The National Women's Soccer League

Abstract

Lisa Baird became the commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) on Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Then, COVID-19 upended the sports world. On Thursday, March 12, as sports leagues around the country canceled or postponed their seasons, she announced the NWSL was cancelling pre-season matches and developing contingency plans for the regular season. Baird and other league leaders knew that the NWSL stood in a precarious position. For financial, competitive and cultural reasons, it needed to get back on the field in 2020.

This case study and companion podcast describe how Baird successfully created opportunities for the 8-year old league during her first year as commissioner, despite the financial and medical chaos that accompanied the pandemic. Notably, the NWSL was the first sports league to return to play and complete a modified season, an accomplishment that was under-appreciated by the mainstream sports media. The league also gained big-name sponsors and set television viewership records.

As she began her second year, Baird was focused on making the right strategic decisions in order to bring financial sustainability and greater cultural relevance to the best professional women's soccer league in the world.

Source: Cate Reavis, Shira Springer, and Ben Shields
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The National Women's Soccer League

As a management consultant, I've worked in a lot of industries, to try to turn around and help a lot of businesses. This is the hardest business I've ever been close to by leaps and bounds. We're not just growing a business; we're changing a culture and waiting for culture to change. This is a generational change.

On April 15, 2020, Lisa Baird, commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), joined a call with a number of other U.S. professional sports commissioners including the National Football League's (NFL) Roger Goodell, National Basketball Association's Adam Silver (NBA), Major League Baseball's (MLB) Rob Manfred, the Women's National Basketball Association's (WNBA) Cathy Engelbert, and Major League Soccer's (MLS) Don Garber. President Donald Trump led the call.

A few weeks earlier, the coronavirus, which caused the COVID-19 disease, achieved pandemic status and forced many U.S. sports leagues at the collegiate and professional level, including the NWSL, to postpone or cancel their seasons. The health risks to players, coaches, referees, fans, and the wider community, were too great, and there were many unknowns.

The purpose of the call: Give each commissioner an opportunity to update President Trump on actions taken to save their league's respective seasons, preferably seasons that included live fans in the stands. Besides the entertainment provided by professional sports, tens of thousands of jobs across the United States depended either directly or indirectly on the sports industry, including people who worked in/or with stadiums, concessions, ticket sales, licensed goods, area restaurants, and hotels.

New to the ranks of sports commissioners, Baird now led a league where eight of its nine teams ranked among the top 20 in the world. Still, Baird had not been included on the first call with sports leaders that President Trump hosted on April 4, an omission that did not go unnoticed in the Twittersphere (Exhibit 1). Baird rectified the situation by calling the White House and speaking to Andrew Giuliani, special assistant to President Trump and son of Rudy. Baird introduced herself and asked to be included on the next call.

The league's phased-in approach illustrated Baird's determination to assemble a season of some sort for the NWSL. She worried that if there was no season to speak of in 2020, the 8-year old league's survival would be threatened. Others shared her concern. As Portland Thorns FC defender Emily Menges noted, "I do worry. Every player knows how precarious this league is. It is scary to think about".

While there was a lot to worry about, Baird began to wonder: if the NWSL successfully navigated the crisis, could the pandemic end up creating opportunity for the league?

Lisa Baird

Baird's business career began in brand management at the global consumer packaged goods giant Procter and Gamble. A few years later, she transitioned to the automotive industry and then the technology industry. Among other lessons, Baird's experience at global fortune 20 companies GM and IBM, where she oversaw global advertising, media, sports sponsorship, and events, taught her how to navigate increasingly ambiguous cultural situations.

In 2005, Baird joined the professional sports world when the NFL hired her. Among her responsibilities, she oversaw marketing for the league's consumer products business and managed its relationship with Electronic Arts, then headed by CEO Larry Probst. Baird initially reported to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who became a lifelong mentor. She saw firsthand how the business of sports was covered unlike any other industry. Reflecting on her time at the NFL, Baird commented, "I really was intrigued by what sports can do as both sport, which is entertainment, but also as something that can be purposeful in society".

In 2009, Larry Probst had just been appointed the chairman of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) i and brought Baird on board as chief marketing officer. She was responsible for raising and managing all commercial revenue, as well as marketing for the non-profit organization. During her 11 years at the USOPC, Baird put together over $1 billion in sponsorship and media deals, and launched Team USA as the brand name for U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Baird believed both Olympians and Paralympians belonged together with the same brand. As she noted, "They are not the same, but they are equal". By the time she left the USOPC in 2018, Baird felt like she accomplished everything she set out to do.

