The National Women's Soccer League

From June 27 to July 26, the NWSL staged the Challenge Cup just outside Salt Lake City, Utah. The league was the first professional sport in the United States to return to play, though this fact was overlooked by many media outlets. (Exhibit 9) Just before the start of the Challenge Cup, ESPN announced it would host a two-hour special focused on the return of sports during the pandemic and feature six professional league commissioners. Baird was not included in the group. Once again, the slight didn't go unnoticed and NWSL fans responded in force on social media with one tweeting, "The NWSL exists also and is coming back before any of these leagues". In light of the criticism, ESPN added an interview with NWSL and USWNT star Crystal Dunn to its special.

Exhibit 9 U.S. Sports Leagues and Estimated Return to Play (as of May 15, 2020)

	Canceled	Suspended/ Postponed	Unchanged	Scheduled/ Started
N.B.A.		🟡		July 30, 2020
W.N.B.A.		🟡
N.C.A.A.*	🔴	🟡
M.L.B.		🟡		July 24, 2020
M.L.S.		🟡		July 8, 2020
Champions League		🟡		Aug. 7, 2020
N.H.L.		🟡
N.H.L. Draft		🟡
French Open		🟡		Sept. 20, 2020
Wimbledon	🔴
U.S. Open (tennis)				Aug. 24, 2020
W.T.A./A.T.P. Tours		🟡
L.P.G.A. Tour		🟡		July 31, 2020
PGA Tour		🟡		June 11, 2020
The Masters		🟡		Nov. 12, 2020
PGA Championship		🟡		Aug. 6, 2020
U.S. Open (golf)		🟡		Sept. 14, 2020
British Open	🔴	🟡
Summer Olympics		🟡		July 23, 2020
Paralympics		🟡		Aug. 24, 2020
N.F.L.			🟢	Sept. 10, 2020
Kentucky Derby		🟡		Sept. 5, 2020
Preakness Stakes		🟡		Oct. 3, 2020
Belmont Stakes		🟡		June 20, 2020

* The N.C.A.A. canceled its winter and spring sports, including its basketball tournaments, and suspended all athletic operations. It is not clear how fall sports, including football, will be affected.

In preparation for the Challenge Cup, the league published a list of protocols, a direct result of the work done by the medical workstream, that players, coaches, and other staff had to follow prior to and during the tournament, including preseason training guidelines, player and staff testing criteria, positive test result protocol, and standards for cleaning, disinfection, and sanitation. Players, coaches, assistants, and trainers, a group comprised of more than 500 people, were tested three times a week.

The 23-game tournament followed an Olympic-style format, which Baird was familiar with from her USOPC days. Every team played four preliminary-round games, followed by quarterfinals, semi-finals, and then the final. All games through the quarterfinals took place at Zions Bank Stadium (an AstroTurf field) south of Salt Lake City. The league staged the semis and finals in nearby Rio Tinto Stadium, which had a grass field. The tournament featured eight of the league's nine teams. The Orlando Pride chose to withdraw just four days prior to the start of the Challenge Cup due to cases of COVID-19. The league gave players the option to opt out of the tournament. Nine allocated NWSL players chose not to play.

Games aired live on CBS, CBS All Access (CBS's streaming service), and Twitch, the league's international distribution partner. There were no live fans in the stands, but through LED technology, fans appeared for the TV audience. The opening game drew 572,000 TV viewers on CBS, the most in the league's history. It was also the most-watched soccer match on U.S. television for the final week of June, finishing ahead of an English Premier League game between Manchester City and Chelsea on NBCSN. The game was also livestreamed on YouTube TV. Through Google Meet, the league organized virtual cheering sections from each team's home market.

Off the field, players and coaches spent the month staying in hotels close to the field. Each player had their own room and those who brought children and an accompanying caregiver lived in suites. A local food company provided meals for the players. Breakfast and lunch were served at the training center and dinner at the hotels. Players, coaches, and trainers moved between "stations": the hotels, dining facilities, training facilities, and playing fields. The league tightly controlled and intricately scheduled everyone's movement because of COVID-19 protocols. Eight teams occupying the same spaces effectively could not interact. As Liz Dalton explained, there was no room for teams arriving early to a given station or staying late. If practice ended early, players couldn't head to the training room until it was their designated time. Typically, they sat on the field and waited until the training room station cleared. If practice ran long, it created bigger worries. Dalton recalled, "A lot of times in that situation, you think being early will help, but in this situation being anything but on time would throw the whole schedule off".

The 30 days in Utah proved both physically and mentally challenging. Combining the physical demands of playing on AstroTurf, in 90 degree heat, at an elevation of 5,000 feet, in a bubble with limited freedom, with a raging pandemic, economic and financial turmoil, and social unrest required, as Sky Blue midfielder McCall Zerboni put it, constantly suppressing fear and anxiety: "There's not a lot of space to sort of escape. You know exactly what's going on. So it just takes a mental strength where you just can't let any negativity seep in. It can be a very slippery slope and you start going down a rabbit hole of everything that is going on".

Cognizant of the challenging environment the players were competing in, the NWSL tried to ease their anxieties. For example, the league arranged for a gourmet coffee truck to park next to the training fields every day from morning until late afternoon. While the league didn't have the $40,000 it would have cost to pay for unlimited coffee for 30 days, simply having easy access to good coffee brought a small bit of normalcy to the bubble and happiness to the players. Fans got on board with the coffee truck, using it to directly connect with their favorite teams and show their support. The Facebook group NWSL Supporters raised $5,000 to cover players' coffee orders.

In collaboration with the NWSLPA, the league allowed players to use their platform when it came to social justice. As Dalton explained, "We're leaders in a lot of ways. Our players are leaders. A lot of boys and girls look up to our players. And what they say, and what they do, and what they wear matters". As she made clear, it came down to what was right. Players were allowed to wear Black Lives Matter shirts as part of their warm-up uniform and, like referees, they could collectively choose to stand, kneel, or remain in the locker room during the national anthem. The only stipulation: the league be informed ahead of a game as to a team's plans so that broadcasters could be prepared to tell the viewing audience what was happening. Before the kickoff of the Challenge Cup's first game between the North Carolina Courage and Portland Thorns, there were 46 seconds of silence in honor of George Floyd. Then, all players knelt for the national anthem. After the game the two teams released a joint statement about their decision to kneel. It read: "We took a knee today to protest the racial injustice, police brutality, and systemic racism against black people and people of color in America. We love our country and we have taken this opportunity to hold it to a higher standard. It is our duty to demand that the liberties and freedoms this nation was founded upon are extended to everyone".

The Challenge Cup's final game between the Houston Dash and the Chicago Red Stars ended with a 2-0 Dash victory, marking the team's first championship. Over 650,000 viewers tuned in to the final game on CBS, setting a new record for most-watched game in league history.  Fans took notice of the effort the league made to bring them a different kind of season with one saying, "So proud to be a fan of the NWSL. They are leaders of ALL professional sports showing that it is possible to compete and play for their fans even amidst a pandemic".

During the 30-day tournament, the league conducted over 2,000 COVID-19 tests and reported zero positive cases. The league spent $1.8 million to put on a 30-day tournament in a bubble. By comparison, the NBA spent $180 million to build and operate its "bubble campus" where it played 172 games over a four-month period.