Understanding The Pyramid 2024 – State of Women’s Soccer

Well, hello there, SocTakes crowd. Remember me? It’s been a while. Even longer than before. Sorry about that, the pandemic, and life, and the universe, and everything, it all happened.

You know the drill by now, it’s January February March April, which means the start of #HipsterManifesto season, and a perfect time for another installment of Understanding The Pyramid, the inconsistently-published series wherein yours truly runs the gamut of what’s what in the North American soccer system.

This time around, it’s a bit of a twist, as we’ll be looking at the state of the women’s game going into the 2024 campaign, including all the various leagues both existing and under construction, along with some thoughts on where I’d like to see the trajectory turn.

Without further obligatory introductory waffling, buckle up, we’re jumping in.

The Pyramid in 2023

This past season saw one professional league operate (the NWSL) along with the same trio of semi-professional/amateur leagues (WPSL, UWS, USL-W) that operated in 2023.

National Women’s Soccer League

• Division 1 – Fully Professional
• First season: 2013
• Teams for 2024: 14

The National Women’s Soccer League was born out of the disarray following the collapse of Women’s Professional Soccer in April 2012. With the USL’s original W-League on shaky ground, the WPSL stepped up for the 2012 season to run the WPSL Elite league to ensure a professional season could be played that year. While that league took the field, US Soccer held a series of meetings incorporating every major factor in the women’s soccer scene to create a new top-level league from scratch to, it was hoped, learn from the mistakes of the previous attempts.

Needless to say, it worked, and the NWSL has remained a bedrock of women’s professional soccer not just in the USA but in the global landscape for over a decade now. While the league has definitely not been without controversy (see: everything that came to light in 2021), and of course the ever-present question of pay equity, one thing it has done is survive longer than any of its predecessors. Entering its 12th season for 2024, the league is continuing to grow, with expansion to San Jose with Bay FC and Utah Royals returning for this season, and a planned return to Boston coming in 2026. Off the field, attendance numbers are at an all-time-high, with the 2023 season average cracking 10,000 for the first time ever, roughly double that of the men’s 2nd division USL Championship.

While the aftermath of the litany of scandals and abuse and overall horrific behavior revealed throughout 2021 still loom large, the league has worked hard to improve off and on the field, and there have been meaningful changes for player welfare to go along with the rising profile and growth. All of this means is that, while the 2021 scandals could have killed the league (and damn nearly did), the league did what it could to clean house, fix its problems, and get back to celebrating the women’s professional game. In my opinion, it succeeded.

Women’s Premier Soccer League

• “Division 4” – Amateur
• First Season: 1998
• Teams for 2024: 141

Full disclosure, I worked for the WPSL as a paid contributor for the 2018 season. With that said, I absolutely fell in love with this league during that summer, learned so much about how it works and how it’s focused and arranged, and deeply respect the organization top-to-bottom. While the WPSL isn’t professional (at least with this specific form), don’t let that detract from the consistent stellar quality you’ll find among its ranks on and off the field. The WPSL has long been a proving ground for collegiate and post-collegiate players either looking to extend their seasons, players keeping the dream alive during the weekends, and up-and-comers looking to impress and prepare to turn pro. That skill level, combined with some of the best coaching around, makes for a highly competitive, highly engaging league with sides that could go toe-to-toe with professional clubs.

It’s commonplace now for most NWSL draft picks to have played some WPSL ball, if not that in one of the other “Division 4” leagues, but the WPSL stands out as the oldest and longest-lasting, with the widest footprint. Fun fact, the men’s NPSL was originally the MPSL, the Men’s Premier Soccer League, a splinter off of the WPSL!

The WPSL has previously operated a professional league, the one-off WPSL Elite for the 2012 season following the collapse of Women’s Professional Soccer after their 2011 season. This league served as a precursor and incubator for the NWSL, with 3 of the 8 teams joining the NWSL for its inaugural campaign and many others branching off to start UWS. They have plans underway to operate another professional league, tentatively named WPSL Pro, but more on that below the fold.

United Women’s Soccer

• “Division 4” – Amateur
• First Season: 2016
• Teams for 2024: 41 (UWS 1), 12 (UWS 2)

UWS has a bit of an unusual origin story. Most of its foundational clubs came from other leagues, with some quitting the WPSL over organisational concerns following a highly dysfunctional 2015 season. Others came from the suddenly-defunct original USL W-League. More still planned to participate in a proposed-but-never realised revival of the WPSL Elite. Ultimately, there were eleven teams that had aspirations for higher standards in amateur women’s soccer comprising the inaugural roster.

From their original footprint in the northeast, the league steadily grew to cover a national footprint and, thanks to the participation of Calgary Foothills WFC, also operate in Canada. The league, like many others at this level of “semi-pro” soccer, has its ups and downs, including a substantial contraction of their original westward expansion and the as-expected revolving door of clubs, but have found a foothold and a niche as an alternative to the WPSL.

They also have done something unique among all active women’s leagues: adding a second division with eventual plans for promotion and relegation. While the two leagues haven’t been formally intertwined in that way just yet, and the UWS 2 currently serves as mostly a reserve/development league, the aspirations are real and the league is definitely one to keep an eye on.

USL W League

• “Division 4” – Amateur
• First Season: 2022
• Teams for 2024: 81

This is not the same USL W-League as mentioned above, rather, this is a brand-new league that emerged much in the same was as UWS (a running theme in all of American soccer, as you probably knew already). Initially, the league was formed to offer an organised way for men’s USL sides to field a women’s team under the same umbrella, but has since grown and expanded, adding some more USL-aligned teams from WPSL and UWS along the way.

