By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The National Women’s Soccer League will have “ammo” when its TV rights deal expires at the end of 2023, Angel City FC lead investor Alexis Ohanian told Reuters, as broadcast executives and FIFA say the women’s game deserves a bigger cut of the pie.
The NWSL entered its deal with CBS in 2020 and emerged as one of the few North American leagues unscathed from the COVID-19 pandemic, with enormous viewership growth after it became the first on the continent to emerge from lockdown.
The inaugural Challenge Cup in June 2020 drew 572,000 viewers on CBS in its opening game.
Roughly a year and a half later, an average of 525,000 viewers tuned into the championship match on CBS, which aired at 12 p.m. ET (1600 GMT), a far cry from the coveted prime time.
“When we were given CBS as the stage, we either competed with – matched or even outperformed – the MLS,” Ohanian said.
“Facts over feelings. When we’re put on that stage, the fans show up. So I think we’re going to have a lot of good ammo to go into that negotiation.”
The 34 Major League Soccer regular-season matches on ABC and ESPN saw an average audience of 343,000 viewers this season.
The top-viewed regular season match – on July 30 between Minnesota United and the Portland Timbers – delivered an audience of 593,000 on ABC and ESPN Deportes.
While the overwhelming majority of NWSL matches streamed on Paramount+ and Amazon-owned Twitch platform in 2022, the handful of games on CBS in the regular season and for the Challenge Cup delivered audiences ranging from 349,000 to 461,000.
While broadcast numbers are public, the league said cable and streaming figures are confidential.
The NWSL championship match between Portland Thorns and Kansas City is on Saturday.
MLS and Apple TV announced a decade-long partnership earlier this year in a broadcasting rights deal worth $2.5 million, according to the Financial Times.
“They essentially set a mark now where, yes, our league is not as big, we’re a fraction of the size in terms of teams and age, but we’re already putting up some great numbers,” said Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit who received the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Champion For Equality Award earlier this month.
Ohanian said some 90% of season-ticket holders had renewed for Angel City FC’s second campaign even though they missed the playoffs last term, which shows the draw of the women’s game.
FIFA last week said it had rejected a number of bids for the 2023 Women’s World Cup broadcast rights for being too low, with Chief Business Officer Romy Gai saying they did not reflect the popularity of the women’s sport.
Joseph, Markowski, CEO North America of global streaming platform DAZN Group, said the “sheer growth” in all women’s sport was pushing the needle.
He pointed to blockbuster attendances at European soccer games, with ESPN reporting the top three biggest attendances in Europe through August this year were for women’s games.
“As broadcasters we’ve had some great deals that are going to get more expensive for us and quite rightly too,” he said on Monday at the Financial Times Business of Sport summit.
“The metrics around broadcast and attendance and various other things around women’s sport are all demonstrating this, the sheer growth of it in the last five years.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Ken Ferris)
