2026 and several others, including Toronto FC, are said to be kicking the tires. The NWSL is in the best shape its ever been in but it has taken eleven years to get to this point and seen considerable turnover in franchises along the way.
Keep in mind the USA has almost nine times the population of Canada and has 56 cities with a Metro population over one million. Canada has six cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton) over one million and another five over 500k. Halifax has a metro population of 465,000. There are 115 American cities with a Metro population higher than that.
So travel is disproportionately expensive for teams in Canadian leagues given the scarcity of metro populations that can reasonably support a professional sports franchise. The list of cities large enough to have a reasonable chance of successfully supporting a women’s team are, literally, few and far between.
So it’s clear there are demographic and geographic concerns facing a Canadian women’s league. Also, it has taken four or five failed attempts at a women’s league in the USA to get to the point where the NWSL is a functioning and growing league. There were two huge positives for NWSL attendance in 2023. The first is the average attendance last season broke through the 10,000 barrier for the first time and the second is that the two newest franchises, San Diego and Angel City FC, were first and second in attendance. Both averaged more than 15 of the 29 MLS franchises did in 2023.
While the breakout couple of seasons the NWSL has had are a great omen for women’s soccer, it makes it more difficult for a neighbouring, fledgling league to compete. Project 8 franchises will have a hard time attracting top players given the higher salaries that teams averaging 10,000 attendees a game can offer and the credibility that the league has earned to get where it is today.
If there is to be a national, professional league in Canada ideally there needs to be at least eight teams. Project 8 plans to launch with six, having four announced at the moment with two more in the pipeline. They have a stated goal of getting to twelve teams after ten years. My hope is the can get to eight by 2027. Logically the six largest cities mentioned above should all be in the league. Halifax we now know is in. There’s no chance Edmonton is coming in having just folded their men’s CPL team. CF Montreal despite having former women’s national team star Amy Walsh working as their women’s soccer “collaborator” have given no indication yet that they plan to add a women’s professional team to match their men’s MLS team. That leaves Winnipeg, Ottawa or Hamilton; the next biggest cities. In other words, we are not a country that has a deep pool of places to get a league like this off the ground.
League model: franchise vs fan owned
Club ownership is perhaps the most crucial but most quickly dismissed consideration in a women’s league. To this point it’s been a foregone conclusion that it should be wealthy individuals or existing MLS clubs who own and bankroll these teams. Social media and former players have lined up to cajole, beg and shame multi-millionaires to pay for something they want to see happen.
I disagree strongly with this model and will explain why later on.
Strangely, in light of the fact that there is an example of alternate ownership present in the women’s (and men’s) League 1 BC setup in the form of TSS Rovers, no other model seems to be given any real consideration. TSS Rovers are the only semi-pro men’s and women’s teams in Canada to offer supporters the chance to be an owner (full disclosure, I own one share). TSS chose to sell up to 49% ownership of their teams. They have raised north of $250,000 using this model and created a thriving culture and community around their teams in the process.
You can do all the surveys and forecasting that you want to determine viability, profitability and durability but if you want stability long term for a league like this the best measure is if you can find a few thousand people who will put their money where their mouth is and join the project. That alone will show whether you can move the needle, well before the team plays its first game, and build a financial base that will become a supporter base and will manifest at some point as a huge part of the club’s identity. This will become your narrative. Beyond social media posts that talk about ‘community’ and signing ‘partnership’ deals with the local youth club, can you establish that enough people actually care about your product and vision to write a cheque and join with you as an owner.
The narrative then becomes that the game is yours. Not a fickle billionaire’s who may move on at some point and take the franchise with them to what they see as greener pastures or worse shut it down to take a tax loss. It belongs to people who want a tactile connection to their community, the game being played within it and a club that abides by principles and values they can relate to both on the field and off.
Expenses
So for the purposes of conjuring up a list of revenues and expenses, I’m going to assume a hybrid model is on the table and a majority owner has the ability and inclination to mirror TSS Rovers’ approach and bring supporters into ownership.
A presentation by Matheson I was at last fall on the numbers was illuminating and forthright on the subject. They are projecting a $1.5m salary cap with some ‘designated player’ salaries. The minimum salary will be $50,000 per season (slightly higher than the 2024 NWSL minimum once currency is converted) and some of the player pools they are identifying for rosters are the 130+ Canadians currently playing professionally abroad, current underpaid and/or underplayed CanWNT players and some experienced international players who may or may not be Canadian. They seem to be allocating seven roster spots for non-Canadians on each team. The season will be eight months long (April to November, not including pre-season training).
The challenge here is convincing current national team players who know that to maintain their standing on the national team they have to be playing at the highest level of club football available to them. A new league in Canada is not going to do that. Investors, supporters and sponsors should all be clear on that. This will primarily be university players and League 1 players, of which there is already a considerable overlap in rosters. There may be a few hidden gems out there that would make these rosters and maybe a few national team players who realize their time at that level is winding down who will be happy to play in the new league but anyone who thinks the current starters on the women’s national team are going to sign up for a Canadian professional league team in its first few years are in for disappointment.
