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Yahoo
04-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Women's sports are booming. Why now?
According to new data from RBC, women's team valuations are expected to increase from $2.6 billion US in 2023 and 2024, to $4.3 billion in 2027. (Illustration by Sophie Baron/CBC Sports - image credit) In July 2020, about five months into the global pandemic, 144 WNBA players gathered in Bradenton, Fla., to play a 22-game condensed season in empty arenas. Inside the "Wubble," a campus-style isolation zone at IMG Academy created as a work-around to social distancing guidelines, athletes took daily COVID tests, shared villas with teammates, and traded in family time for nearly three months of elite basketball. Advertisement On the court, Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings led the league in scoring with 22.8 points per game, Las Vegas Ace centre A'ja Wilson was named MVP, and the Seattle Storm swept the Aces 3-0 in the championship series. However, what happened off the court proved just as significant in the league's emergence. When the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement surged following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, WNBA players were among the first professional athletes to make a public stand, filling social media platforms with their messages of support for Floyd. And when Atlanta Dream owner Kelly Loeffler, a Republican senator, objected to their message, the players pushed back, publicly supporting her opponent in the November election, which she ultimately lost. A few months later, she sold her stake in the franchise. Advertisement WATCH | Why women's sports have become big business: The WNBA players were suddenly front and centre, and with major program gaps brought on by the pandemic, WNBA games and social justice initiatives were broadcast on major sports broadcast channels such as ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, CBS Sports Network, and even platforms like Facebook and Twitter. With both the NBA and WNBA playing in empty arenas, where the echo of squeaking sneakers bounced off the walls, there seemed a more fair comparison to be made between the two leagues. "We were looking at a court with no fans around it, the game was central to it," Ann Pegoraro, chair of Sport Management at the University of Guelph said. "They saw them [the NBA and WNBA] as equal, and I think that put them on some equal footing." New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu takes a free throw in an empty arena during the WNBA's pandemic "Wubble" season in 2020. (Getty Images) The equation had changed, and not just for women's basketball. The rise across all women's sports has been steadily gaining momentum in recent years. From soccer, to hockey, to volleyball, women's sports are experiencing a record-shattering surge like never before. Advertisement Since then, two new pro leagues have launched in Canada, emerging superstars like Caitlin Clarke have captured global audiences, and money has flowed. Lots of money. The lifeblood of any professional sport, male or female, and until now, something the women's pro leagues have struggled to attract. "No moment in history has been what it is now with women's basketball, women's soccer, women's hockey, women's cricket, and there's the data now around the world, it has just never been there before," said Diana Matheson, founder of the Northern Super League (NSL). Three years after the Wubble summer, WNBA viewership grew by 170 per cent, indicative that the times really are changing. Natasha Cloud marches to the MLK Memorial to support Black Lives Matter and to mark the liberation of slavery on June 19, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images) Attractive investment option When asked if launching the first women's pro soccer league in Canada would have been possible 10, even five years ago, Matheson, a former senior women's national team star, responded without hesitation, "No." Advertisement "To be honest, Canada is a very conservative country when it comes to investing in ourselves. It seems to be something I've learned a lot about doing this," she said. "And it's not just women's sport, it's across the board." Prior to April 2025, Canada was one of just two countries — Haiti is the other — which competed in the 2023 Women's World Cup which didn't have its own professional women's league. Fans celebrate after the Vancouver Rise score against the Calgary Wild during the Northern Super League's historic first game in Vancouver on April 16. (Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press) So when the NSL, launched its inaugural season this April and 14,000 fans were in Vancouver's BC Place stadium, it was historic. The eight-team league is owned by Matheson's company Project 8 Sports, Inc. and is already set to add its ninth franchise team next season. Advertisement "It's been three years since we started Project 8. We could see what was happening in women's sport already at that time and what was going to happen," she said. "The acceleration of that growth during those three years, I think, surprised everyone." There has been a 53 per cent increase in attendance at women's soccer games in the U.S. since 2019, heavily influenced by the Women's World Cup and equal pay movement pushed forward by