In late 2019, a year into her role as chief marketing officer at New York Public Radio, Baird received a call from a search firm informing her that a professional league wanted to hire a new commissioner. She was not told which league was hiring, but she pointed out, "When someone calls you about a commissioner's job, you take that call".

United States Soccer Federation

Founded in 1913, the United States Soccer Federation (U.S. Soccer) is the governing body for soccer in the United States. Among its various roles, the non-profit fields the U.S. national teams—including the U.S. Men's National Team (USMNT) and the U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT)—which represent the United States in international competition, including the Olympics and the World Cup.

Members of the USWNT are employees of U.S. Soccer and, like the USMNT, are represented by a players' union. Members of the men's team are employees of U.S. Soccer only when they are in training camp or playing in matches. Outside of these commitments, they are employees of their professional league (e.g., MLS) or club (e.g., Chelsea).

Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Soccer is a member of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the global governing body for soccer, which also runs global competitions including the World Cup. The International Football Association Board, of which FIFA is a member, sets the rules of the game. FIFA rules require professional and club soccer leagues around the world to release players who play for national teams at various times of the year for training and competition, even if it interferes with a league's game schedule. In early 2020, the NWSL roster included 23 members of the USWNT. (See Exhibit 2 for the FIFA calendar for women's soccer.)

Exhibit 2 — FIFA Calendar 2020. Match-release windows for women's national-team soccer in 2020, showing the dates, the window type or tournament, and the maximum number of matches permitted in each window. A dash (—) indicates that no match maximum applies.

Dates (2020)	Window type / tournament	Max. number of matches
27 January – 9 February	Concacaf Women's Olympic Qualifiers	—
3 – 9 February	AFC Women's Olympic Qualifying Tournament	—
2 – 11 March	Type II	3
6 – 14 April	Type I	2
or 6 – 15 April	Type I (exclusively for the two teams in the Women's Olympic Football Tournament 2020 intercontinental play-off between CONMEBOL and CAF)	2
1 – 9 June	Type I	2
or 1 – 10 June	Type II (non-UEFA confederations)	3
22 July – 7 August	Women's Olympic Football Tournament	—
14 – 22 September	Type I	2
19 – 27 October	Type I	2
or 19 – 31 October	Type III (confederation qualification tournaments only, for all confederations excluding UEFA)	4
23 November – 1 December	Type I	2
or 23 November – 20 December	Blocked period	—
	Women's Africa Cup of Nations 2020 (includes release period)	—

Since being founded in 1990, the USWNT had won the Women's World Cup four times. The championship tournament began in 1991, and the USWNT took home the trophy in 1991, 1999, 2015, and 2019. The Olympic Games hosted its first women's soccer tournament in 1996 and, since then, the USWNT had won four gold medals—1996, 2004, 2008, and 2012. The USMNT, founded in 1885, had never won a World Cup or an Olympic gold medal. The success of the USWNT on the international stage translated into popularity at home: in 2015, the Women's World Cup final between the United States and Japan averaged 25.4 million viewers, setting a record for the most-viewed soccer match—men's or women's—in the United States. The team's success and popularity drew attention to player compensation, especially given the struggles of the USMNT.

In 2017, U.S. Soccer and the USWNT signed a five-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that provided players with better salaries, travel, and accommodations; more financial support for players who were pregnant or adopting; and control over their image and marketing rights. The CBA also included a commitment from U.S. Soccer to improve NWSL stadiums, facilities, and player accommodations. But members of the USWNT didn't think it went far enough.

In March 2019, 28 players filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging that U.S. Soccer was violating the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by engaging in "institutionalized gender discrimination" and perpetuating "gender-based pay disparities" (Exhibit 3). They sought $67 million in back pay. In its defense, U.S. Soccer argued that the men's and women's teams had different CBAs and pay structures, making any comparison difficult. The men chose a high-risk/high-reward, pay-for-play structure: they earned $5,000 per game if they lost, while a win against a team outside the top 25 in FIFA rankings earned them $9,375 per game. If they missed games due to injury, they were not paid. The women received a guaranteed base salary of $100,000 plus bonuses of up to $1,350 for games won. As the USWNT pursued its legal claims, the players became high-profile, public faces of a much larger "Equal Pay" movement, raising awareness of the issue well beyond the sports world.

