Parker: The WUSA folded partially because their overt “girl power” message turned off potential ticket buyers. Furthermore, this recession is hitting niche sports markets hard so the bottom line is more important than ever.

Fake Sigi: The WUSA folded partially because they jumped on the “girl power” bandwagon as a last ditch effort to save the league after they ran out of money. WPS is working to distance itself from the failures of WUSA by starting out as a more grassroots business model and by not marketing themselves as a charity case, or as Andy Crossley said, “the ghetto of being a role model for girls.” (great quote!) So what WPS can do is embrace cause-related marketing which is apparently an actual term that defines businesses that align themselves with social causes by raising money, creating volunteer opportunities, raising awareness, etc etc etc. The point being the message targets the company’s audience emotionally. We all feel a bit better about spending our money on you because you care about the same issues that we do. Fake Sigi also argues that – well – WPS is struggling to understand their core demographic market and cause-related marketing is a good way for them to figure it out before they lose all the fans.

What can I say, I’m nowhere near as eloquent or S.M.R.T. but I do agree with the fake one. And one of my employers just happens to be a organization at the forefront of this cause-related movement. Over the years, I’ve seen their funding shift dramatically from 100% philanthropy to now majority business partnerships and their list of clients is really becoming a who’s who of the Fortune 500. What Fake Sigi writes is no joke. WPS can benefit from league-wide and strategic social cause marketing because that is actually what many consumers want. And don’t even get me started on the demographic woes of the WPS. It’s enough to make me stop caring about this league altogether. The mixed message of yes this is an important thing for women’s sports but no we aren’t going to talk about it might just backfire because the league’s core audience, who the fake one calls “athletic minded women and girls,” may very well want WPS to talk about it!

Well, I’m no expert on the subject and it seems pretty apparent that this is new-ish mostly unchartered territory (srsly, how many professional women’s sports leagues are there?). And I’m typing this while sitting at said job mentioned above while at the same time testing mysql backup programs. Stay tuned while I pull together my thoughts on why WPS should completely ignore television and broadcast everything online as well as keep all video archives available on their website on-demand. That’s right – control the means of production!

But the expansion draft does remind us all that WPS season two is on the horizon. I’ve been away for a while dealing with LIFE so I missed likely all the postseason reflections and reviews out there on the internets. Although I did catch Peter Wilt’s post at Pitch Invasion which is good enough for me! Just read that one. So I say it’s time to move on to season two! Haters to the left. Looks like the league has another year in it. Here’s what I’d like to see happen for 2010.

Christie Rampone is officially named head coach of Sky Blue FC By April she should be showing and I think it will be crazy cool to see her preggers self perched on the sidelines bossing everyone around like a soccer version of the movie Fargo – but without all the blood and snow and William H Macy. Even better would be Rampone solving murder cases while at the same time coaching her team to their second league victory.

Kim Zolciak becomes a sponsor of the Atlanta Beat and her headshot is screenprinted on the front of their jerseys This will, of course, coincide with the release of her soon to be hit album follow up to the smash single Tardy to the Party. Kim, THE BRAND. You know she only needs to ask Big Papa for the money. And then Real Housewives season three will feature scenes from team practices & games. And WPS, the brand, gets plastered all over Bravo tv for a few months. Win win.

Justin.tv or Ustream.tv or Veetle or whoever gets a WPS channel I was pleasantly surprised to discover a few months back there was a 24 hour online rollerderby channel. Interviews, live games, random filler. Very impressive. Just sayin’.

Rachel Brown joins WPS Perhaps the Euros final was not her shining moment but I spent most of that game thinking the England keeper really is the spitting image of Christina Cox, one of the actresses on that mediocre soap opera in space, Defying Gravity. And after reading that the British “Superleague” is on hold yet again, perhaps she really is Christina Cox? Girl has gotta pay the rent somehow.

FC Gold Pride actually sign a player under the age of 40 And the rest of us spend one more year inventing new and hilarious ways to make fun of the name “FC Gold Pride.”