Here is where the 24 women’s national team players currently listed on the CSA website are playing:
Women’s Super League (England): 8
NWSL: 8
Top divisions in Italy*, France, Portugal, Sweden and Benfica: 6
NCAA Div 1: 2
*Julia Grosso is in the process of leaving Juventus and likely moving to NWSL
Is a new Canadian league going to draw players who are currently playing in any of these professional leagues or get them to drop out of Harvard (Jade Rose) or USC (Simi Awujo)?
Regardless, rosters of 18 paying an average of $75,000 comes to $1.35m. Head coach and another three staff at an average of the same comes to another $300k.
Travel costs have astutely and largely been taken care of via a sponsorship deal with Air Canada. Travel parties of 18 players and four staff means 11 hotel rooms at $175 for twenty nights (assuming six team league and everyone plays each other twice at home and twice away; staying two nights for each away game) and an $80 per day per diem plus 15% for incidentals (vans, practice field rentals, etc) and travel to away games is coming in around $85k per team. This does assume no cost for flights which may not be accurate.
Stadiums could actually end up being either the easiest or most difficult expense and after player signings the most difficult to get right. Location and capacity are critical. The best model here is probably what Vancouver FC in the CPL have done. They focused on the location and then built a simple, inexpensive stadium that they decided the ideal capacity for. While it’s unclear what their arrangement with the city of Langley is for using the space it’s a very creative and practical solution that amortized over ten plus years will prove to be very cost-effective. Knowing that you can get capacity-appropriate stadia in the Lower Mainland for less than $1000/day, especially if you’re set up as a not for profit society, let’s call the stadium costs $18,000 inclusive of any staffing costs. That would be a low-end estimate, augmented by game day staff largely being volunteers. Location is critical though. Finding a place to play that’s within a 30 minute drive, bus or bike ride for at least 300,000 people should be a very important metric in the decision on where to play.
Add in four part time admin staff at $30,000 each (on average) and it looks like this for a rough budgeting of expenses:
Players and coaching staff:`$1,650,000
Travel: $85,000
Stadium: $18,000
Admin staff: $120,000
Miscellaneous: $75,000
Total: $1,948,000
If franchise fees are indeed going to be a thing and the $1,000,000 that is being put forth is accurate, amortize that over ten years and add $100,000 to the operating expenses to make it $2,048,000.
Balls, kit and related equipment bring it up to about $2.1m.
Worth noting that having player salaries comprise 64% of your turnover in a league that will have no broadcast revenue (see below) is not a metric you want to sustain for too long.
Revenues
So how do you offset those expenses? How do you structure the ownership shares that will be made available? The first thing I’ll suggest is that if you can’t convince at least 3000 to buy in at a minimum of $1000 each (not including a season’s ticket) then it’s very unlikely that you have the level of engagement necessary for this to be a viable venture given the expenses. It really should be the litmus test for all teams considering entry to the league.
A professional league means paying all those in critical positions enough money to be competitive on the field and in the labour market. While membership shares is clearly not the only revenue source it is a critical one in terms of revenue generation and community generation. It is the foundational piece in the narrative that moves people from occasion to habit and through to priority in terms of engagement so it is of fundamental importance to get right.
So let’s call it 3000 people at $1000 each and they get one youth season ticket. That’s $3,000,000. Assume season tickets for 10-12 home games (league and Cup) sell for an average of $250 each and between owners and others 4000 are sold. That’s $1,000,000. This is probably the revenue line item that is most important yet has the ability to have the biggest swing one way or the other. Project 8 has explicitly said they don’t expect any meaningful broadcast revenue for the first five years. Game day ticket sales? Conservative estimate of another 1000 at an average of $25 per ticket over 12 home games is $300,000. Corporate sponsorship per team, based on a share of league sponsors and individual team sponsors? $75,000 in cash and in kind (hotels, kit etc).
So as with expenses here’s what revenues could feasibly look like with the assumption of 10% of ownership share revenues being made available for operating expenses.
10% of owner share revenue: $300,000
Season ticket sales: $1,000,000
Broadcast rights share: $0
Game day ticket sales: $300,000
Sponsorship: $75,000
That’s $1,675,000; 80% of projected expenses.
But we now now that the CSA has been able to pass a motion that will see 50 cents of every player in the country’s registration fee go to Project starting in 2025. Based on 2023 registration numbers that will amount to $366,666 each year. Assume Project 8 keeps a bit to keep their lights on and disburses $300,000 to the six clubs. That’s another $50k revenue bringing the total to $1,725,000.