U.S. senior women's soccer team. It was common to hear that women's sport doesn't make money, that no one watches women's sport. It wasn't treated like a business. - Diana Matheson "I didn't have any of the numbers that tell the sponsors that actually, our fan base in women's sport engages more with women's support sponsors, they're more loyal, they have a higher spend," she said. "It was common to hear that women's sport doesn't make money, that no one watches women's sport. It wasn't treated like a business." Just over a year ahead of the NSL's launch, the Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) began its inaugural season. Advertisement When the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) folded in 2019, more then 200 pro hockey players across North America and Europe came together to push for better wages, health care, and overall support as athletes. For four years, players competed in what was called the Dream Gap Tour, making monthly trips to North American cities to compete in community rinks in practice jerseys, awaiting better opportunities. When the PWHL formed in 2023, a player's association was created in tandem, and a binding collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was put in place ahead of the league's first game. Billie Jean King and Jayna Hefford take part in the ceremonial puck drop with Blayre Turnbull of Toronto (40) and Micah Zandee-Hart (28) of New York before the first PWHL game on Jan. 1, 2024. (Getty Images) "The true investment in our league and in our players is something that is huge," said Erin Ambrose, who plays for the Montreal Victoire. "No women's league has ever had a CBA before the first puck [drop]. To have that happen I think is setting a new precedent for female sports." Advertisement Ambrose said she never thought having a three-year contract with benefits, like a housing stipend, would be possible. "It's still very much surreal," she said. The PWHL found quick success, attracting a million fans to both regular and playoff games in its second season, according to the league. The demand for Toronto Scepters tickets was so high in its inaugural season that the team moved from the 2,600-seat Mattamy Centre to Coca Cola Coliseum, which seats more than 8,000 fans, in 2025. Matheson said that while the NSL was already in the works before the PWHL, it helped to propel the NSL forward. The PWHL has played to increasingly larger crowds since beginning play in 2024. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press) According to new data from RBC, which highlights the growing appeal of women's sports as a profitable investment opportunity in 2025, women's team valuations are expected to increase from $2.6 billion US in 2023 and 2024, to $4.3 billion in 2027. Advertisement In simple terms: women sporting franchises are being purchased for significantly less money than they end up earning, indicating their ripe opportunity for growth in the current sports ecosystem. San Diego Wave FC, a team in the NWSL founded in 2021 just sold for 5,550 per cent return-on-investment for its founding owners. Meanwhile, the WNBA's expansion Golden State Valkyries were recently valued at $500 million, the most of any team, and 10 times what the owners paid just two years previous to join the league. League One Volleyball, the indoor women's league which began its inaugural season in January and is backed by high-profile investors including actress Amy Schumer and NBA champion Jason Tatum, secured $60 million in funding in 2024. So, what's driving the growth? Advertisement High-value sponsorship deals, audience metrics, and team performances, to name a few. "We're seeing smart and different investors getting into women's sport. We're seeing Alexis, Ohanian and Serena Williams knowing where to put their money," said Pegoraro. "Anybody who plays in the stock market, anybody who bets, they want that big return. Women's sports is the place they can get it now, and it's pretty well guaranteed." Pegoraro adds that "now is the time to get in," and references a few of the savvy business moguls pouring money into the booming industry. Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, purchased a stake in the heavily celebrity-backed Angel City FC, the L.A-based NWSL team now considered the most valuable women's soccer team globally at $280 million. Advertisement In 2022, American billionaire Michele Kang went on a spending spree, buying the NWSL's Washington Spirit for $35 million, the independent U.K. soccer club, London City Lionesses in 2023, as well as a majority stake in the French club Olympique Lyonnais Féminin in 2024. "She made her money and she knows what she's doing, she's getting a return on her investment," Pegoraro said. "Men's leagues are at maturation league levels. They don't have any growth potential left. Sure, financially they still seem to grow, but their fan bases are pretty locked. They're not seeing exponential growth, whereas women, year over year, we're seeing exponential growth." Marketing toward women When the Toronto Tempo, Canada's first WNBA team, was revealed as an expansion team set to join the league in 2026, Sephora Canada was swift to jump on board as a major sponsor. Advertisement Allison Litzinger, Sephora's senior vice-president of marketing, said that having more women in leadership roles impacts where big