The Exchanges

Q a lot of attention. They were in Orlando, and there was a bubble, and you began to think about how do we do this with women's soccer, and eventually you brought it back. You kind of created this bubble in a world, and you, and you, you relaunched in Utah, the Challenge Cup tournament. Tell me about bringing women's soccer back. How did you guys begin to, to construct that?

A So you get your medical protocols and your doctors talking, you start to think about resources and what you can do, and we work on a fraction of the resources as other leagues, so we started to think about ways to stage competition, and frankly, Guy, we iterated through several rounds of could we continue to do, you know, kind of the home and away format that people wanted to do. I think, you know, we all wanted to think that fans would come back, and there was this dawning realization that We weren't going to be able to keep our players safe unless we went to a bubble. So we started to look at that. That required us to identify a host city with the capabilities and the facilities that would enable us to do it. We looked in Utah. At that point in time, when we, um, started to look at Utah, there were very little incidents out in the, the West of the United States. It was, so there was low thresholds, I worked with the governor and the people at, at Real Salt Lake that helped us put together facilities, and we were actually able to put together a very contained plan. So we had all of the training pitches, we had two competition fields, we had access to enough locker rooms, because the important thing about a bubble is keeping the teams, they're called pods, keeping them separate. So we actually had to coordinate and develop The schedules so that one team was being fed in one hot…

AI assessment note: “you get your medical protocols and your doctors talking, you start to think about resources”

Q It's incredible. I mean, you and, and how many, I mean, how many human beings were involved in this bubble? I mean, I'm thinking, what, at least, what, 20 athletes per team?

A Yeah, we had rosters up to 28, but then you have all the staff, you have coaches, you have supporting, you have facilities. So there were probably over 550 people getting tested every two to three days. You know, when we had something that happened, we were obviously doing backup testing. And so it was, you know, finding a testing provider that could, you know, handle the volume and the turnaround time. Because the, the whole key with testing is you want it Late enough where you're ensuring that you have the most recent results, but you need it early enough so that teams can make their roster decisions. They can be appropriately preparing. So even like a, a 45 minute shift in when those testing results are coming back can influence something that's going to happen. So it was, it was down to a level of like precision that, and no one had ever done this before.

AI assessment note: “there were probably over 550 people getting tested every two to three days.”

Q Yeah. And how did you, I mean, it's, it requires incredible discipline among the athletes and the staff, and I mean, one person going out or breaking the rules, I mean, how, how did you guys ensure that everybody cooperated?

A Well, you know, I think two of the things I did was early on, I put together a Zoom call, you know, with all my athletes. And so we did it twice. One was so that we could answer their questions about the medical protocols. And they had very detailed questions like, what about this? How does this, how do you know this is going to work? So I sat there with over 230 players on Zoom calls twice. The second time was as we were going into the tournament, I wanted them to hear from me that Orlando had withdrawn and why. I wanted to reassure them that we could do it. But in actuality, we had a partnership up front with our PA that said, listen, this is the conduct that we are expecting you to do. You must stay with your team. You can't mix with other teams. You can't go out. If you're going to have something delivered, it has to be according to this protocol of delivery, contactless, et cetera. And, you know, it wasn't me that delivered the COVID-free environment. It was the players and their discipline and their care for their own health. And one of the things I was really proud of is that early on, as a women's sports league, I realized what it's like to spend a month away from your family, and several of our players are moms and have very young children, so we created a separate protocol just for the kids themselves. And those players were sequestered from their teams, and their kid…

AI assessment note: “we had a partnership up front with our PA that said, listen, this is the conduct”

Q Right. Um, getting some questions from viewers. This is a super insider question, but I think this is an interesting one. It's from Danielle Lorenz. Um, Danielle asks, do you expect players that have gone abroad, Rose, Muis, Dahlkemper, to come back and play in the NWSL?

A Well, let, let me say, If Rose or Kristen or Tobin are listening right now, you are absolutely welcome back anytime you want. The fact is that, um, our sport operates within a global economy. We're not, you know, just like the National Football League or even the NBA, where most of the players are playing in one country. Soccer is a global sport, um, unlike no other. So every year there is some back and forth Um, it's done via an organized process, frankly, of transfer fees, etc. Um, this year, because of our abbreviated season, I know that several players did choose to go abroad and play abroad because they wanted more playing time. These are professional athletes, and this is their career. So Alex Morgan, for instance, went and played, I think, for Tottenham this summer, or in the fall. We were only offering abbreviated system, but she came back, and she'll be playing for the Pride Um, at the start of the Challenge Cup. We're hoping that the rest of them come back, and they're welcome anytime.

AI assessment note: “We're hoping that the rest of them come back, and they're welcome anytime.”

Q of course, U.S. National Women's Soccer is a huge sport with huge, huge stars like Alex Morgan and so many others. Um, In a sense, do you think that what happened this summer with the National Women's Soccer League, a nine-year-old league, was a tipping point, the beginning of a real, now, a real national interest in this league that could actually turn it into something much, much, much bigger?

A I do. I'm saying this, like, with confidence, everything, but when we were putting together a plan for the summer, there was part of me that said, look, I've got to be as safe and risk-free as I can, and then there was the other part of me that said, I've got to take risks, because this is a summer, and this is an opportunity to introduce our league, our sport, our players to a much broader audience, so it was that, and I have to tell you, there were a lot of sleepless nights, you know, I know the name of this series is Resilience, I had a lot of sleepless nights over this because it was that combination of being incredibly conservative, but also taking risks. So at this point in time, we're now, we've announced our second Challenge Cup. We're going into a year where, um, the best women's soccer players, both from the U.S. national women's team, and it's also other of the best players in the world, Marta, Dabinia, Rachel Daly, um, people from all over the world will be Altering between going back and forth between playing in our league and also playing in the Olympics in Tokyo, um, this summer. And it's an opportunity for us to do something and put women's professional soccer on the same level playing field as other premier sports. I mean, that's what I hope to accomplish.

AI assessment note: “I do. I'm saying this, like, with confidence”

Q of the decisions that was made early on was that, that the players would still be paid. The athletes would still be paid even if they opted out From playing, which, which you eventually relaunched the season, but the idea of continuing to play to pay the players, how was that made possible if there was no ticket revenue, if there was no ad revenue, if there was no nothing?

A You know, it was, this is the point of clarity and principle, and, um, for me as a new commissioner, but also with our owners, and importantly with our owners, you know, we knew that that was a critical component of whatever we were going to do, is how we were going to safeguard our players, not only with the safety protocols, but also with the resources, and there wasn't ticket revenue, there wasn't, there wasn't the ordinary sources, so I started looking around again, no playbook, and we started to hear In late March about something that the federal government was going to do with the Small Business Administration to offer a lifeline, which it was for us to small businesses who didn't have any resources coming in, and I started to research it, and literally there was nothing out there about it on the internet. You were just kind of hearing things from different people. I, you know, I called our partner, um, JP Morgan. That's where we, we do our banking business. They didn't know anything about it, so I started to find out about it. I reached out, found the person at JP Morgan who could help me understand it. Literally, I remember this, on Monday, the Small Business Administration, and Steve mentioned this, Treasury Secretary said, we're going to do this. By Thursday and Friday, there was an app that was completely untested in order to load your paperwork in to apply for this …

AI assessment note: “Small Business Administration to offer a lifeline, which it was for us”