U.S. Women's Professional Soccer Leagues

After scoring the winning goal in a penalty kick shootout against China at the U.S.-hosted 1999 World Cup, Brandi Chastain celebrated by ripping off her jersey, collapsing to her knees, flexing her muscles, and letting out a victory scream. It was the USWNT's second World Cup win.

At the time of the team's win, there was no women's professional soccer league in the United States. USWNT players and their coaches wanted the training and development opportunities a professional league would provide during non-Olympic and non-World Cup years. During those years, members of the women's national team gathered for residency training camps that lasted anywhere from several weeks to a few months. They played games against other national teams.

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".

Women's Professional Soccer League

Just four years later, right on the cusp of what would become a global financial crisis, a new league was founded, and in 2009 the 7-team Women's Professional Soccer League (WPS) began to play. Different from the single entity structure of the WUSA, the WPS was built on a franchise model. Investors could buy a team from the league for $1.5 million and solely own and operate it. The league provided governance and oversight. To keep spending under control, the WPS implemented a $565,000 salary cap for the league's inaugural season.

Like its predecessor, the league never found economic stability. Each season saw the introduction of new teams and the collapse of established ones. In addition, the WPS was involved in a public dispute with controversial team owner Daniel Borislow, founder of magicJack, who filed two lawsuits against the league.  Due to WPS policy infractions, the league's Board of Governors terminated his franchise after the 2011 season. The 7-team league eventually became five and folded a few months after announcing the cancellation of its 2012 season due to financial troubles.  As Sunil Gulati, who was president of U.S. Soccer at the time, explained, "You needed really deep-pocketed investors who were willing to do this for a very long period of time and absorb huge losses coupled with a realistic economic model. The key is to have those two things merge".

National Women's Soccer League

Almost as soon as the WPS folded, discussions began about starting yet another league. In late June 2012, Gulati and a couple of owners from the WPS, including Arnim Whisler, owner of the Chicago Red Stars, as well as representatives from MLS, U.S. Soccer, and the USWNT, gathered in Chicago. While not at the meeting, MLS Commissioner Don Garber indicated that he was in support of a new professional women's league.

During the meeting, Gulati stated that in order to create a sustainable professional women's soccer league, stability had to come before growth. "It wasn't about growth," he recounted. "It wasn't about becoming a national league. It was about being around the following year and the following year and the following year". With no profitable professional U.S. women's sports league as a benchmark, and two failed professional women's soccer leagues, the group had no successful model as a guide.

As they drew up the blueprints for the new league at that first meeting, including rules, early schedule, and compensation structure, the group made two critical decisions that it believed would help the new league eventually become sustainable. The first decision came from a concept floated by Gulati. His idea was that U.S. Soccer would pay the salaries of up to 24 allocated national team players who competed in the new league – an amount that was more than $1.4 million in 2019. These players' salaries would include their guaranteed pay as members of USWNT plus a NWSL salary. The Canadian Soccer Association and the Mexican Football Federation would also be a part of the league and fund their national team players like U.S. Soccer.  These players would be under contract with U.S. Soccer, the CSA, or the FMF, not the NWSL. Recalling how "wild" the idea was when he proposed it, Gulati said, "My CEO at the time, if he had been close enough to me, he would have kicked me very hard under the table because, A, he and I hadn't talked about it, and B, he's the guy that's got to manage the money and make things work". But Gulati's idea was quickly agreed to by owners. As he noted, "The equivalent is you're running a for-profit, but you've lost money every year, and the government walks in and says, 'Hey, we're going to subsidize this thing in a big way,' that damn well better be a eureka moment. Everybody better like it, or they need their heads examined, right?" In addition to paying the salaries of allocated players, U.S. Soccer would pay for and manage the league's front office, including work pertaining to sponsorships and marketing, operations, player affairs, communications, and legal.

The second critical decision: structure the league as a single entity like the MLS and former WUSA. With the financial backing of U.S. Soccer from its founding, the new league was set up to control operational costs relative to expected revenue. League profits would be shared with the teams.

