WPS: So far, so good with attendance, ratings

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Fran
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WPS: So far, so good with attendance, ratings

Post by Fran » Mon Jun 22, 2009 6:10 pm

Women’s Professional Soccer is meeting attendance expectations and exceeding ratings expectations in its inaugural season, Commissioner Tonya Antonucci said.

At the midpoint of its season, the league is averaging 5,361 fans a game through 35 matches and averaging 32,000 households over 12 weekly telecasts on Fox Soccer Channel.

Soccer marketer John Guppy, founder of Gilt Edge Soccer Marketing, said that the league has done a good job of launching a professional league in a challenging economic climate.

“The key to their success is their ability to evolve a multidimensional revenue model,” Guppy said. “Tickets need to evolve, they need the sponsorship world to kick in and need to continue to figure out ways to drive camps, clinics and other revenue streams.”

Coming into the season, Antonucci said the league expected to average between 4,000 and 6,000 fans a game. All seven of its clubs are falling in that range, with Washington and Los Angeles exceeding it. The Los Angeles Sol, headlined by Brazilian star Marta, leads the league with an average of 6,985 per game. The Saint Louis Atletica averages a league-low 4,005 per game.

“I’m feeling good that we’re right in the wheelhouse of our expectations,” Antonucci said. “I’m cautiously optimistic that with summer we’ll have more folks coming out to check out the product, particularly with the soccer families and the family side of our audience out of school.”

On the ratings front, WPS drew a season-high 59,000 households for a Boston Breakers-Washington Freedom game on May 17. Its lowest-rated game was an April 26 match between FC Gold Pride and Washington Freedom that drew just 8,000 households. Both Fox Soccer and Antonucci dismissed that game as an anomaly and pointed to the second-lowest-rated game, May 10, between the Chicago Red Stars and Sky Blue FC that drew 26,000 households.

Fox Soccer Channel is distributed in 34 million homes.

The league is increasing its television presence as the season progresses, and Antonucci expects that to help the league increase ratings during the second half of the season. Fox Sports Net will rebroadcast games from Fox Soccer Channel during the second half of the season, and Comcast Sports will air four games on eight of its regional sports channels.

Despite the relative success on TV, the league is lagging in sponsorship sales. WPS hoped to secure five national partners at the start of the season but has just four — Puma, Hint Essence Water, AdvoCare and UK International. It is pitching sponsorship space on the back of players’ uniforms beneath numbers, and Antonucci is optimistic that the league will make headway with that opportunity.

“For a new property, they have to develop that relevancy and value proposition for the corporate world and it takes time to do that,” Guppy said.

The league continues to expand and will feature nine teams next season. Philadelphia and Atlanta both added franchises for an expansion fee of $1 million each.

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Post by nksports » Wed Jul 01, 2009 9:39 pm

59,000 households out of 34 million.

That's a market share of .0017.

I believe the old league exceeded this one in both attendance and ratings, and we all saw how that turned out.

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