With the push that USL has made to grow the men’s game across its three leagues, the women’s game has been able to benefit since the re-founding of the W League, and now it seems that the majority of incoming men’s teams in the USL system have plans out of the gate for a women’s program. And all this despite a very sparse distribution: despite the national footprint, there are few teams west of the Mississippi excluding some small clusters in the pacific northwest, bay area, central Colorado, and south Texas.

That said, the W League can safely lay claim to being the fastest growing of the four leagues, and like the others in its “semi-pro” level, has professional aspirations that too will be further explained below the fold.

The Pyramid in 2024 (and beyond!)

Much like on the men’s side, there’s been an explosion of new professional opportunities across the continent alongside the creation of multiple new professional leagues.

USL Super League

• Division 1 – Fully Professional
• First season: 2024-2025
• Teams for 2024-2025: 8
• Committed future teams: 9

USL wasn’t content running the second-highest men’s professional league alongside one of the two national amateur leagues after reorganising in the mid-2010s. No, they had bigger, bolder ideas. They added another men’s professional league, re-started their women’s campaign, built out academy and youth leagues, and now are issuing a direct challenge to the NWSL with the creation of the USL Super League.

This league has already requested and received division 1 sanctioning from US Soccer, putting it atop the women’s pyramid jointly with the established NWSL, but with the added benefit of an existing professional infrastructure on the men’s side for USL teams to leverage. Already, 4 of the 8 announced teams (Brooklyn, Carolina, Lexington, Spokane) have direct ties to men’s professional teams in the USL Championship or League One. This now makes it far easier and more straightforward for groups to add a professional women’s team to their operations, and ultimately will massively increase the playing opportunities for young women.

The league is also taking the unusual step of running a fall-summer calendar alignment, anticipating an August 2024 kickoff and running through, presumably, some point in May or June. While the league is on track for their August start, we still don’t have further details on the schedule – yet.

Women’s Independent Soccer League

• Division 2 – Fully Professional
• Planned first season: 2024
• Teams for 2024: 1

Ah, NISA, everyone’s favourite torch-bearer of the NASL’s dysfunction combined with classic USL chaos. They’ve got a women’s league in the works, the WISL! It’s been on the books and has a team announced (Los Angeles Force), they’ve applied for division two sanctioning, and allegedly have 5 other teams ready for their inaugural season.

Aside from that, radio silence since September 2023, which is far from ideal, given that the hypothetical kickoff point for them would have been some time during the many delays of this article. Inauspicious, to say the least, and very NISA.

Do they actually have 5 other clubs lined up? Gut says probably. Are they ready to roll right now? Absolutely not. Could they be ready to roll for a fall start, or even better a Spring 2025 proper launch? Probably, or at least probably maybe. Who knows? It’s the NISA orbit, where the timelines are made up and the deadlines don’t matter. I’ll have more to say when more exists.

WPSL Pro

• Division 3 – Fully Professional
• Planned first season: 2025
• Teams for 2025: 10

Over a decade ago, following the abrupt collapse of the lone professional league Women’s Professional Soccer in 2011, the WPSL operated a hastily-assembled professional league known as WPSL Elite. This gave the organisation their first bite at the professional ranks, and it seems they never lost the taste for it.

Now, with a far stronger organisation from top to bottom, the WPSL is planning to give it another more permanent go, with the modest aspirations of division 3 professional status. For their planned 2025 launch, they already have 7 teams signed on with letters of intent, an application filed with US Soccer, and multiple teams already lining up to play for 2026 and beyond. Given their large footprint and the strong foundations of many of their clubs, this slow and methodical approach to expanding up the pyramid seems well-placed for success.

The Future (Speculation Time)

So, that’s 4 existing leagues, plus 3 more vying for a spot in the pyramid. What’s the future going to look like? Set your tin foil caps to hypothetical, it’s Speculation Time!

At the top, NWSL is ingrained and doing well and growing, and the media attention it needs is there where it needs to be. I’d put my chips on it continuing to grow and improve year-after-year, as it already has been. For the trio of amateur leagues in play, WPSL and USLW feel the most ready for long-term success, purely based on the strength of their central offices. Not to say I’d bet against UWS, just that, in comparison, the others seem a bit more stable and faster-growing. But there’s definitely room for more than one league at that level, as we’ve seen on the men’s side of the pyramid with NPSL, USL2, and UPSL.

Now onto the debutantes.

I have extremely high hopes for the USL Super League, and not just because the DFW Metroplex is finally getting a professional women’s team (something that long-time readers will know I’ve been wanting for years), but also because the way USL has become a juggernaut of soccer across the country over the last decade is utterly spectacular. They’ve built a formula for successful expansion that puts every league before them to shame, and applying that to the women’s game is logical and exciting.

WPSL Pro, they’re doing things slowly and carefully, which in this business is not just safe but often the soundest strategy. Using existing teams that are ready to move up rather than trying to form a new league entirely out of thin air is a time-tested strategy that, see above, has been used to massively grow the professional ranks on the men’s side already. It’s exciting that we have enough long-lasting, sustainable women’s clubs that we can now have amateur teams ready to turn pro.

As for the WISL, who knows? They might turn out to be a great little league, or they might never take the field, and at this point, I have literally no idea what to expect. But even still, credit to them for trying, and as much as I rag on NISA, I’m glad they exist and are doing what they’re doing as best as they can to provide a viable alternative to the current systems. It’s important, even if it’s unstable.

So with all that said, I think it’s even more high-time we got a women’s Open Cup. This is not a new soapbox for me to stand on and yell, but if it was debatable and borderline enough in 2018, it’s even more of a pressing point in 2024. We have the teams, the leagues, the time, and the media attention. So please, PLEASE, give us a Women’s Open Cup. Please. I need it.

Anyway, that’s enough words to shake the rust off the ol’ SocTakes feed and kick off a new season of #HipsterManifestos. Welcome back, y’all, and happy spring.