When I was a kid, we liked to play a game where we’d imagine being gifted a million dollars. My brother and I would debate how many hundreds of thousands of dollars we’d spend on different pursuits. This car here, that house there, back and forth, dropping our imaginary stacks of dollars on purchases that lived only in our imagination.

That sort of wishful thinking still happens in today’s soccer community, when lower league fans and operators alike discuss the prospects of various clubs, if ONLY they had an endless operating budget. Debates will rage and participants will yell, “if I had millions, I’d invest in this amateur club!” Of course, the vast majority of those participants will never have that kind of money for investment and most amateur clubs will remain in that position for the foreseeable future. But if you asked me today, what would you do with a million dollars? I know my answer, I’d invest in a women’s soccer club.

TITLE IX

Women’s soccer, after being ignored for years, is on a massive rise. Thanks to Title IX (1972), which demanded equal sporting opportunities for women in college, women’s soccer exploded across the college landscape in the 1980s. The NCAA recognized women’s soccer in 1982 and the growth of the sport has been staggering since. According to the New York Times, “participation rates went from 1,855 players on 80 teams across all three divisions in 1982 to nearly 28,000 players across 1,026 teams in 2020-21.”

Title IX forced colleges and the NCAA to support women’s sports with real investment and, in the process, gave girls a real path to continue their sporting pursuits into adulthood. Suddenly there was a reason to focus on developing skills beyond high school and the game blossomed across the country. Amazing how investing in women can pay off!

THE NATIONAL TEAM

That rapid growth of college soccer programs triggered several key outcomes. First, our national team quickly became the best in the world. A title that, at least for now, it continues to possess. Since the inception of the Women’s World Cup in 1991, the United States has won half of the eight possible titles and, maybe even more impressively, has never finished worse than third place. The USWNT is a dominating force in women’s soccer, beating teams by multiple goals on the regular, and that sort of dominance has triggered support on a scale rarely seen in American women’s sports.

The team is both beloved and hated. Beloved by fans of the game and the excellence of execution. Those fans demand perfection of the national team. Every match (friendly or otherwise) is analyzed and discussed, with criticism heaped on those players that failed to meet expectations and praise generously given to the heroes credited with the win. But the success of the team has also made them a cultural lightning rod.

Before she was an international champion, Rapinoe played for Elk Grove in the WPSL.

In 2019, during the fraught years of the Trump presidency, Megan Rapinoe was asked about the team visiting the White House if the squad won that year’s World Cup. Her response, “I’m not going to the fucking White House,” triggered Trump and his supporters to attack Rapinoe on social media. If her words meant nothing, they would have been ignored, but Rapinoe, with her dyed hair and outspoken opinions, had clout inside and outside of the sporting world. As a team spokesperson, a woman, and, probably most importantly to her opponents, a lesbian, she was the encapsulation of why conservative politicians, including the president, reacted so aggressively against her comments. Later that year, Rapinoe led the USWNT to the World Cup title and turned down an invitation to a private visit to the White House.

AMATEUR SOCCER

Aside from the national team, another important outcome of the expansion of women’s college programs was the growth of talent development. Across the country, youth soccer programs began to focus on girls as a viable market for expansion. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the number of female high school soccer players rose from 23,475 in the 1978–1979 school year to 374,773 in the 2021–2022 year. That kind of growth demands support from club teams across the country and girl’s club soccer has become a lucrative niche industry in response.

Naturally, as female players exit high school sports and head to college programs, there’s a significant need for a place to develop their skills in the offseason. Many club programs have simply expanded their age range into young adults as a way to continue that pathway. Other clubs have emerged, without roots in youth soccer, to give women the opportunity to grow their skills in a semi-professional (some might call it “pre-professional”) environment. These clubs need leagues to give their players opportunities to test themselves in real life situations and now the U.S. hasthree major national women’s leagues (no doubt many others at slightly smaller scale) below the fully-professional NWSL: UWS, WPSL, and USLW. Between those three national leagues, just short of 200 women’s amateur clubs gave opportunities to thousands of women and girls to play at a high level in 2022.

Alyssa Thompson, selected #1 by Angel City, played four years in the UWS. Photo credit: Angel City

That level of growth in the women’s amateur game is paying dividends to the NWSL. Alyssa Thompson, the overall #1 pick in this year’s draft, played four years for Santa Clarita Blue Heat in the UWS. According to the WPSL, 34 players taken in the 2023 draft played in their league. The USLW, after only a single season of play, boasted seven players taken this year.

The amateur game delivers the talent that will fuel the top tier league for years to come. Regrettably, the NWSL is reluctant to publicize the role amateur clubs play in developing players, instead opting to celebrate the collegiate programs, but the truth is that ALL professional soccer players have benefitted from the amateur clubs they played in as they worked their way to pro.

IF I WAS A RICH MAN…

There’s a running joke that if you want to lose money, invest in soccer. That may have been true in the past, but the growth in the women’s game seems to be going a long way to change that perception. Women’s clubs are growing, interest is strong, and, because the talent pool is so deep, amateur rosters are filled with skilled players. Every amateur league is enjoyable to watch and many clubs are seeing a rise in fandom. It’s clear that women’s soccer is on the rise and, at least from my perspective, it’s the perfect time for investment.

Consider the test case of Minnesota Aurora FC of the USLW. The club was founded by fans of the women’s game in such a way that built excitement on social media. When the players finally hit the field, there was an army of fans ready to cheer the team to victory. During Aurora’s run to the USLW championship match, thousands of fans attended its matches. The atmosphere was infectious and the level of play lived up to the expectation. I wouldn’t say that every women’s soccer club is on par with the success of the Aurora, but what that organization has done is, for the most part, repeatable.

So, given all of these facts, if I had a million dollars, I’d be buying into women’s soccer. The future is bright and 2023 is going to be an awesome year.

- Dan Vaughn