brands invest their money. "It influences not only what we invest in, but how and why we show up," she said. "More diverse perspectives bring greater awareness to areas that have long been undervalued. This allows us to make choices that are both culturally relevant and business-savvy." In a 2024 report by sports data platform Relo Metrics, the WNBA generated a record $136 million in sponsor media value in 2024 from major brands like Nike, Gatorade, and Bumble, a woman-founded dating app. As Litzinger points out, women's sports is no longer a "niche" place for brands to invest. [Women's sports is] a less saturated space with passionate, engaged fans, and it creates real opportunity for brands to show up with authenticity and impact. - Allison Litzinger, Sephora VP Meanwhile, in Canada, women are responsible for 75 to 80 per cent of consumer spending through purchasing power or influence, according to Business Development Canada. Advertisement And according to Lisa Ferkul, the chief revenue officer for the Toronto Tempo, the WNBA's fan base is 54 per cent women in Canada, data which influences which brands the team chooses to partner with and how they tailor their marketing strategies. "That decision-making power comes from the fact that women are more engaged," Ferkul said. "If you look at the purchasing funnel, fans of women's sports are actually more aware of sponsors that support their favourite team, thus making them more likely to consider them for their next purchase need, and more likely to buy from them." After women's sports generated an astronomical $1 billion in 2024, a recent report from Deloitte projects that the women's sports industry will be worth $2.35 billion this year. "At its core, equity is just good business. Brands are always looking for white space — untapped areas where they can grow, differentiate, and build stronger connections," Litzinger said. "Women's sports offer exactly that. It's a less saturated space with passionate, engaged fans, and it creates real opportunity for brands to show up with authenticity and impact." Advertisement Litzinger says that for brands that regularly engage with women consumers, sponsoring women in sport is a natural alignment. "It enables us to be present where consumers are increasingly more focused and to elevate visibility in meaningful ways," she says. Top players in the league are also seeing bigger deals than ever before, like Clarke's eight-year, $28-million contract with Nike, or L.A. Sparks forward Cameron Brink, who is expected to be making a high six-figure income through endorsements. According to Ferkul, women athletes are more accessible to fans, creating a ripe business opportunity to sponsor them. Advertisement "Fans can get closer at the tournaments. They're more accessible to sponsors and to the media, and that creates a special bond and connection. That makes them more attractive to all those stakeholders," she said. With the Toronto Tempo just under one year out from its inaugural season, Ferkul only sees a bright future for women's sports and their continued financial growth. "It's really a movement. Billie Jean King says that. Our owner, Larry Tannenbaum, says that. And I will use it, because we're starting to prove that investing in women's sports is good business," she said. "I think it's just a matter of time when brands will be spending their marketing dollars equally on women as they do on men." Chloe Primenaro, an 18-year-old PWHL-hopeful who played for Team Canada at this year's world championship, is waking up to a new dawn for women's hockey. (Melissa Majchrzak/The Associated Press) What's next? Chloe Primenaro, an 18-year-old PWHL-hopeful who plays for the University of Minnesota, is waking up to a new dawn for women's hockey. Advertisement When Primenaro enters the draft in three years time, she'll have a level of opportunity that her role model, Montreal Victoire centre Marie-Philip Poulin, could have only dreamed. "I remember, always from a young age, wanting to play with Team Canada and to go to the Olympics, and now with the PWHL, obviously, that's a goal of mine," Primenaro said. "Just knowing that there's something awaiting after college is awesome." With strong investors and player support in place, the only obstacle standing between Primenaro and a professional sports career should be the one male athletes face: fighting tooth and nail against the world's greatest athletes for a roster spot. Like anything, there's still room for growth: Ambrose hopes to see player wages improve at a yearly increase of more than three per cent in the PWHL. Matheson says that all teams should have access to top-notch facilities located in city centres in order to build up the success of women's leagues. Advertisement But looking back on pre-pandemic times, when Clarke had not yet burst onto the scene, when women's sports news was buried deep into the daily news shuffle, and when gender parity at the Olympics wasn't yet possible, the progress is undeniable. What happened in the Wubble in 2020 could have been just a blip in time, a fleeting, unprecedented moment that left as quickly as it came, like mask mandates and standing six feet part from one another. But from the mouths of athletes, to team owners, to league-launchers, one thing is for sure: women's sports are not just having a moment, they're starting a movement.