The financial and logistical role played by U.S. Soccer, in addition to the tight spending controls, helped ease the doubts of the league's eight initial investors. Out of those eight, a few were holdovers from the previous league - Arnim Whisler and Merritt Paulsen - and three, including Paulsen, also owned MLS teams. Paulson owned the Portland Thorns in the NWSL and Portland Timbers in the MLS. The investor group understood they would lose money, at least at the beginning. They recognized that in order for the league to succeed they would have to be in it for the long term.

On April 13, 2013, the first game of the NWSL featured the Portland Thorns and FC Kansas City. The sold-out match drew nearly 6,800 fans and ended in a 1-1 draw.

Commissioner Job

When Baird heard that the commissioner job was with the NWSL, the opportunity intrigued her. She wondered what it would be like to lead a women's soccer league after the momentum and attention generated by the 2019 World Cup, especially by USWNT players like Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, and Rose Lavelle who became superstars while winning the tournament. She liked the entrepreneurial spirit of women's professional soccer, its ability to resurrect and reinvent itself, and its scrappiness. She had dealt with U.S. Soccer quite a bit during her time with the USOPC and knew quite a few individuals involved in women's soccer". And understanding why there wasn't a large, committed following for professional women's soccer had indeed been a puzzle.

Baird went through two interviews with the NWSL search committee which included three owners before the last and most consequential interview with the full NWSL Board of Governors. In this interview, she was asked to prepare and present a case study. The board, made up of a senior member of each ownership group, wanted to know how she would grow the league. In a large, conference room at a New York City hotel in late January 2020, in front of a group of 15, Baird emphasized that growth would come by building out traditional and new revenue streams including sponsorships, media and licensing. (While Baird heard rumors that the league had signed broadcast and streaming deals with CBS and Twitch, she did not know any details). She also acknowledged that growing revenue would require a much bigger staff.

Remembering her presentation, Baird said that it was challenging to put together her vision because she didn't have a clear understanding of what the league's P&L looked like. Whisler, however, had a vision for what the commissioner should bring to the job. He believed the next NWSL commissioner "needed to be able to look around corners and know that maybe we're not aiming for what the men's leagues are. Maybe we're aiming for something else that's not yet been done, that is unique to women, and the way they connect with sports". From her perspective, Baird wanted the NWSL to be a power player in international soccer, to influence the game and the game's growth as the world's premier professional league for women

From its perspective, the board came away impressed by Baird's multi-faceted career, working with global businesses, professional sports leagues and team owners, non-profits, and NGOs. She brought deep knowledge of marketing, an ability to build media and sponsor relationships, and a global business network, both inside and outside of the sports industry. The board believed that Baird would not be bullied or swayed by any one individual. During her last interview, she moved the room by, in her words, showing an ability to listen, take in information, direct a conversation, and reach consensus with a group of 15. But Baird acknowledged there was more to it and said, "They've got to check a lot of boxes. Can I be a public face of the league? Do I have the values that they want for women's sports? Am I passionate and authentic about the sport? Do they want someone with experience running a league?"

Early Days

Baird's first official day as NWSL commissioner was Tuesday, March 10, 2020. Her priorities for her first 90 days included increasing the league's staff, signing more sponsors, and building trust with players and owners. She flew from New York to NWSL headquarters in Chicago where she met the league's staff.

The NWSL's 17-person front office was significantly smaller than other professional league front offices. The National Basketball Association's front office employed over 850 people. The front office support that U.S. Soccer provided the NWSL had been phased-out considerably since the league's inception, and by the end of 2020, U.S. Soccer would no longer manage the league.

Baird wanted to get to know each staff member and gain a better understanding of everyone's roles and responsibilities. She scheduled 30-minute, individual meetings. Those meetings typically lasted one hour. Recalled Kirsten Brierley, the NWSL's director of communications, "She came in with a vision, but she wanted to know what our vision was internally and how she could use those ideas and everyone's input to get us on the same path".

After meeting with the league's staff, she went to dinner with Whisler to talk about the upcoming season. Despite the fact that COVID-19 was dominating New York's headlines, it wasn't being talked about much in Chicago. In fact, during their dinner, Baird and Whisler did not discuss COVID-19, though it was in the back of Baird's mind. Earlier in the day, she received a call from a New York Times reporter asking what was happening with the upcoming season given the looming health crisis.

