Soccer Monday: Taking a look at the Northern Super League — a conversation with Diana Matheson

But former national team star and co-founder Diana Matheson had long been determined for Canada’s “A League of Their Own.” And earlier this month, the Northern Super League kicked off.

The six-team league has been bolstered and advised by Christine Sinclair, international soccer’s all-time leading goal scorer. Quinn, Desiree Scott and several other Canadian stars have joined in. Coca-Cola, Toyota and Door Dash are among the league’s partners.

So, to do something a little bit different this week, I’m including part of my wide-ranging conversation with Diana Matheson, which is a piece of a project I’m doing on the expansion of women’s leagues in North America. We didn’t just talk about the league; we talked about her journey and the state of women’s football, too.

Annie Peterson: I guess the first question is, how did this actually get off the ground? Where was the genesis of the idea, and what did it look like in terms of the road to get here?

Diana Matheson: I would say the genesis has kind of been on two fronts. On the one side, it’s been an ongoing conversation for a decade, if not more, in Canadian women’s soccer. We’ve had such success on the national team side, but it’s always been, ‘when are we going to build the professional game in this country?’ And for me personally, it started in earnest when I was retiring. I knew it was coming, I was 37. It wasn’t sneaking up on me. I wanted to be a part of whatever was going to be built in women’s football in Canada. I knew it was going happen eventually, I wanted it to be part of building that.

I’d always been interested in the business side of things, so I went back to school for 18 months. Did my MBA, did a program through UEFA, the UEFA masters for international players, which is kind of an overview of the business of football. And just learned as much as I could. Everything I was learning, I was applying to the feasibility of women’s pro soccer in Canada. I did projects that gave me a great excuse to talk to everyone in the landscape, and I just got a really clear picture of how we could start to build in Canada, and also a really good picture that no one was working on anything. And that was the driver to found Project 8, a company solely devoted to getting women’s professional soccer started in Canada. Myself and my business partner started that in the summer of 2022, and then it was it was two and a half years of an ongoing of the startup life. Anyone who’s built a business or been an entrepreneur knows what that’s like: lots of long days and nights, lots of uncertainty, lots of raising capital. And it never stops.

AP: What were the markers that you saw that indicated that Canada was ready for a pro women’s soccer league?

DM: I think there’s a lot of the trends we’ve been seeing, not just in Canada, but around the world, the cultural shifts that have been happening, especially coming out of COVID. We all grew up at a time when it was commonly said that no one watches women’s sports, women’s sports doesn’t make money. And because of that, women’s sport wasn’t treated like a business and it wasn’t invested in. And that started to shift culturally, but it also started to shift because there was more and more data out there that showed really clearly that women’s sport is a very similar investment to men’s sport, but at a lower buy-in. It’s growing faster, there’s more and more data around franchise valuations, fan growth, all of these things.

There was data to start to disprove some of those myths and biases, so it was just the timing for us. You could see we had a fan base that had been following women’s soccer in Canada since really 2012, if not sooner, so we’ve got a generation of fans already here. I’d say the timing in the market around women’s sports, sponsors were really ready to invest. And also the soccer landscape of professional women’s pro leagues around the world, the investments had really taken off in the last five years. Canada was more and more at risk of being left behind. We were only one of two countries in the last Women’s World Cup, out of 32 countries, that didn’t have a league yet.

So, yes, a bit of a shocking stat there for Canada, which has one of the largest player pools in the world. It was third-largest in 2019. We have a huge participation rates here. We have the fan base that watches. We have incredible national team success. We won Olympic gold medals. So that was kind of the one area where we were going to be left behind. And if we didn’t invest in the next five, 10 years, we weren’t gonna be able to compete with these countries with strong professional leagues, because this is where you develop. And the fact that this new industry, women’s pro soccer, is growing so quickly, salaries are rising, costs are rising. If we didn’t start to build now, we weren’t going to be able to get into the market and compete the way that we can by entering the market now.

AP: What has been the most difficult thing that, well — maybe not most difficult — but most challenging thing that you’ve faced in starting a women’s pro soccer league?