A US player will finally outshine the foreign players A year ago at this time, I fully expected the brand spanking new league to unveil a whole new crop of amazing American players. Uhhhhh, no. Instead, we got to meet (some of us for the first time) Sonya Bompastor, Eniola Aluko, Lisa De Vanna, Karina LeBlanc, Aya Miyama, etc etc etc. A few fresh faces creeped into the roster for the upcoming USWNT training camp and WPS marketed the Olympic winners hard in their advertising campaigns. But on the field… I dunno… I felt like our domestic draft picks just kinda disappeared. No star quality? No flair or creativity? Are we still just settling in? Fuck it. Let’s bring on season two!

But moving on… Hello and welcome to mid-season! Now is the time for the smart people paying attention to reflect and review the first ten weeks and even the drafts. So far, the league is averaging around 5,400 fans per match (but I think that count may be a bit high) and the number of people watching the WPS games on FSC is about the same as the those watching the FSC MLS games. And hey! WPS is now streaming those FSC games on their website. And after Chicago put their non-FSC games online and now LA appears to be following suit — next up is for the league to keep online archives for fans to stream on-demand. I’m not saying they will do that, I’m merely suggesting that they should.

But the inaugural season so far is not without it’s criticisms. John Howell at the Bleacher Report thinks each team needs a psychologist because these top-flight players are so used to winning, they can’t figure out how to come back from falling behind (but I think there were at least two Washington games to prove his theory wrong and I’m not entirely sure if this guy is really just asking for a job). And Commish Tonya, speaking at the Association for Women in Sports Media convention, said the way WPS is built almost “takes gender out of the equation in what our brand stands for” – meaning the league signed top players and will not use sex appeal to sell tickets. According to Antonucci, MLS is busy competing with the “other football” and soccer is already a popular sport for girls to play, so it’s natural for players to turn into fans as they get older. The Sports, Media, & Society blog argues this idea won’t work:

Popular spectator sports in western culture have always been all about gender performance. In other words, gender can’t be removed from any sports equation. That’s one reason (among several) that soccer will struggle in the U.S. to ever have a sustained, high-numbers following — it’s a gender-neutral sport, and, thus, is less appealing to fans (logically, this quality gives it more appeal as a participatory sport.)

Although, I don’t know if I can agree with the argument about the popularity of soccer in general since I’m pretty sure western culture includes Europe… but the Commish is quoted further In Jim Slater’s article “US women’s soccer league builds for success,” he writes:

WPS is cultivating attendance, attention and sponsorship slowly and in markets, wanting to build lasting partnerships as a sport league and avoid sympathy ploys as a women’s league fighting for attention against male rivals.

“This isn’t about making people feel guilted into helping our sport,” said Antonucci. “We’re going to earn it.”

…which brings me to the point here that WPS may be positioning itself as the gender-neutral gendered sports league yet I wonder how it is going to appeal to the the worldwide, both male and female, soccer fan (since it wants to be the top league in the world – right?) while at the same time aligning itself with the teeny tiny handful of women’s professional sports leagues we’ve got right now. Seems to me, in order to do both, one can’t ignore gender at all. Thoughts?

(Consider this blog an incomplete rant so please add any ideas/opinions you’ve got)

“Differences have arisen between Ian and the ownership of the organization,” said Thomas Hofstetter, CEO and President of Sky Blue Soccer – the parent organization of Sky Blue FC. “We are working through this matter as professionally as possible and will have further information available sometime next week.”

Not exactly the best morale boost for the team stuck in last place. And they lost that game against the Freedom 2-1. Surprise surprise.

Adding to the mystery is a random tweet from Steven Goff on Friday: “Washington Freedom, which ousted team president before season started, dismissed 3 front office folks this week, soccer industry sources say.” Kind of a strange report when you consider the fact that the Freedom are slowly inching their way up the standings. So the firings can’t be because of team performance – right? And both Sky Blue and Washington made some player movements this week – the Freedom in defense and Sky Blue added another forward – presumably to help out Natasha Kai who I swear gets injured during every game. I really hope that’s the reason why she was left off the USWNT roster against Canada.

