NWSL lost $4m with its Summer Cup. This year, it is encouraging club-organized friendlies

New York Times

16-07-2025

While some American sports leagues use the summer as a breather, women's soccer takes center stage.
Every four years, the World Cup dominates headlines. In alternating cycles, the European Championship seizes the spotlight. Add in the Olympics, regional tournaments including Copa América Femenina and the Women's Africa Cup of Nations, and now the Club World Cup (which is delayed until 2028 on the women's side) and there's no shortage of high-stakes, high-drama football.
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The reason these tournaments are scheduled in the northern hemisphere's summer is that many domestic soccer leagues around the world are on pause during this time. But for the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), they land in the middle of its season.
Following Major League Soccer's lead with the introduction of the Leagues Cup, the NWSL debuted its own version of a midseason tournament last summer to try to maintain momentum through its Olympic break. The Summer Cup featured all 14 NWSL clubs and six top teams from neighboring Mexico's Liga MX Femenil.
With some powerhouse competitors involved, the stage was set for something truly special: a summer showcase that could deepen cross-border rivalries, expand audiences, and create new commercial tentpoles for both leagues. In the end, the Kansas City Current took home the trophy.
But reality did not match the ambition.
The tournament's inaugural year looks like also being its last.
It struggled to find its audience in certain markets, and only 3,668 people attended October's final between the Current and New York/New Jersey's Gotham FC, played on neutral soil at 8,000-capacity Toyota Field in San Antonio, Texas. The league lost more than $3.5million on the tournament, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter who spoke with The Athletic on the condition of anonymity. Total losses eventually exceeded $4m, with over $1m spent on travel alone.
The league did not comment on the financials of the matter.
'Internationally, there's a flawed assumption that if the men's version of a league succeeds, the women's version will automatically follow,' one industry insider told The Athletic. On top of that, compelling matchups didn't necessarily translate to broadcast success, and sponsors were not willing to take a risk on a first-year tournament.
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'The challenge with any startup competition is that you can't just show up and expect to make money just because it's a 'hot topic.' There still has to be a return on investment. Not everyone can be the Club World Cup, throwing millions at an idea and hoping it sticks,' the insider explained. The men's Club World Cup, which just concluded in the U.S. with Chelsea of the Premier League taking the top prize, included a $1billion broadcast deal with DAZN and an equally large total prize-money pot.
For the NWSL, this will be the third consecutive summer that its efforts to establish a consistent cup competition have undergone a major overhaul. With 37 NWSL players representing their countries at various tournaments this summer, the league encouraged each of the 14 clubs to organize its own slate of exhibition matches, to ensure player safety and level of play when the schedule resumes in August were maintained, while stars such as Esther, Barbra Banda and Delphine Cascarino light up international defenses abroad.
'We have to be strategic with our scheduling, knowing that our spring-to-fall calendar always comes with a summer gap,' a league spokesperson told The Athletic. 'The league ultimately sets the schedule structure, but for this summer, there was a clear desire from clubs to build in some flexibility to stage their own matches.
'This is just the next iteration of how we're working to solve testing new ideas and seeing what sticks.'
This process becomes that much more important next summer, when the NWSL squares up against the behemoth that is the expanded men's World Cup, with 48 teams competing in the U.S., Mexico and Canada across June and July.
These friendly matches aren't just tune-ups to keep legs warm, ensure player safety and maintain quality of play. For most NWSL clubs, the games are a strategic play and an opportunity to grow the brand beyond current limits and tap into new revenue streams.
The North Carolina Courage, for example, is hosting Mexican sides Tigres Femenil and Chivas de Guadalajara this month in back-to-back ticketed events.
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'When we looked at our schedule from a front-office perspective, we didn't see it as a 13-game season, we planned for 15,' Jake Levy, the Courage's director of communications, explained. 'From the start, those two exhibition games were built into our strategy, our models, and our goals. We treated them as full-fledged matchdays: opportunities to open our doors, engage fans, and showcase our stadium and product. To us, they carried the same weight as regular-season games.'
Elsewhere, the Current have hosted the Teal Rising Cup, also involving the Chicago Stars and Brazilian clubs Corinthians and Palmeiras, Racing Louisville is leaning into a natural in-state rivalry with fellow Kentucky side Lexington SC of the United Soccer League, and Bay FC, Portland Thorns and Seattle Reign are welcoming Japanese club Urawa Red Diamonds' women's team for a set of matches. In addition to commercial aspirations, these friendlies also serve as a soft-power play, allowing other teams to showcase their style and culture, and tap into local diaspora communities.
'Playing two teams from Liga MX Femenil is a great opportunity for both leagues to gain cross-market exposure,' Levy says. 'While I can't speak for Tigres directly, conversations with their staff made it clear they're eager to build a footprint in the U.S., so having a chance to be in-market and connect with American fans was valuable for them. Teams like Tigres and Chivas are massive brands in Mexico, and hosting them in our stadium gives us a unique chance to engage a different segment of our local market fans we might not otherwise reach.'
In northern California, Bay FC approached the break with two core strategic objectives: ensuring that their non-internationals got an opportunity to continue playing through the summer and engaging with fans through this break in the NWSL schedule. As well as Urawa, the club is playing a friendly against regional rival Angel City FC from Los Angeles.
'The Bay Area is such a diverse community, so anytime you bring an international club over, you have a whole segment of the community that's just very excited to see them on their home turf,' the San Jose-based club's CEO Brady Stewart tells The Athletic. 'I also think there is a recognition that the game is so global that there's great talent all around the world and getting to see some of that other talent showcased here in the U.S. is really important to our fans.'
From a business perspective, these friendly games work. They offer clubs additional revenue and a low-risk opportunity to face international opponents without the pressure of league points. They also give younger players minutes and keep those returning from tournament duty with their country fresh.
'Every friendly has a bit of a different economic structure,' says Stewart, confirming the club will make money on these upcoming games. 'Both clubs will look at it as, 'Does this help us to expand our fanbase? Does this help us with storytelling?'. And you assume that you meet those strategic objectives and you work the economics around that.'
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With the Teal Rising Cup, which they won overnight with a 2-1 defeat of Corinthians, the Current have showcased a world-class stadium, hosted top Brazilian teams, and controlled their own calendar — a prototype for what the NWSL is encouraging league-wide.
'The inaugural Teal Rising Cup has given us the opportunity to bring in elite competition we wouldn't normally see here, and our community has responded with passion and pride,' a Current spokesperson told The Athletic. 'It's an experience that's proven its value on and off the pitch, and one we're excited to continue growing.'
While clubs are taking varied approaches to the NWSL's summer break, the key to success is to treat these games as an intentional part of your season: properly planned-out in advance, promoted well and positioned to build momentum both on and off the field.
'It's not a regular-season game that's on the calendar. It is very difficult to raise awareness and communicate to people,' explains Racing Louisville's vice-president of marketing and communications Jonathan Lintner, whose club has been part of The Women's Cup invitational tournament — a four-team event being played in Sao Paulo, Brazil over the next week — for two years in a row and advertises it in its season match calendar.
'It is so important that when that schedule is released, the date needs to be on there, or just people don't plan around it, and especially when you're adding dates in the summer when folks are taking vacations. Anytime you try to add on, especially when you're going to your business partners, they'll just go, 'No, we're good.'
Planning is essential, as Litner says, to offering something meaningful during a part of the season that is otherwise dominated by international competitions.
It's something NWSL and its clubs continue to work out.