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U.S. Women’s Soccer League Goes Belly-Up
A second attempt at a major women’s soccer league in the U.S. foundered Friday as Women’s Professional Soccer announced that it would permanently suspend its operations.
The league, which played with six teams in 2011, announced it was going on hiatus in January amid a lawsuit with one of its owners, Dan Borislow, who owned the Florida franchise magicJack. The league and Borislow announced Friday that they had settled their litigation; in a separate statement the league announced that it had decided to terminate all operations. The league’s owners had lost several million dollars during its three-year run.
“We sincerely regret having to take this course of action,” said T. Fitz Johnson, Atlanta Beat owner and the league’s chairman of the board.
“We are proud of what WPS has accomplished, having attracted the highest quality players in the world to play in the best women’s league, as well as the progress women’s soccer has enjoyed over the past three years,” said Thomas Hofstetter, chief executive officer and president of Sky Blue Women’s Soccer, Inc., the company that oversaw the WPS’s New Jersey-based team.
“We are extremely grateful to our sponsors, the talented players and dedicated fans that made this league so special. They, along with our teams, have invested an incredible amount of resources for the benefit of the women who played in WPS and the young players who aspire to play professionally someday.”
The end of WPS marks the second time in nine years that a women’s professional league has failed despite the popularity of the U.S. women’s national team, which became a sensation last summer during the Women’s World Cup in Germany. In 2003, the Women’s United Soccer Association collapsed despite the effort of stars like Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy and tens of millions of dollars of investments.
WPS launched in 2009 on a much smaller scale but suffered from several of the same problems as WUSA – miniscule television ratings and disappointing attendance. Several top players have called for a semi-pro model that will allow them to continue to play compe ively but require them to hold down other jobs as well.
http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2012/0...goes-belly-up/
no one cares
50k is a bit fkn low, in euro they get paid more then that...or else they all year round in different leagues...
i think netball pays alot down here for womens sports compared to basketball, lol
then again this country is a bunch of bandwagons when someone is doing really good and jump on the newsmedia to hype them up to fail, then they dont report it
Too bad. It sucks that women aren't afforded the same opportunity as men to pursue in athletics and get rich doing it.
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