On Wednesday, March 11, Baird's second day, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Baird flew back to New York, as scheduled, so she could meet with NWSL sponsor Budweiser on Long Island the next morning. Upon landing in New York, she learned that a Utah Jazz player had tested positive for COVID-19 and NBA commissioner Adam Silver had suspended the NBA season in response. The first domino had fallen. Unlike any other industry, the sports industry collectively and nearly simultaneously hit the pause button.

On her third day, Thursday, March 12, Baird sent out a press release at 4:00pm announcing that the NWSL was cancelling preseason matches. They were to begin in two weeks. The press release also stated that the league was monitoring pandemic developments and reviewing contingency plans for the regular season, scheduled to start on April 18. Reflecting back on that day, and the days that followed, Baird recalled, "I was trying to find the playbook for when there is a global pandemic which shuts down the world". She quickly discovered there were no playbooks, there were no best practices, there were no precedents.

In the weeks after Baird announced the cancellation of preseason matches, she held many conversations with the league's owners, players, coaches, and sponsors. She also spoke with other sports organizations and medical professionals at the University of Utah, which had been the U.S. Olympic team's medical partner. She wanted to know what a reconfigured season could look like, specifically one that prioritized player safety. Long work days extended well into nights. Baird asked for and accepted help along the way, weighing information from multiple sources. She sought a safe, yet cost-conscious way forward. "We have to be the most creative problem solvers in sports," she said of the NWSL, "because we don't have the resources other sports have. We have to be really scrappy".

The core principle for the phased-in play approach was safeguarding players' health and safety. But Baird and the staff remained unsure what the league was "phasing" into, exactly. Women's soccer in the United States had gained momentum after the USWNT's World Cup win in 2019. She worried cancelling the season altogether would slow the league's quest for stability and sustainability, perhaps damaging it permanently. As Dan Weinberg at CBS Sports noted, getting back on the field as soon as possible was Baird's north star goal. She told him, "We've got to get on the field this summer. We have to. It's too important for the visibility of the league to go dark for an entire year". Less clear was what type of season, where, and how. The virus wasn't going away. Baird could not guarantee players' safety, but it was her job to mitigate the risk.

Workstreams

With an eye on getting back on the field, Baird created different workstreams involving staff, owners, medical experts and the NWSLPA. As she explained, it was a way to create a holistic solution: "You're tackling all these problems at the same time and you're managing the process so that you're not having to go back and iterate or start over again. That's how we got to be the first league back. We tackled it all at the same time".

First and foremost, there was a medical protocol workstream made up largely of medical professionals. They developed the Return to Play Phased Protocol that dictated when players could get back on the field. (See Exhibit 7 for Return to Play Press Release). Players had to be COVID-19 free, as well as in compliance with league, local, and state requirements to move on to the next phase.

Exhibit 7 May 25, 2020 NWSL League Update on Return to Play

The finance workstream figured out how the league would pay its players' salaries – a problem largely solved by the PPP government loan – for whatever kind of season the NWSL pulled together. In applying for the PPP loan, Baird spent six hours filling out the online paperwork. She uploaded 1,000 pages of supporting documentation, including players' physical therapy bills. She submitted the application the first day the paperwork was accepted and received funds from JP Morgan within 10 days. The league used every penny to pay non-allocated players. The finance workstream also proved instrumental in picking up three new NWSL sponsors: Google, Verizon, and P&G/Secret. The league made money through sponsorships, broadcasting/media deals, expansion, and licensing (Exhibit 8). Sponsorships represented the bulk of revenues at 40%, followed by broadcasting. In early 2020 when Baird became commissioner, the NWSL had two sponsors: Nike, which had been the league's exclusive sponsor of athletic wear and equipment since 2013, and Budweiser, which became the league's first official beer sponsor in 2019.

Exhibit 8 League and Teams Revenue Breakdown

There was a workstream dedicated to competition format. Since COVID-19 disrupted the 2020 schedule and shifted league priorities, the NWSL needed innovative format ideas. As Liz Dalton, managing director of competition and player operations said, "We would select one, build it out, vet it. And then we'd see we needed to pivot a bit and we might start over". One early option: go ahead with a regular, but delayed, season. Based on the work done by the medical protocols team, however, league leaders quickly rejected this idea.

