Lisa Baird, Commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), emphasizes the league's standalone governance model and structural independence.
Prediction Open · timeframe Mar 2031
Baird predicts women's soccer will reach media parity within 10 years
“I do, and I know that's kind of a bold, brave statement to say when we're only four percent of the coverage today, and we're certainly not anywhere near the massive audience or revenues that some of our men's leagues have, but I think we and other women's spor…”
Assertion Supported
NWSL completed its month-long 2020 bubble tournament with zero positive COVID cases
“So we went in with nine teams, and we were there for a month, We staged a full-blown single, you know, it was kind of single elimination, knockout round. The most intense competition you can do in soccer is what we did, and we emerged with zero COVID cases.”
Assertion Supported
Women's sports receive only four percent of all sports media coverage
“Only four percent of all media, this is not only, you know, broadcast, but, you know, press stories and social media, pizza is against women's sports. Four percent.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Major sports leagues lacked COVID return-to-play playbooks in March 2020
“The dawning realization that there was no game plan to come back. Like whenever, you know, there has to be a game plan for this, right? I kept, I called everybody. You know, I'm a small league. We're very thinly resourced. So I'm calling the NBA. I'm calling p…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
NWSL secured emergency SBA relief funding in seven days
“We loaded in a thousand pages of corroborating documents to say, here's how we're going to pay our players, and here's all this stuff that we need. What I later learned is that some people just loaded in one Excel spreadsheet and got their loan, but I was so w…”
Assertion Supported
Over 550 NWSL bubble participants were tested every two to three days
“So there were probably over 550 people getting tested every two to three days.”