So with no airfare costs and an average of $75,000 per season to pay players and coaching staff, we have a $375,000 deficit per team. Not great but to be expected for a new venture and owners will certainly be budgeting on running at a deficit for several years.
If we take down player and coach salaries to an average of $60k rather than $75k that reduces the deficit to just $45k.
Again, these are just an outsider’s rough numbers but while some are projections that could be way off, some are very clear. It’s worth reminding you though that the revenues call for clubs to provide an ownership option for supporters. That may not be part of their business plan.
Back to supporter owned model
As mentioned above, I think this league is a golden opportunity to introduce a different model that has a good chance of success owing to the changing climate around what people want and need from a soccer club.
Success would be predicated on being able to tap into what I believe are latent values and principles in the soccer supporting demographic that are currently on the sidelines waiting for spaces that allow for them to be expressed.
First off, present the league for what it is. A launch pad for young, female soccer players. Don’t try to create faux “superstars.” TSS capture this perfectly with their tag line: “Always a Rover.” I read it as applying to their players and their supporters. It says to the players we are happy for you to move on to higher levels and are proud to be part of the story that got you there. It says to their supporters that we are in this together; ideally forever.
Keep the focus on the collective and what the league and its clubs stand for. The draw, the way to move the engagement towards it being a priority, is for people to feel they are supporting something they are aligned with and believe in. This is not a hard sell in this day and age. Specifics around what this looks like may (and should) vary by community. It speaks to connection and permanence.
Build off a narrative of being sustainable and equitable. Don’t patronize supporters with gimmicky old school nonsense. Don’t even be new school and hit up supporters with Crypto/Influencer garbage. Be original and deliberate. Be unapologetically a professional women’s soccer team that respects its athletes, its supporters and its wider community. Sustainable doesn’t just mean ‘no plastic’ it means that the club will sustain itself and anchor themselves in the community. Hire women to run the teams on and off the field. All women ideally. Don’t market yourself as authentic, just make it obvious through your acts and intentions that you are authentic. Let your ownership model and supporters be models of that authenticity. Don’t build a platform to sell. Build a platform to invite belonging that people choose to buy into and from. The goal is to convert passive observers of the women’s game to people who strongly identify as supporters of the club and what it stands for without having to beat them over the head with that messaging. The identity should be inherent in every aspect of the club, not bludgeoned into frontal lobes by incessant Insta posts.
So there’s a realistic budget and approach to get a league off the ground. How do you sustain this and grow revenues so that you can retain good players and attract others? If you have been doing well in terms of entrenching your club identity in the community there should be organic growth through increased ticket sales and sponsorship. Further, a second round of membership shares, subject to approval from existing members, can be put out to supporters. Additionally, instead of being an owner, a less expensive membership/founder package can be offered. As the club grows so does the appetitive for different types of engagement with diversified offerings and prices.
In case I didn’t already sound like a Marxist
As with men’s clubs, two models exist for professional women’s soccer. The North American single-entity league that sees owners buy franchises and then operate them and the model overwhelmingly used by the rest of the world that allows for true competition (promotion/relegation) and, in some leagues, mandated supporter ownership.
The North American approach to professional sports leagues is an anti-meritocratic approach that’s primary function is to reduce financial risk by ensuring teams will never be punished for poor play (ie be relegated) and that spending on players can be restrained through salary caps. While this model has proven attractive to North American sports fans across many sports its primary concern is to protect an asset from competition and, by limiting access to leagues, gradually increase owner or shareholder value. There’s a reason why NFL franchises are the most valuable in the world despite having very limited appeal outside of the United States; the asset is insulated from competition and poor performance is in fact rewarded through improved access to good young players through the awarding of higher picks in the respective player drafts. The asset is also portable and can be moved to other locations as has been seen in the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA.
Last bit and we’re done
You are not going to see Kadeisha Buchanan, Ashley Lawrence, Jessie Fleming or Janine Beckie in this league. At least not in the next 3-5 years. There is no point in pretending otherwise and trying to develop interest in the league around the notion of household names featuring on all the teams in the league. For at least a decade, this will be a development league that sells players on to larger, more established leagues in the USA and Europe. The draw, therefore, has to be based more on affinity than celebrity. Make it their league. The players’ league and the supporters league. Invest them in it financially and emotionally. Set down roots and rather than repeatedly telling people you’re there to stay – show them. To the degree that this is transactional, make it about selling an experience and an opportunity to see their values mirrored in sport rather than selling a ticket and some kit. People remember and value the experience for a long time.
Bottom line: this can be done but I stand by the assertion that the best litmus test for success is a club’s ability to sell at least 3000 owner/founder shares at $1000 each.
The numbers are challenging but not outlandish and the current appetite and environment for professional women’s sport is perfect for launching a league like this. I want it to work. I want it to be a long term part of my community and popular culture. Let people buy into it. If you do, I’ll be at the front of the line.
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