As for Chicago, their performance on the field aside (but honestly, Saturday’s game was our first real glimpse of how amazing Christiane is as a playmaker), this club is miles ahead of all the other WPS clubs. The webcasts they provide us are just perfect. And because I’m a complete geek, I noticed Saturday’s webcast used the Google App Engine. But the best part was right after the game began, the program scaled up and migrated over to Amazon Web Services. My geek self seriously wants to work for the company providing these webcasts! Absolute brilliance! Ok, there were still some glitches as I logged out during half-time and could not log back in for the second half, but that only proves that the company totally needs to hire me to sort these little snafus out. But dorkiness aside, Chicago are doing a great job marketing to multiple demographics – partnering with ZipCar, promoting Green Laces, having members of the Windy City Rollers Rollerderby team perform the national anthem, and a bunch of other awesome stuff too. I just don’t think the other clubs are anywhere close to these accomplishments.

And I’ve got to be in San Jose tomorrow – a few freeway exits from Buck Shaw – for work, so I’ll be making my way over to the stadium for the game against the Sol (crossing my fingers there will still be walk-up tickets available). Both teams are missing key players which, off the pitch drama aside, is the real theme for this week. The US plays Canada on Monday and suddenly all our teams are bringing out their Z squads. Bit of a problem for WPS and one they seriously need to address if they plan to continue broadcasting these games internationally. But since I’m just a lowly blogger with no credibility, here’s someone with perhaps a bit more influence adding a few comments of his own:

• A parade of nations prior to kick-off with flags from all 10 nations represented in WPS for the Inaugural Season: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, France, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, United States.
• The opportunity for fans to follow along with players thoughts about the historic day with real-time tweets right to fans’ cell phones.
• On-field opening remarks from WPS Commissioner Tonya Antonucci and on-field ball handover from Mia Hamm to the referees.
• The creation of a special WPS Inaugural Match logo to commemorate the game that will be included in team photos and stamped on all official match balls.
• Video welcomes from key sports figures and officials, including among them FIFA President Sepp Blatter.
• National anthem sung by rising stars “The Beach Girlz”.
• The development of a unique website – My WPS Inaugural – where fans in attendance can post their memories and images of the historic day.
• Fox Soccer Channel live pre-game show beginning at 5:30pm EST/2:30pm PT followed by game coverage at 6pm EST/3pm PT.
• The ball used in the historic first goal for WPS will be taken out of play, then signed after the game by the goal scorer, and sent for display to the National Soccer Hall of Fame and Museum in Oneonta, NY.

Oh wait, you mean THE Sepp Blatter who once publicly said the women’s game will be more popular if players wore tighter shorts? Well sheet, Since Kerri Walsh is probably a bit busy with her first kid and with Dancing With the Stars onto a new season, I bet Misty May-Treanor has a bit of free time to come on down. Ok, I may be kidding a little bit here (but perhaps someone *should* give her a call). Mia Hamm will also be around and posing next to the WPS logo which just happens to be a silhouette of her kicking a ball. Tres postmodern.

Right. So in the next day or two, I plan to have my first WPS game preview out. But until then, here’s your Picture of the Week and a lil’ teaser of what’s to come…

(I’m blind! I’m blind!)

And to everyone planning to attend the game at the HDC on Sunday, tailgating in the parking lot is totally ok. You just gotta keep the booze bottles in the car trunk and the booze in plastic cups. And after the game, there are usually vendors strategically located in the parking lot selling cheap and delicious bacon wrapped hot dogs. Great for the drunk munchies. Have fun everyone!

p.s. It’s important to note that now the entire world knows Sepp Blatter is an ass man. Keep that in mind when you are watching him do whatever he’s gonna do on Sunday.

Find more videos like this on Women’s Professional Soccer

…got to give credit where credit is due (aarrrrggghhhh, why am I posting so much?!?!?)

Suns center Shaquille O’Neal posted a note on his Twitter feed before a home game against Washington on Saturday night, suggesting he planned to post to the popular social networking Web site during halftime.

And sure enough, a brief message was posted on Shaq’s feed before the third quarter.

“Shhhhhhh,” it read.

It was the same message O’Neal delivered when asked about his Twitter plans before the game. When told Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry already knew about it, O’Neal bent over, leaned against the locker-room wall and groaned loudly, saying his plans were blown.

“I was going to do it and not get in trouble, then brag about not getting in trouble,” O’Neal said.

Gentry, when asked about O’Neal’s plans before the game, said he didn’t care.