CBC
16-04-2025
- Sport
- CBC
Living the Dream: How NSL founder Diana Matheson is determined it remain a reality
Canadian Press photos / Illustration by Sophie Baron CBC Apr. 16, 2025 It's hard to pinpoint the starts of dreams, or why they come when they come, but Diana Matheson's vision for a professional women's soccer league in Canada first shimmered through the tears of defeat. At the 2012 Olympics in London, Matheson and her devastated teammates watched the Americans celebrate an improbable 4-3 semifinal victory after extra time. The Canadians had been ahead, 3-2, after a hat trick from captain Christine Sinclair. A dubious Abby Wambach penalty and Alex Morgan's stunner at the death felt, to the women on the field at least, like the end of something beautiful. Instead, it was the beginning. The Canadians rallied to claim bronze over France two days later, thanks to a late goal from Matheson, and through happier tears, women's soccer came into our collective field of view. The quality of that improbable run — its intensity, its controversy, its passion, its charm — made the unequivocal case that women's soccer was worthy of more than our occasional attention. It demanded following. By the end of the year, the National Women's Soccer League had been founded in the U.S., and Matheson, who began her professional career in Norway, joined the Washington Spirit, a little closer to home. Over the next eight seasons, which included a stretch in Utah and injury-marred visits to Seattle and Kansas City, Matheson found herself staring into stadium lights, hearing the noise of steadily growing crowds, dreaming some more. Those dreams will become an overdue reality on April 16, when the Vancouver Rise host the Calgary Wild at BC Place, kicking off the inaugural season of the Northern Super League, Canada's first professional women's soccer league. 'I'm a big believer in knowing what the end in mind is,' Matheson said in a recent interview, a few frantic days before the NSL's opening night. John Herdman, her former coach for the national team, had taught her the value of a specific imagination: What does it feel like? What does it sound like? What does it look like to other people? Following Matheson's retirement from competitive soccer in 2021 — she finished with 206 national-team caps — she sought answers to those questions in earnest. With help from Game Plan, the Canadian Olympic Committee's athlete wellness program, she began an MBA at Queen's University and met a fellow believer in Thomas Gilbert. One afternoon, the two retreated to a bar around the corner from her house in Toronto and pulled out a napkin and a pen. 'That napkin,' Matheson said, 'definitely led to some things.' The pair made a list of the obvious needs for any new league: owners, sponsors, players, fans. Matheson worked to fill them. She called Greg Kerfoot, the co-owner of Major League Soccer's Vancouver Whitecaps. He came on board. The Calgary Foothills Soccer Club also agreed to field a team. Air Canada and CIBC joined as sponsors. The dream had a frame. In December 2022, Matheson and Gilbert, with a boost from Sinclair, felt confident enough to make their plans public under the banner of Project 8 Sports, Inc. ('We literally waited our whole career for this moment,' Sinclair said.) They promised eight teams, playing from coast to coast by the spring of 2025. They managed to find six: Vancouver, Calgary, the Ottawa Rapid, AFC Toronto, the Montreal Roses, and the Halifax Tides. The launch, they got right on time. 'There have been lots of days when something fell through, and it just felt like it wasn't going to happen,' Matheson said. 'In times like those, I absolutely pictured the opening games.' Now Canadians, too, will finally see the end she's had for so long in mind. ♦ ♦ ♦ The vision for a Canadian league should never have been singular. Thirty-two countries competed at the 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Only two didn't have a professional domestic league for women: Canada and Haiti. 'We have to acknowledge the historical disadvantages that women and girls have faced, and there's still a legacy of that in our country,' said Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, said Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, the CEO of Canadian Women and Sport, an organization dedicated to increasing the presence of women in sports at all levels. 