Kelsey Eagan

December 6, 2013
The Marketing of USWNT
The United States Womens soccer national team represents the Unites States of
American in the international association football competitions and is controlled by the United
States soccer federation and competes competitively in the CONCACAF (The confederation of
South Central American and Caribbean Association football). The women of this team competed
in their first ever game in the Mundialtio tournament on August 18, 1985. In 2004 two of their
stars, Mia Hamm and Michelle Akers helped start a revolution towards womens sporting teams
in America by being the only two American women named to the FIFA list of 100, a list of the
125 greatest living soccer players. The game that started it all was their most influential of the
many when they beat China 5-4 in the 1999 World Cup in a penalty shootout, although, it took
many previous games to get them where they are today and a lot of marketing techniques also.
The women of the USWNT spent their days off working overtime making sure their fans were
happy, signing autographs hours after their games, hosting youth camps, and having celebrity
endorsements. The USWNT is a group of determined women that had a goal, to make womens
sports what they are today. They marketed their world cup games resulting in a change of
attendance rates, media time, and the biggest crowd in sporting history, attracting over 90,000
fans to the rose bowl for the 1999 World Cup, the game that started the USWNTs revolution
and helped the team emerge onto the world stage that brought significant media attention to
womens soccer and athletics.
The current womens national soccer team is a team that consists of a roster with 24
women on it being coached by Tom Sermanni, but these are not the women that shaped history

they are the women who maintain the glory. It was the team coached by April Heinrick and the 5
seniors on the team, including Mia Hamm, Brandy Chastain, Michelle Akers and Christine Lilly.
These women helped shape history. It all began in the 80s when recruitment for a Womens
national team was underway. When the team was formed it gave hope in women team sports
considering during this time women sports had little opportunity and had a few women heroines
in sports. This was the beginning of a revolution no one saw coming. Head Coach April Heinrick
transformed a sport and found opportunity where there was none; created a new base of fans, and
inspired a generation of young girls and their families who took the soccer field as if it were their
birth rights. When Heinricks team began to travel to matches, they were on shoe string budget
and didnt play for money. They traveled on 3
rd
class travels, stayed in cheap motels, ate bad
food, and were given only 10 dollars in meal money a day. This was the Red headed step team in
the world of soccer, under the mens Unites States team because this was the team brining in the
money for their country so they earned the name and respect that the womens national team had
to earn. The USWNT didnt have many fans at all starting off, as a matter of fact their first match
as a team they had less than 1,000 fans in the stand consisting of just family and friends. The
team and coaches knew that if they wanted to even make a dent in history they needed more fans
and more recognition. This is when they decided to start marketing their players and team to
make others know more about their dreams and desires and wanted to include others in the road
to a revolution.
In 1991, FIFA held the first ever soccer tournament and invited twelve nations to come
compete. These series of games were not televised nor advertised but it was a way to get the
USWNT known. Usually, when FIFA holds a tournament it is known as the World Cup but the
people of FIFA didnt call it this. They called it the M&M cup, M&M being their only sponsor

for the tournament. FIFA did not want a unproductive tournament to ruin the way they are
perceived and told the womens team that they were not confident that the womens teams would
be a good enough sanctioned World Cup and the following year depending on attendance rates
and results they would be playing in the World Cup. Not only did the twelve teams including the
United States team see this as a disappointment and embarrassment, they used it as their
motivation to prove critics wrong. The 1991 games were held in China and were not expected to
be a big draw but when the United States team showed up, even the Chinese were cheering for
them, holding American flags that filled the stadium, critics were wrong. The Chinese were
introduced to something new and this drew every one of every ages attention. This was the first
time the people were lined up for auto graphs and the first time they sold out a stadium of 65
thousand people who came to watch the new born rivalry championship game between the
United States and Norway. The United States came home with the 1
st
ever world title in
womens soccer and made everyone realize that this is a new phenomenon. Like FIFA said, in
1995 the USWNT played in their second ever World Cup tournament. This game did not get TV
time but was advertised in magazines including Sports Illustrated. Kelly Whiteside covered the
world cup games in her issue of Sports Illustrated held in Sweden. Not only did this tournament
get more attention they received more sponsors such as Phillips, Snickers, Master Card, and
Coca Cola, making the game site more official to fans. In 1996, the USWNT was invited to the
first ever womens soccer Olympic Games held in Atlanta Georgia. This meant a new beginning
for these women players, that they were going to be paid athletes. They came into a dispute with
the soccer organization because the men were being paid more and women wanted to get a raise
of $20,000 if they won a gold medal, and thats what they got. After the Olympic Games, the
USWNT was a hit. In 1996 Mia Hamm was the face of womens soccer and an idol of many

young girls. She was asked to do several commercials promoting the USWNT, one with Michael
Jordan sponsored by Gatorade and another for a shampoo company. The broadcasting of these
commercials brought in more fans than they expected.
It was then brought to the attention of the head coaches and sponsors of the womens
national soccer team that fans wanted to see more. They wanted to follow these women around
and watch them change the history of sports. After the winning of the 1999 World Cup the
women of the USWNT, in a partnership with Discovery channel sought out the investors,
markets and the players necessary to form the eight team league called the Womens United
Soccer Association (WUSA). The league had some initial investors including Time Warner
Cable, Cox Enterprises, Amos Hostetter, and Comcast Corporation each giving about 5 million
dollars towards the new league. These games were televised on many stations such as TNT,
ESPN2 and CNNSI, something that has never happened in womens soccer. The running of the
league lead to another marketing opportunity, the Farewell game, a game celebrating the
retirement of the original 5 women who started it all for the USWNT. This organization was up
for a big challenge, to fill one of the largest stadiums, the Rose Bowl. Critics doubted the women
saying that they will not even come close to filling the stadium at a press conference which lead
to one of the teammates saying they have already sold half of the tickets getting media and fans
eager to buy their ticket quickly before they sold out. This was one of the greatest marketing
tools the women used, word of mouth to fill the stadium, which they accomplished. Over 90,000
fans showed up to the rose bowl to watch the original 5 women play their last soccer game in
front of the people who got them where the team is today.
The marketing of the USWNT was an incredible success getting them where they
originally saw themselves, playing in front of thousands of people and turning soccer into a

hobby to a career. The use of word of mouth, television advertisements, celebrity endorsements,
and desire and drive is what got these women to fame. The biggest way the USWNT gained its
fans is from their hard word on and off the field, always trying their hardest to please the crowd
and teammates. It is hard to say that if it werent for the original National soccer team if us
college females would have the opportunity to play in a colligate soccer match. I as well as other
youth and adult female soccer players are very grateful that a team of women and coaches could
achieve such greatness just from a few tools of marketing. Today, the USWNT has a roster of 24
women and is always fighting for another World Cup title, increasing attendance rates and
slowly gaining more television rights.














References
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2013, from http://www.ussoccer.com

ESPN. (n.d.). History of the FIFAS women's world cup. Active. Retrieved September 20,
2013, from http://beta.active.com
HBO Sports. (December 11, 2005) Dare to Dream: The story of the U.S womens
national soccer team
Herwood, M. (2010, June 28). Movie Review: Dare to dream- The story of the U.S
Women's Soccer Team. Yahoo Voices. Retrieved September 20, 2013, from
http://voices.yahoo.com
Jezek, G. (n.d.). World cup soccer.History Of Soccer. Retrieved September 20, 2013,
from http://www.historyofsoccer.info
Shapiro, O. (2005, December 11). HBO- Dare to dream, The story of the women's soccer
team. HBO. Retrieved September 20, 2013, from http://www.hbo.com