“As long as he gets 25 [points] and 11 [rebounds], he can do whatever he wants. He can Twitter, Facebook, MySpace,” said Gentry, who also has a Twitter account set up by his daughter.

Last Sunday, Milwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva became an overnight Web celebrity after he posted a note, called a “tweet”, to his Twitter feed during halftime of his game against Boston.

“I stirred something up,” Villanueva said after Milwaukee’s 96-84 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday night. “I’m a trend setter, I guess.”

Villanueva wrote that he had to step it up in the second half. He did, and the Bucks won. But coach Scott Skiles was annoyed, saying it gave the impression that Villanueva wasn’t focused. Skiles said Villanueva would not be fined for the incident but said it was a “no-brainer” that players shouldn’t be doing such things from the locker room any more.

O’Neal referenced Villanueva when he announced his plan on his Twitter feed.

“Attention all twitterers I’m a tweet at halftime and not get fined like vill a new wave a whteva his name is,” Shaq wrote.

Great. We all up to speed now? With professional basketball suddenly thrusting the concept into the minds of mainstream sports in this country, eyes are turning to teeny tiny WPS who already sanctioned the idea for their inaugural game. I must say, this is a BRILLIANT marketing strategy. And, so far, MLS has done nothing to steal the spotlight.

And on top of all this extra publicity, the twittery idea is sparking debate over the internets which is everything WPS needs to remain in the minds of many-o-sports fans.

But is it the right thing to do? Will players tweeting from the sidelines be a distraction to what’s happening on the field? Well, I have a few thoughts on this…

* Twitter is PERFECT for live reporting at the game. Call it a match tracker that’s available on the internet as well as to a significant number of fans’ cell phones. Real time updates of that game you’re missing because you are stuck at work, your grandma’s house, Costco, etc etc etc. Every single WPS team AT THE VERY LEAST should have someone at the game live-tweeting what in the hell is happening out there.

* Twitter is PERFECT for marketing the teams. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is how twitter plans to make money; by selling what we write to marketing companies. And if you think about it, suddenly the whole twitter search and twitter hash marks top trends phenomenon makes so much more sense. To think that companies aren’t using what we write and aren’t immediately shifting how they market their products, is crazy talk. And because twitter keeps this info open and available to everyone with an internet connection, we can all benefit from the information we all tweet out – even teeny tiny WPS.

* During-game tweeting is a brand new phenomenon and no-one really knows if it is truly distracting. And no-one really knows if it’s about to become that new & personal way for fans to feel right in that moment and right there on the sidelines which is basically where we all want to be when we’re watching this stuff anyways. This is basically a “wait and see” type scenario. And WPS is willing to take the plunge and experiment with the idea. If they succeed, other leagues will take note and adopt and WPS will get the credit.

But is it the right thing to do? Honestly, I don’t care. I say experiment away because the fans WILL let the league know if the result sucks. In fact, the fans will probably tweet their frustration… maybe even by using a hash tag so WPS can easily search twitter for the comments.

The new Women’s Professional Soccer league will allow selected players to post short Twitter notes, called “tweets,” during its inaugural game between the Los Angeles Sol and Washington Freedom March 29 at Home Depot Center, league spokesman Robert Penner said.

Yup. And before that, the WPS twitter page asked for feedback on the idea (I totally replied that they should NOT censor the participants – bring on the explicitives! You wanna be real then be real!). And Nick has graciously offered to retweet the official game tweets for the rest of us who are perhaps too lazy to go and follow every single WPS player & staff member’s twitter feed:

My pledge to you, the reader: If they tweet, I tweet. I’ll tell you who’s tweeting, why they’re tweeting and what they’re tweeting about. Is it redundant to retweet? Only if you’re not listening.

Thanks! Green’s feed is here. He also promises never to post the score. Whew.

And just to give the live-tweeting participants some twittery ideas, Here are my favorite feeds of the moment:

Rob Corddry The guy who used to be on The Daily Show. He recently fired writer Michael Ian Black over an Ugly Word of the Day tweet then took applications through twitter for a replacement. The winning tweet: “hey, what’s the deal with traffic?”