The host city workstream shouldered the responsibility for finding options for where the league could play. The location needed to be safe and home to adequate training and living facilities for players and coaches. The players workstream kept the NWSL Players Association (NWSLPA) and its members in the loop and addressed their questions and concerns about returning to the field. There was also a childcare workstream. As Baird noted, "I wanted a solution for moms to bring their kids. There's no mom in the world that's going to leave her kid home for a month during a pandemic".

The social justice workstream discussed how the league wanted to support the Black Lives Matter movement and involved the players, the front office, and global sponsor Nike in the process. The NWSL would be the first league to return to play after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.ii The league's Board of Governors and Baird spoke weekly, sometimes daily, by phone. Together, based on options or potential solutions presented by the workstreams, they made the critical decisions on what eventually became the Challenge Cup. "The biggest mechanism that was used was the Board of Governor's meetings to make decisions," said Baird. "We iterated with them and we got feedback". As part of that process, the Board of Governors unanimously agreed to pay all players and extend their health insurance for the entire year, even if they didn't play in the Challenge Cup. "That's an act of boldness and courage by our owners, and they don't get enough credit for that," said Baird. "Then, you have the boldness and courage of the players".

Baird's Year 2, NWSL's Year 9

While 2021 likely wouldn't test Baird and the NWSL in the same way as 2020, the year promised to have its share of challenges to overcome, complex changes to navigate, and opportunities to seize.

Fans One big question: how to convert casual NWSL watchers to avid fans? As Baird noted, "Not only do we have to grow the fan base much bigger, but we need a deeper level of engagement". The league needed to draw as many people to their third, fourth, and fifth games as their first with its fans engaging not only at the team level but at the player level. Baird saw fan engagement extending beyond the United States. Women's soccer was gaining popularity in Central and South America, where fans could watch NWSL games through the league's streaming partner Twitch. With fan engagement in mind, league owners decided that the best way to kick off the 2021 season was with another Challenge Cup. This time, the tournament took place outside a bubble, and in home stadiums with updated medical protocols. From April 9 to May 8, casual and avid fans alike got more familiar with the league's teams and players before the regular season began on May 15. In an NWSL press release announcing the return of the Challenge Cup, Baird said, "We're ready to build on our success of the last year and I couldn't be more excited to open the 2021 NWSL Challenge Cup presented by Secret the same way we left off in the summer of 2020, watching Houston and Chicago showcase the very best in women's professional soccer". As the league looked longer-term, what steps could it take to broaden and deepen its fan base?

New Teams, New Investors While a sign of success, league expansion would be challenging. The NWSL welcomed Racing Louisville and Kansas City for the 2021 season, and Angel City FC and Sacramento would join in 2022. The new teams would add up to 66 new players to the league, growing the number of players by 31%.

Beyond putting the league in the second biggest media market in the United States, Angel City FC brought a different type of ownership structure to the NWSL. Over 60 young, successful, mainly women, investors from the tech, sports, and entertainment industries, including Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman, tennis superstar Serena Williams, and former USWNT legend Abby Wambach, owned stakes in the team.  With so many owners/investors, Angel City wouldn't be at risk of folding from the financial downfall of one investor.

The celebrity backers behind Angel City attracted several high profile women investors from the sports, politics, business, and journalism worlds to other teams. In early 2021, Chelsea Clinton, Jenna Bush Hager, and U.S. Olympic gymnast Dominque Dawes invested in the Washington Spirit, and tennis champion Naomi Osaka in the North Carolina Courage. The addition of more women in the ownership ranks was welcome. Reacting to Osaka's announcement, Baird tweeted, "Proud to have you join our boardroom! Women betting on women". Going forward, what role should the high profile women investors play as the NWSL grows its fanbase?

Relationship with U.S. Soccer It remained unclear how the relationship between the NWSL and U.S. Soccer would evolve following the league's official separation in December 2020. With U.S. Soccer stepping away, league leaders needed to define the fundamental governance of the NWSL. And with U.S. Soccer arguably the league's most complicated stakeholder relationship, Baird and league owners had to wonder: How can the NWSL build a new kind of partnership with U.S. Soccer that was mutually beneficial?

