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Good. If the women can start filling up stadiums, the pay issues will disappear. They're a long way from that, but at least in the U.S., attendance is increasing, and the NWSL has made it a priority to move the teams into professional caliber stadiums. They've had considerable success, although I don't know if all the teams are there yet. Not too many years ago, many of the women's teams were playing in awful venues, including giant football stadiums that looked and felt empty even if the women drew a pretty good crowd for soccer in the U.S. Right-sizing venues is an important art. A smaller stadium rocks if you can fill it, and there are no bad seats in the house.

Iirc, global television viewership for the last Women's World Cup was about one third of viewship for the men's World Cup. I have the impression that the women's game is developing grassroots support in most parts of the world, Africa and Latin America being the big laggards. Africa is Africa, and a lot of Latin America is misogynist. But bottom line, the women need to put butts in seats and build tv audiences.

I don't follow the details closely enough to have an informed opinion, but my sense is that the biggest threat right now to the women's game internationally -- and to the USWNT particularly -- comes from Europe. For both marketing and political reasons, European men's soccer has moved towards "strategic partnerships" with the women's leagues. The problem is that there is so much money in European men's soccer that the European clubs can buy the women's leagues with spare change. The danger is that they will pull the women's game into a permanent WNBA model, in which the women's teams are run as loss leaders for the men's leagues. That would mean permanent dependency, living on charity, and it would inexorably pull those wanting improvements in the women's game (including higher pay) into basing their arguments on endless whining about "equity" rather than ticket sales and revenue. This is a profound corruption. There is a lot of "equity" rhetoric flying around women's soccer in the U.S. as well, but at least financially, the NWSL has so far been insistent on the women remaining masters of their own ship and building the league from the grassroots up on a financially sustainable model. (The national team players get a separate salary from U.S. Soccer, but most of the regular NWSL players still don't earn much, which is why so many of them double up with a second season abroad after the NWSL season wraps up.) For the league, this means attendance uber alles. As it should be.

FIFA is corrupt and still stiffs the women's game. That's yet another problem.

Oh well. The upcoming Women's World Cup is wide open. The U.S., as always, is one of the teams to beat, but I don't think it will win. This is simply a matter of the law of averages catching up. Once past group stage, it is a high stakes, single elimination tournament, so the winner has to run the table against peer level competition. Even the best team is going to have to dodge a bullet now and then. The U.S. has now won two consecutive World Cups, which is an impressive winning streak against peer level teams. Sooner or later, the lucky goal, the questionable call, the moment of magic, or the ball off the post will bounce the other way. Streaks are made to be broken, and the U.S. team enters with a bullseye on its back. They are one of the teams to beat, but the odds say the unbeaten string will be broken.

It would be a different calculation if soccer were like the NBA, NFL, NHL, or MLB with seven game series. But it's not. It's like the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Even the best team has to survive an off game.