Diplo The dj & producer. Firstoff, his pic is Alf the alien. He tends to poke fun at very famous in the twittershpere Puff Daddy (Diddy? Doody?) along with pretty much every effin thing he does & sees. He recently saw an eagle outside his studio then spent many-o-tweets wondering where the eagle went and if we all want to follow his eagle (no idea if the eagle has a twitter feed… yet).

Michael Sheehan I recently convinced a company I work for to migrate a significant portion of their IT infrastructure to the GoGrid cloud. A while back, while I was working on this, I tweeted something about the Grid that annoyed me. GoGrid employee Sheehan replied and helped me out a bit. We’ve been following each other ever since. He tends to post articles about how new technology & social media is shifting quite a few businesses (not just IT) as well as his own reviews of various (usually open source) applications. And I think he’s the guy who started the twitter-trend to follow a father every Tuesday.

So there you have it. My top twitterers of the moment (this list changes almost weekly). Season kick-off is in a few days and I think this post means I’m now officially back and regularly writing about this crazy messed up league. Huzaah.

The picture above is brought to you by the excellent site LOL Jocks. And I also recommend Ladies… because it’s pretty awesome to find a blog of only women writing about sports (sorry Euro readers – for now Ladies… just writes about games in the US). And I’m also pretty bummed out because I missed what is now kind of sort of maybe being called the game of the year when Montreal played Santos last night in the CONCACAF Chamions League. Personal complaints aside, I shall now attempt to do a WPS pre-season write-up so far which will likely look more half-assed than polished.

Perhaps the biggest news from last month was Arsenal winning their 10th Premiere League Cup courtesy of a Kelly Smith hat trick. And now, both England and Canada are playing in the Cyprus Cup so our English and Canadian internationals haven’t started their WPS pre-season yet. Same for the USWNT who are currently kicking massive ass at the Algarve Cup (they’ve won an automatic spot in the final). As for all the WPS internationals, Michael Minnich does a nice, concise review on his blog. His big question marks are Sky Blue FC (too many internationals, not enough slots) and The Washington Freedom (injured McLeod, questions whether Necib and Mykjaland will sign). And as for St Louis he writes: “Aluko’s first name isn’t even spelled correctly on the roster page. Not the best way to sell tickets and endear yourself to fans.” It’s true, I don’t really hear much from St Louis. Is that just because I live in California?

Domestically, the big story is the agreement reached between WPS and the USWNT players. The results place the average league salary at $32,000 with (I think) the USWNT players making around $40,000. Yeah, it’s low but considering that last time I checked the MLS salary structure (a starting MLS salary for a senior spot was around $30,000), I’m not particularly surprised at the numbers. Also the WPS salary cap is about half of what MLS teams get to work with. Although, it’s pretty obvious whatever Marta, Smith, Christiane, (likely) DeVanna, etc etc make will be much higher than the average leading me to wonder if each team is quietly being allowed one marquee (i.e. not part of the salary cap) player. Speaking of money, the other big story is whether the league will make it at all since WPS failed to land another major sponsorship after Puma and ticket sales are still a little low. But the hope is the league planned well for conservative spending. Goff writes:

Players will earn an average of $32,000 on six-month contracts instead of the full-year pacts used in the WUSA. To supplement earnings during the offseason, players will be loaned to clubs overseas, coach youth teams aligned with WPS or work non-soccer jobs identified for them by team officials.

And this conservative model means less dependence on ticket sales to stay viable. The goal being an average of 5,000 tickets sold per game which, you know, is a bit easier that 10,000 or 15,000.

So each team opened up their pre-season training camps and a few even released videos. And hold up – is that Abby Wambach to the left in that picture below taken at a recent Freedom training?

I really wish the The Offside had bloggers for each team RIGHT NOW to keep up with all the reports coming out of the different camps. This is too much for one girl to handle.

Ok, and one last bit on Skortgate 2009. By now, we all know those things are accessories only (although I really held back on announcing they’re convenient places to stash your weed) but it’s still worth it to read Jennifer Doyle’s take on the controversy at her blog. And after that, read Amanda Vandervort’s arguments for the sko– err wraps. And I just gotta say, both blogs have some pretty good points. But no matter what, I’m still calling them skorts.

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!