Allocation Money Teams could utilize up to $400,000 of allocation money for the 2021 season, up from $300,000 in 2020. In early 2021, the Portland Thorns signed USWNT players Lindsey Horan and Crystal Dunn to three-year contracts reportedly worth between $125,000 to $150,000 a year, marking the first time USWNT players had chosen to sign directly with the NWSL. Signing with the Portland Thorns gave both the players and the team a sense of a security and continuity. For Horan and Dunn, if they ever lost their spot on the USWNT, their salaries, healthcare, and benefits would not be affected as contracted members of the Portland Thorns. Meanwhile, the Portland Thorns would not have to worry about losing either player, at any point during or after the season, to teams outside the league. There was an additional upside for the Thorns. Because Horan and Dunn gave up their allocated status with the USWNT, the Thorns would have open spots to fill with new USWNT allocated players, effectively doubling the number of USWNT members on the team.  Dunn and Horan's contracts with the Thorns highlighted the difficult balance between wise investment and tight controls. Would their contracts be the first of many like them? As Liz Dalton noted, "We have to be very, very careful not to try and run before we walk... We can't be paying certain players millions of dollars and others $20,000. We have to maintain some of those controls".

Rebrand Baird would spend a large part of 2021 developing a new brand for the league, planning the launch in time for the league's 10th anniversary in 2022. As she explained, "The brands of the league and the teams live in the same environment and need to reflect our values and culture, and connect with a growing and even more diverse fan community". Baird planned to involve players, many of whom were helping refresh their team brands, owners, and fans in the process. But she remained uncertain whether the new brand would be an "evolution or a revolution". What brand strategy would lay the best foundation for the NWSL's next decade?

More Exposure Another big goal and challenge for Baird: broaden the media exposure of the NWSL. Baird was well aware of the role media exposure, or its absence, played in generating interest in the league and converting casual fans to engaged, avid fans. Broadcasters and the sports media faced pressure from players and fans to better measure the demand for women's sports and its value, in general. The traditional measures of success – television ratings, attendance, sponsorship dollars – didn't always fully or accurately capture fan interest and engagement in women's sports because so much took place through social media and niche online publications. But even by traditional metrics, the NWSL made remarkable strides during the pandemic. In 2020, the league succeeded in maintaining the momentum created in 2019 by the national team's World Cup win. Television viewership of the league's Challenge Cup and Fall Series games increased 493% over 2019 numbers, though this was largely overlooked by the mainstream sports media. The failure to appreciate that accomplishment appeared especially glaring since most major sports leagues suffered double-digit viewership declines. Social media mentions climbed 152% and traditional media mentions were up 55%.  For Baird, it was critical to keep growing exposure. How could the league capitalize on its social media strengths and convince traditional media outlets to cover the league more extensively and consistently?

Social Justice In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic and killing of George Floyd brought issues of social justice to the collective conscience of many. The sports industry stood at an inflection point, figuring out what it needed to do and how it needed to change in response to race and gender-related inequities and police brutality. Leagues like the NWSL also needed to learn the best ways to use their powerful platforms. During the recreated 2020 season, the NWSL showed that it wanted to be a leader among professional sports leagues in supporting social justice, whether issues at stake concerned race, gender or sexual orientation. With higher profile leagues also eager to lead on the social justice front, how could the NWSL make an impact?

Conclusion

When Baird took the reins as commissioner in March 2020, little did she know how her third day on the job would unfold. It would set the course for her inaugural year and the tone for her leadership style. It would also set the NWSL on a new trajectory. By various measures, Baird and the league overcame seemingly insurmountable challenges and emerged from the pandemic in a measurably stronger position. The NWSL achieved higher television ratings, more sponsorship revenue, welcomed new teams to the league, and raised awareness about social justice issues.

As Baird began her second year on the job, the league's to-do list was wide-ranging: compete in an increasingly competitive global soccer economy, revenue generation, fan engagement, the NWSL rebrand, expansion, and a new item: negotiating a CBA with the NWSLPA. On April 7, 2021, the NWSL announced that it would start negotiations with the NWSLPA to "secure a mutually beneficial, long-term, collective bargaining agreement between the two parties". The overarching vision held by Baird, the owners and league executives: attract and retain the best players in the world with a high- performance environment that provides the highest quality training and competition and leads the way in women's professional soccer. And they wanted to do that in a way that benefited both the players and the league.

Looking at the future more philosophically, Baird noted: "The league's founding owners and U.S. Soccer navigated great uncertainty and founded the 'right league,' growing with prudent, smart investments. Now is the time to make the league 'right,' making the strategic investment, to create a sustainable future for the business of women's professional soccer.