In Part 3 of my interview with Tim Holt, president United Soccer Leagues (USL), Holt spoke about the recent trend of W-League affiliation with MLS clubs and what that relationship means to WPS, the United States' first division of women’s professional soccer.
Read the overview of the interview here.
Part 1: MLS and USL affiliation and the new MISL
Part 2: Changes coming for the U.S. Open Cup
Interview with Tim Holt, president USL
Part 3: W-League/MLS affiliation and WPS
LE: In 2011, four MLS teams launched women’s teams and three of those teams (Vancouver Whitecaps, D.C. United, Chivas USA) are W-League teams and the other (FC Dallas) is a WPSL team. Do you see this affiliation between MLS and women’s teams as a trend? And, do you see this as a conflict with or a complement to WPS?
Holt: It’s definitely a trend. What we’re trying to provide here is a great women’s player development league for collegiate, amateur, professionals, former professionals, but obviously it can’t be on a paid basis. Our model is different than WPS and I don’t compare W-League to WPS.
We fully support WPS, we fully support this country’s having a division 1 professional league and we hope that they continue to be and to be successful. But the W-League has been a constant. This is the first women’s national soccer league in the country. Our mantra is to be the best developmental league for women in this country.
I don’t look at it that D.C. United would have their brand involved with a W-League team in any way in conflict with WPS. I don’t feel like we’re competing with WPS. It’s not that much different than when we talked about the Philadelphia Union and other teams like Harrisburg [USL PRO] and Reading [PDL].
LE: Are any W-League players being paid?
Holt: That used to be the case. We used to have professional teams playing in the W-League, but those teams did not have any collegiate players on them. If you pay one player as a professional on your team – and if you pay a player they’re professional by NCAA definition – you cannot have any student athletes on that team. So, it’s an either/or type of model. You’re either using student athletes and collegiate players and you can’t pay your players or you do play your players and therefore you can’t have any student athletes.
At present, there are no W-League teams that are professional, that pay their players. There have been in the past – FC Indiana was one, the Buffalo Flash, which has become the Western New York Flash of WPS was one, but I don’t think we’ve had any others.
There are a couple other teams in California that I understand to be professional, but none that play in the W-League. Our teams in California are the Pali Blues, the LA Strikers and Santa Clarita Blue Heat and none of those teams are professional.
LE: Did the NCAA changes that allowed MLS Academy players to play with professional players affect the W-League?
Holt: That doesn’t change anything for current students athletes. What it changed is pre-enrollment at an NCAA institution, say a 16-year old who hasn’t enrolled in college yet. Once you enroll in a university you can have no involvement from a competition standpoint with a professional team. You can train with one in the summer when school is out.
Some of the Union’s Academy players who are technically high school are in the Union’s Academy and they play in the Union’s exhibition games and other friendlies, that can happen. They’re playing alongside paid professionals in that environment. But that same kid, if he decides to go to Clemson, once he enrolls he won’t be able to do that.
LE: Do you see more W-League teams starting affiliations with MLS clubs in 2012?
Holt: I think it’s a trend. I’m aware of one other situation where that’s being discussed/contemplated and that could happen. When geography makes sense. These MLS teams are growing vertically. In the first ten years of MLS it was really just about the first team, the men’s professional team, and now they’ve started academies, they have youth clubs and now they’ve started getting into soccer on the female side and it’s part of the evolution that’s happening.
It’s not just MLS clubs, there’s a lot of USL PRO clubs and PDL clubs that have branched out on the women’s side or on the girls’ youth side, and vice versa. Take a club like the Hampton Roads Piranhas, which has been one of our flagship W-League teams for a couple of decades and former W-League champions, they added a PDL team. It’s happening in both directions.
The clubs are getting so diverse to try to service all their members and compete in their areas. It’s really an amazing time of growth for the game in every way.
LE: Why does the Women's Premier Soccer League (WPSL) stand alone as a league? Is it comparable to PDL?
Holt: I don’t believe that it is. The PDL has franchises that are run as businesses. The PDL and W-League are for ownership groups that probably aren’t of the highest financial stature or don’t have the right market or objectives to operate at the highest professional level, but still want a league and a structure that is very professionally operated.
We have a 20-person full-time staff at USL and we’re constantly servicing the teams. We run the PDL and the W-League in the same way operationally and from a promotional standpoint that we do with our professional leagues USL PRO and Major Indoor Soccer League. So there’s a high level of service and an emphasis on quality. We have a vertically integrated club approach and emphasis on team services and a high level of minimum standards, which are enforced. For the PDL and W-League it’s not about the number of teams, it’s about the owner that wants to operate in a more sophisticated, professional structure.
There are a lot of other big regional and national amateur leagues which have really grown, and that’s a positive thing about the interest level in the game. The great thing about soccer in the United States right now is that there are so many different options you’re bound to find one that fits your club or your interests.
LE: So if WPS is division 1, is W-League the equivalent of division 2?
Holt: No, because W-League is not a professional league. There’s only one fully sanctioned professional women’s soccer league in the United States and that’s WPS. Below that there are the other national leagues, W-League and WPSL.
We operate the W-League as if it’s a professional league.
LE: You sell tickets to W-League, right?
Holt: Yes, we do, it’s a business. W-League and PDL are almost brother-sister leagues in terms of the way they operate. You have full-time staff, they’re 12-month businesses involved in the community, they sell tickets and you’re running a business. There’s a camp aspect to it, there’s a marketing aspect, there’s a player development, a technical aspect to it and there’s a revenue generation, tickets sales, sponsorship aspect to it.
We’ll have over a dozen new franchises between the PDL and the W-League for the 2012 season and we bring all of them in several days before our AGM [annual general meeting] for three days of dedicated training and orientation meetings and that’s just the beginning. Most fans and people who follow the game don’t realize how much goes into what the teams do to organize themselves to put on a season each and every year at the USL level.
LE: The USL PRO Harrisburg City Islanders have become something of a feeder team for the Philadelphia Union, a place professional players out of contract with a first division team can play, upcoming talent can play, professionals coming out of MLS can play and there’s a good back and forth. But there isn’t a second division professional soccer for women. What does it take to get W-League at least semi-professional to support those female players in between first division contracts?
Holt: We continue to explore whether there’s a model for that. The W-League continues to evolve, we’ve got some really ambitious ownership groups and clubs that would like to do more programming, potentially even have professional teams. You want to do that in a way that supports WPS, so we continue to explore how to grow the W-League in a way that could fill that void.
We’ve not reached any conclusions or prepared to make any announcements, but we’ll continue to explore that over the next two months - how the W-League can continue to grow to help fill the very void that you’re talking about. That’s something that’s currently lacking on the women’s side of the sport right now. We’ve seen a lot of tremendous strides, but there still are not enough professional playing opportunities for female players at this stage. And that’s even with WPS having however many players they have on their rosters.
The more professional opportunities there are, the more players will not slip through the cracks. It certainly happened on the men’s side and some of those players turned out to be National Team players and had an impact. It’s important for the continued development of the women’s game and something that fits our pyramid, whether that’s W-League or something different than the W-League, it’s something that we need to continue to look at.
We’re going into our second quarter century - it’s 26 years for USL, so it’s exciting to see the growth of the sport and USL. It’s like we were living in the dark ages 15 years ago and there’s this soccer renaissance coming on. It’s fun to be a part of it.
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