Positive Outlook

By: Melissa | January 6th, 2009

Are you reading the Global Game blog? Cause it really is quite fantastic. And they have a recent article that takes a fond little walk down memory lane regarding the Atlanta Beat of the old WUSA and it also explores whether the new WPS will make it through these current financial times. And unlike previous non-Global Game articles I’ve probably linked to on this blog, this particular story remains mostly positive. Writer John Turnbull does a pretty good job outlining the advantages for WPS to promote a low-cost, grassroots product that offers consumers a unique and intimate experience.

In a retracting economy that has seen the loss of one team (Houston) in the Women’s National Basketball Association and layoffs in the National Football League and NBA, Atlanta and the WPS hope to trade on the sport’s intimacy and to offer advertisers unique value. Puma already has signed on as a league-wide sponsor. Playing in small venues—Yurcak Field at Rutgers University in New Jersey, for example, will seat 5,000 for home games of Sky Blue FC—the WPS might be the perfect downscaled sport for downscaled times.

Franchises in the women’s league cost $1.5 million compared to $40 million in Major League Soccer. The Wall Street Journal continued a prospectus on Dec 15 by concluding that the WPS “will more closely resemble minor league baseball than Major League Soccer” (Matthew Futterman, “Women’s Pro Soccer League Scores Deal with Puma,” subscription only). As for the “beer an inning” challenge that sometimes prevails at minor-league ballparks, perhaps we could substitute a beer for every throw-in?

And yes, I CAN TOTALLY GET BEHIND a beer for every throw-in. But seriously. I think Turnbull is taking a chance at looking a little bit beyond whatever gut fears exist over the economy to suggest that markets do in fact still exist. And hey, he may not be too far off. For example, smartphone shipments are expected to rise 8.5% this year. That LinuxDevices (my bias) article claims the cell-phone upswing is due to consumer interest in cheap, converged devices (i.e. they do more than one thing). So Joe Six-Pack (can’t resist) is looking for more bang for the buck and WPS might just be that right kind of product.

Another good point Turnbull brings up, is the effort from the League to find local ownership for each team. He explains the advantages while describing Atlanta’s owner, T. Fitz Johnson.

Johnson offers a contrasting portfolio to the Russian oligarchs portrayed in a recent Sports Illustrated. Some of the latter are splashing out up to $7 million per year on women’s basketball teams… Johnson is likely more approachable than these Russian counterparts. He gladly schmoozed with a young player who, inspired by sea creatures floating in turquoise aquarium water, suggested “Sting Rays” as a possible team nickname.

Putting the WNBA aside, even compared to the old Atlanta Beat, then owned by the Cox media conglomerate, with WPS, we may see that effort to establish personal interest from the new owners go a long way to keeping these franchises afloat. Just today, I read that Russian internet startup, Sup just laid off 12 out of 28 employees over at Livejournal. Oh and by the way, that includes the entire engineering department so if you have an lj blog, you may want to export it for safe keeping. Just a fyi. And not to knock Russia, but it’s just an example of a place that is very very far away from here… except, as we’ve recently learned, if you live in Alaska. But, for now, there are no WPS teams in Alaska so I’m letting this one go. Personally, if Livejournal folds, I’m going to miss Oh No They Didn’t (and its football counterpart which I know has been linked to on Kickette and The Offside in the past) especially because ONTD is where I met my friend Samantha. We struck up a friendship after having a conversation about Eric Wynalda in the comments section of some random post. Viva la Internets!