DM: I think it’s related to the path we chose, which was the startup route, building this from scratch and all the challenges and uncertainty that come with that. Most of the women’s pro leagues around the world have been started with men’s soccer investment: either the federation builds a league, or the men’s league is mandated to have a women’s league, or some of the biggest men’s clubs in the world start to invest. In Canada, we have a very unique soccer landscape. The fact that we are an independent league built for women, by women. It’s a longer road to raise that capital, get it going, build everything from scratch. The scale of it itself was a challenge.

AP: You had an amazing first match there in Vancouver, and I’m wondering, how important was the buy-in for players like Christine Sinclair, like Quinn, like Stephanie Labbe?

DM: The involvement of players current and past was huge. I don’t think I don’ think we got this off the ground without them. Sinc was one of my first phone calls. I think Sinc is one of the main reasons we have a successful women’s national team program in Canada. She was on board from day one. Stephanie Labbe was working with Vancouver before there was even a league. I think it was so key that we got those folks because they’re known by Canadians, they have a platform, they’re respected. But in a lot of ways it’s been a really easy sell because I think we all are very committed to leaving this landscape better than we found it.

And then there’s the current players, too. This league doesn’t work without players. We’re aiming to be a top five league in the world from day one and that takes world-class players. And we knew it was always going to be hardest to build rosters in the first season. We were essentially asking players who are employed in existing clubs and existing leagues around the world to take the risk on a new league where they maybe didn’t know what the playing quality was going to, or who their coach is going to be, or who the teammates are going to be. And it was massive that players like Quinn signed on, and Emma Regan, another current women’s national team player for Canada. It was also very exciting was to get some of those Canadian legends like Desiree Scott and Erin McLeod, who are very known faces in Canada. So it was huge to get them in.

AP: With the NWSL, USL Super League, Liga MX and the Northern Super League, as well as a pair of recently-announced lower division leagues in the U.S., there are more professional opportunities than ever before. What does that say about the evolution of the women’s game? What are your thoughts about the competition for talent?

DM: I would say the mindset of rising tide raises all boats is ubiquitous in women’s sport. We all believe that. We all believe it’s a new industry that’s just getting started and there’s lots of growth to be had. The league we’re trying to build, top five from Day 1. It’s a global industry, we’re competing with leagues all over the world, is the reality. But I think in North America specifically, I think us, the NWSL, Liga MX Femenil in Mexico, also know that we have the opportunity to really build women’s soccer in our region. I think we’ve got three very competitive tier-one women’s pro leagues in our regions that can work together to build that landscape — because we also have to compete against UEFA. Which has, you know, women’s Champions League, and a confederation with UEFA with much higher revenues and perhaps supports than our region, which is CONCACAF. So globally, we want to build our region as best we can.

I think there’s always going to be competition for players and all those things, but behind the scenes there’s such great support throughout the community. And we’re really excited to build that. Regional competition, you know, W Champions Cup or other ways to have our clubs play against NWSL.

Notable:

Links:

NWSL fan groups launch campaign to support transgender players.

Thorns beat Pride! Hey, show the local paper some love with clicks to show there’s value in covering women’s sports.

Carli Lloyd wishes she would have let more of her teammates in

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Tannenwald went to the Hall of Fame ceremony to cover Lloyd’s induction

London City, owned by Michele Kang, moves up to the WSLHow

How the NWSL’s parity is its strength against the WSL, UWCL

Tiernan emerges as a young star and we have a sister-to-sister goal for the Thompsons. From Theo Lloyd-Hughes, who is helping out with coverage of the NWSL for AP.

The Equalizer looks at some of the NWSL’s young players.

Jessica Berman talks about how the men’s World Cup next year will impact the NWSL

The Stars fired Lorne Donaldson.

The rise of rookies in the NWSL

The NWSL is moving its headquarters

The 99ers score a movie deal with Netflix

All for XI with a nice interview of Jaedyn Shaw

Midge Purce makes her Broadway debut

Bonus Content! Here’s Reyna Reyes and Mackenzie Arnold after the Portland Thorns defeated the Orlando Pride on Saturday.