The National Women’s Soccer League has reached a huge milestone entering it’s fifth season.

In the United States, prior to the NWSL, there’s never been a successful women’s soccer league that made it this far. The Women’s Professional Soccer League (WPS) (2009-2011) only made it three seasons before meeting its demise. Before then, the Women’s United Soccer Association (2001-2003) also only reached three seasons of play.

Reaching a Milestone: Examining NWSL Growth in its Fifth Year

Now, the NWSL has increased in popularity. The league’s 10 teams have made a name for themselves. Proving it with two major deals for this current season. A&E Networks and Lifetime TV partnered up with the NWSL to regularly broadcast matches this season. Lifetime agreed to a “Game of the Week,” which also features a 30 minute pre-game show as well. In total, airing 23 games on the channel.

Also, Verizon agreed to pay the NWSL an undisclosed amount to use Go90 to live-stream the other 98 matches occurring this season. Anyone interested can view the games on Go90’s IOS or Android application, or use Google’s Chromecast to stream it on their televisions. The streaming demand has the potential to get the NWSL even more exposure, as according to an interview Philly.com‘s Jonathan Tannenwald conducted.

Verizon plans to put the Go90 games on their AOL and Yahoo apps. This opens the NWSL to Roku, gaming systems, Fire TV and more.

The Quality of Players

The league is also growing with the quality of players that are joining. Last week, I wrote about the big singing of Marta by the Orlando Pride. A legend for the Brazilian Women’s National Team

In addition, popular players like Christine Sinclair (Portland Thorns), Ali Krieger (Orlando Pride), Rose Lavelle (Boston Breakers) and Kelley O’Hara (Sky Blue FC) are on NWSL rosters. In the summer, Alex Morgan returns from Lyon in France to the Orlando Pride. While Carli Lloyd returns to the Houston Dash after a stint with the Manchester City Women’s Team.

The NWSL also updated their website to help the league gain more traction. The website features a more pristine and clean look. NWSL is also working it’s way up the ladder in popularity, with several trends on Twitter and Facebook.

The league still has a long way to go, to reach the level of Major League Soccer. However, they’re clearly on the right path, and could reach it sooner than expected.

Be sure to read other articles from Rachael at her Kicking it With McKriger blog. Also, you can listen to her, Erik Watkins and Sean Garmer each week as well. Right here on W2Mnet.com or I-Tunes, Youtube and more on the Soccer 2 the MAX Podcast.

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