'The expectations that boys have for the experience they will get in sport should be shared by girls, too, in every part of the pathway.' Globally, women's leagues began forming in the 1970s, after 110,000 fans filled Azteca to watch host Mexico play Denmark in an unofficial women's World Cup final in 1971. (The English Football Association lifted its ban on women for the event; it had been in place since 1921 after soccer was deemed 'quite unsuitable for females.') Canada failed to form its own league at the time because 'there wasn't really the natural onramp,' Matheson said. Some professional women's leagues were started at the behest of national associations, especially after the Women's World Cup began to assert itself as a major event. Other leagues in Europe and Mexico were offshoots of men's professional outfits. Where men played in front of crowds, women naturally did, too. Canada Soccer, this country's sports governing body, never had the financial or organizational wherewithal to build its own league. It was saved by our relatively progressive culture when it comes to girls and women playing sports, which meant the national team was better than it should have been. In a strange way, its success made the need for a league less urgent. 'We've been punching above our weight,' Sandmeyer-Graves said. And until the Canadian Premier League formed in 2017, there wasn't a men's domestic league to grow alongside. They sell pucks at Parliament. They don't sell soccer Matheson Today, entering its seventh season, the CPL is still finding its feet, never mind helping a parallel women's league find its own. The CPL's average attendance last season was a little less than 4,000; FC Edmonton, one of its founding franchises, folded in 2022. For many Canadians, soccer is for kids to play, not for adults to watch; hockey is how we occupy ourselves. 'They sell pucks at Parliament,' Matheson said. 'They don't sell soccer balls.' She wasn't surprised, then, when she encountered resistance — none of it catastrophic, but every step forward exacted a toll. 'Diana met a lot of disbelievers,' NSL president Christina Litz said. 'She heard all the things that people who have been in the women's side of sports have heard for so many years.' Negotiations with potential big-pocket owners like Toronto sports behemoth MLSE and Major League Soccer's CF Montreal fell through; club licences came a year later than expected, only weeks before the season opener; some teams scrambled to find venues and fill their rosters. Asked for the hardest day in her journey, Matheson struggled to come up with just one. 'It was probably some random Tuesday,' she said. 'We called them 'sky is falling' days.' She remained undaunted. As a young midfielder, she had a reputation for seeing space where others did not. As a 41-year-old businesswoman, she can still spot opportunity in the void. The Northern Super League doesn't include 'women' or even 'soccer' in its name because of its grander ambitions, and hers. In Europe, the best men's leagues — the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 — have never felt the need to define or explain themselves. Their reason for being is obvious. Their supremacy is, too. ♦ ♦ ♦ 'By most measures — salaries, revenues, projected attendance — we'll come out of the gate as a top five league in the world,' Matheson said. In the men's game, such a pledge would sound like lunacy. The standards are so high elsewhere, and the history so deep. The CPL is ranked by CONCACAF as the sixth-strongest league in North America, never mind the world, behind Guatemala's Liga Nacional. Opta Power Rankings rates Calgary's Cavalry, the defending cup champions, as the game's 1,403 rd -best men's side. Because the women's game is less established, it's an easier market to enter and dominate, especially given Canada's deep player pool. Despite hockey's cultural dominance, soccer is the country's largest participation sport; Canada has the third-most girls and women playing the game in the world. 'We're able to compete right away,' Matheson said. One of her most pivotal decisions was the league's salary structure: It took more than some jotted notes on a napkin to strike a balance between attracting top talent to a new and risky proposition and not bankrupting owners. In the end, teams will have a salary cap of $1.6 million (all figures Cdn) for a roster of 20 to 25 players; the league minimum salary is $50,000, or $2,000 for each of 25 regular-season games. That minimum salary is the second highest for women's soccer in the world, after only the NWSL. It's also higher than the CPL's lowest bar of $30,000. (The CPL has a salary floor and ceiling for its clubs, with a cap of a little over $1.2 million and some exemptions for young players.) NSL contracts are guaranteed, and players can't be traded without their consent. 'We knew we wanted to build a league with certain professional standards,' Matheson said. 'What's a liveable salary in Canada? Shouldn't that be the baseline?" To skeptics, that might seem an overly optimistic or even naïve approach; soccer is a game of fine margins, and women's soccer has proved a delicate business. But the way Matheson has trained herself to see problems as openings, she recruited independent owners committed solely to growing the women's game. (She and Gilbert have a stake in the Rapid. Most of the other groups are led by women; Kerfoot has announced the sale of the Whitecaps, making the Rise his principal soccer holding.) She found six instead of her desired eight because she offered a binary proposition: total investment, or none. 