Former Chicago Fire (of MLS) general manager Peter Wilt is now with Women’s Professional Soccer, the seven-team league you probably didn’t hear about when it kicked off its innaugural season in March. In an interview with ESPN.com, published yesterday, talked about the target market of WPS being suburban families. In talking about whether WPS could compete for the same audience as MLS, Wilt said:
WPS’ secondary audiences of ethnics, gay and lesbian and the young urban are relatively small and have not cannibalized MLS by any means.
It’s encouraging that a sports executive recognizes us as a target audience. Over 70 regular-season games, WPS averaged almost 4,700 spectators per game: So it’s impossible for him to say that they’s stolen any fans from MLS. And if they were going to steal fans, my guess is it would be the “ethnics” a soccer league stole before anything else.
on Sep 16th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Women’s pro soccer? Man that sounds terrif….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
on Sep 17th, 2009 at 2:44 am
Women’s pro sports will never be successful until they are supported en mass by women. The vast of majority of sports fans are men and most of them could care less about women’s sports.
on Sep 17th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Sounds like the previous two posters need to go to a match and find out what they’re talking about. There were several men at the matches I went to last season. Fathers and sons/daughter’s, college guys and men looking for a good game to watch since MLS isn’t doing it for them.
The skill is higher and the ball control is better which both make for a more attractive soccer game.
According to the WPS Commish, this past season was a success and they are even adding two additional teams for this upcoming season.
Don’t talk about what you don’t know anything about.