ABSTRACT
The third and most successful attempt at professional women’s football in the United States, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), began play in 2013 and has steadily grown since. While the NWSL has faced many of the same challenges that previous failed leagues have struggled with, their marketing and business practices have evolved to make the league and its clubs viable. The purpose of this article is to examine and explain the marketing of the clubs of the NWSL through feminist themes. Through the collection of archival material and qualitative interviews with club marketing officials in five case settings, researchers found three common feminist themes within the marketing of the NWSL: inequities in rules, resources, and coverage; the embracing of motherhood, family values, and role models while shunning the “other”; and the existence of ideal heteronormative femininity and a consumption community.