'It comes down to the values you want to create,' Litz said. 'We're declaring to the rest of the world that doing this any other way is not right.' ♦ ♦ ♦ Every promise is also a potential liability, of course. Startups inevitably take losses: The league has told its owners to expect to invest $8 million to $10 million over the next five seasons. But devotion has its limits. At some point, the NSL's revenues will have to exceed its considerable expenditures, and there's no shortage of soccer leagues and clubs that have foundered on the rocks of financial reality. The NSL exists in large part because of Matheson's passion. It will continue to exist only if hundreds of thousands of fans come to share it. 'As a national team, we've always wanted to build a league in this country, and it's been honestly so sad that we haven't had one,' said Quinn, the national-team mainstay who signed with Vancouver in January after five seasons with the Seattle Reign. 'I think it's just such an incredible opportunity for young athletes to finally see themselves and what their futures can look like on the pitch.' The first challenge to overcome is distance. The Professional Women's Hockey League also has six teams; strategically, however, the PWHL's longest single road trip is between Minnesota and Boston. The NSL is spread farther afield, and so thinner, facing the same hard math that's long frustrated touring musicians: Canada's miles-per-gig ratio is unkind. We're building our audience from a very small number. We have to go where Canadians Matheson Litz, a Winnipegger who previously worked with the CFL and the NHL's Winnipeg Jets, knows well the struggles of building intimacy at a remove. 'It's all about connection to community,' she said. The league has secured broadcasting partnerships with the CBC, TSN, and RDS in Canada, as well as ESPN+ in the U.S., hoping even faraway fans will feel tied to their teams. 'We're building our audience from a very small number,' Matheson said. 'We have to go where Canadians are.' Geography will remain a foe. When Halifax visits Vancouver on May 5, the Tides will complete one of the most daunting road swings in domestic soccer anywhere. The world's current longest is in the A-League, between Perth, Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand. The CPL's well-named Wanderers claim third whenever they leave Halifax to visit Pacific FC on Vancouver Island, and vice-versa. The Tides and Rise will take fourth. Despite Canada's daunting space, the league faces a bigger, almost ironic challenge: There are not nearly enough places for women to play. 'Our biggest constraint is infrastructure,' Matheson said. Two of the league's six founding clubs, Ottawa and Calgary, will be second- or third-tier tenants in stadiums that are too big. Others, like Toronto and Montreal, will risk outgrowing their tiny outposts. Goldilocks venues, with capacities between 8,000 and 18,000, are rare in Canada. In comparable countries like Japan or Australia, there's one for every 500,000 residents. In Canada, there's one for every eight million. Outside Toronto, the same scarcity exists for quality indoor training facilities. When Iceland emerged as a surprise soccer power in 2016, despite having a winter-bound population of fewer than 400,000, an ambitious national building program won much of the credit. Communities across Canada will put up expensive hockey arenas without restraint. Any pasture becomes the soccer field, even though more kids will use it. Now, in six cities across Canada, girls can go watch women play. That's the short-term. It's even more exciting to think about what things are going to look like five years, 10 years from Sandmeyer-Graves, the CEO of Canadian Women and Sport 'Give me a couple of weeks, but we think there's a role for us there,' Matheson said. She'd like to meet her original goal of eight teams by 2027. The two expansion franchises will go to cities willing to make practical investments as well as emotional ones. They will go to communities that promise to put women's soccer first. 'Boys know that men's soccer matters,' Sandmeyer-Graves said. 'Girls don't get that message. Now, in six cities across Canada, girls can go watch women play. That's the short-term. It's even more exciting to think about what things are going to look like five years, ten years from now.' The Halifax Tides have a slogan: Rise Together. It evokes images of boats lifted by the ocean. But if the NSL is truly to become part of the national sports landscape in Canada, its success won't be measured by the size of its fleet. It will be measured by the safety of its harbours. ♦ ♦ ♦ Already, Matheson has been surrounded by love. The London Olympics team that cried and celebrated together has answered her call again. Christine Sinclair is part of Vancouver's ownership group. Desiree Scott is suiting up for the Rapid. Erin McLeod came out of retirement to play for the Tides. The national team's triumphs made the NSL possible; the hope is that the favour will soon be returned. 