The National Women's Soccer League

Women's United Soccer Association

With the momentum of the women's 1999 World Cup victory, the absence of a professional league was addressed. In early 2000, Discovery Inc.'s founder John Hendricks and a group of other corporate investors, including media companies Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Comcast Corporation, founded the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA). The new league would mirror Major League Soccer's single entity structure in which teams (including their intellectual property) and player contracts were owned by the league.  Players were employees of the league, not their teams, and owners were the league's "shareholders," sharing the league's profits. The league set a salary cap to control player acquisition costs and salaries.

Play began in April 2001 with eight teams and a 22-game season. The league folded just days before the 2003 World Cup after losing $90 million of the $100 million invested over three years. While the USWNT drew crowds at the Olympics and World Cup, there was less enthusiasm when it came to supporting a woman's professional league and it struggled to attract sponsorship dollars. To cover its operating costs, the business plan called for eight "charter" sponsorships for around $2.5 million each. The league sold only two of the eight.  As one sports marketing executive noted at the time, "I just don't think the marketplace has shown a resounding acceptance. No one wants to be in the business of loss-leadering a women's sports league for altruistic reasons. It may be the right thing to do, but that's not the private sector's job".