When the United States hosted the 1996 Olympics — a Games sometimes referred to as “The Title IX Games,” the top level of women’s soccer was a handful of amateur teams in the Northeast. Pro women’s basketball was going to get started in the fall. Two pro softball teams, the Blaze and the Storm, barnstormed the nation. Worldwide, if you wanted to play soccer, you went to Japan or northern Europe. If you wanted to play volleyball, you could go to Italy or Japan. In the United States, though? Forget about it.
Today, the number of prominent women’s sports teams is absolutely astounding. There’s a WNBA in basketball, and a 3 x 3 league called Unrivaled. There are two USSF-sanctioned Division I women’s soccer leagues as well as a bunch of amateur and pro-am sides from coast to coast.
A women’s lacrosse league has been at play this week. That league, the Maybelline Women’s Lacrosse League, has supplanted Athletes Unlimited Lacrosse. AU, however, still runs two pro softball promotions, a volleyball league, and a basketball league.
Women’s Professional Fastpitch is limping into this year, but is still planning to operate. Three women’s volleyball leagues, League One, Major League Volleyball, and the Professional Volleyball Federation, are playing this year.
But wait, there’s more.
The second season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League is also taking place, a six-team league representing detente between the Premier Hockey Federation and the Professional Hockey Players Association, which had refused to play with the Federation. There is a similar detente amongst the various interests which had been playing women’s tackle football in an alphabet soup of leagues, and now are under the Women’s Football Alliance. And next month, Women’s Elite Rugby, a six-team league Rugby Union group, will start its inaugural season.
The women’s sports revolution isn’t even limited to the United States. In soccer, women’s teams have been nurtured by world-famous men’s club sides like Barcelona, Manchester City, Santos, Bayern Munich, Club America, and Juventus. There are popular cricket leagues for women in England, India, and Australia. And last month, the inaugural season of the Women’s Hockey India League took place.
The opportunities for women to play the sport they love, and (sometimes) get paid for it, are widespread, diverse, and quite extraordinary. However, one does get the feeling that there could be a bubble of expansion which is not going to be sustainable unless every league and every team is able to attract sponsors as well as ticket-holders.
And that, of course, assumes that the current economy will keep the businesses that support women’s athletics afloat. I’ve seen so many women’s athletic teams and leagues get dashed upon the rocks of recessions. Think of it: the mid-70s saw attempts at starting leagues of pro women’s basketball, softball, volleyball, and even tackle football, but the recessions of 1974 and 1979 affected the nascent business of women’s sports.
Without a stable worldwide economic outlook and people with disposable income to go to a Women’s Big Bash League match, a WNBA game, or a Women’s Super League soccer game, the current bubble could burst very suddenly.