'For the women's game in Canada, this is a huge step,' said Casey Stoney, the head coach of the women's national team. 'To professionalize the game and have professional teams is massive.' 'It's absolutely critical,' Kevin Blue, Canada Soccer's CEO, agreed. 'A thriving domestic professional league for women is essential to our sport.' His organization will grant $1 million to the NSL this season, the same commitment it's made to the CPL. So far, the CPL has paid limited dividends to the men's national team. At last month's CONCACAF Nations League finals, defender Joel Waterman, the only player on the roster who could be considered a CPL product, didn't get off the bench. That's partly a function of the CPL's weak position in the global soccer hierarchy; the NSL is setting its own stronger standards. Stoney included two NSL players, Vancouver's Samantha Chang and Toronto's Emma Regan, in her first squad selection for February's Pinatar Cup. She rostered three for this month's friendlies against Argentina, including Quinn. The numbers should only grow. 'It does feel like a movement more than a moment,' Sandmeyer-Graves said. NSL teams can roster no more than eight internationals. This season, there will be 87 Canadian women getting paid to play, watched by however many Canadian girls imagining a different future for themselves. More will soon see glory in joining them. 'Going to market in 2025 was the priority,' Matheson said. Canada will co-host a men's World Cup in 2026; the next women's World Cup will take place in Brazil in 2027; the Canadian women, who won gold at the Tokyo Olympics, will try to win another in Los Angeles in 2028. It's hard to pinpoint the starts of dreams. It's easier to know when it's time for them to come true. ♦ ♦ ♦ Back on that field in 2012, or even in that bar in 2022, Diana Matheson couldn't have foreseen another reason — maybe the biggest reason — her dreams have a chance of surviving. In a different time, it might have made more sense for Canadian cities to bid for NWSL teams, the way Toronto will soon be home to the WNBA, tagging along rather than starting from scratch. But the usual perils of an international league, like player recruitment and the value of the dollar, pale next to the current state of play, when a president's whims can derail best-laid plans, and borders feel like tripwires. Earlier this month, the Football Association of Zambia decided not to roster four NWSL players for a tournament in China, citing U.S. travel policy and fearing their being unable to return to their clubs. Vanessa Gilles, Canada's reigning women's player of the year and currently on loan to Lyon from L.A.'s Angel City, suggested recently that she wouldn't return to the NWSL. 'I don't see myself going back to the United States with the current geopolitical situation,' she said in a French-language interview with Le Progrès OL. 'It's a bit complicated to go back there as a Canadian.' We're choosing to invest here, at home. We're taking a big bet on Matheson For Quinn, the first openly transgender athlete to play in a FIFA World Cup, the calculus is even more fraught. For them, the Northern Super League must seem like a sanctuary. While the world is fracturing, the country is coming together to protect its own. 'It's not like anyone wants what's going on politically to be going on right now,' Matheson said. 'But we're starting to have conversations about investing in Canada in a way that I haven't seen. I love that we're having those conversations. Because from day one, we're choosing to invest here, at home. We're taking a big bet on Canada.' There is more than one way to measure distance. While the NSL's inaugural class of players will travel thousands of kilometres over the course of their historic season, they won't once cross an international border. Eighty-seven Canadian women will now be at home even when they're on the road. The value of that to them, especially these divided days, is clear. Now it's up to their fellow Canadians to decide: What's the value of that to us? About the Author Footer Links My Account Profile CBC Gem Newsletters Connect with CBC Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Mobile RSS Podcasts Contact CBC Submit Feedback Help Centre Audience Relations, CBC P.O. Box 500 Station A Toronto, ON Canada, M5W 1E6 Toll-free (Canada only): 1-866-306-4636 TTY/Teletype writer: 1-866-220-6045 About CBC Corporate Info Sitemap Reuse & Permission Terms of Use Privacy Jobs Our Unions Independent Producers Political Ads Registry AdChoices Services Ombudsman Public Appearances Commercial Services CBC Shop Doing Business with Us Renting Facilities Accessibility It is a priority for CBC to create a website that is accessible to all Canadians including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges. 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