Is Louisville Showing up for Racing?

Year 3 of the National Women’s Soccer League in Louisville has just recently finished, so I wanted to take a look back and see where the city and the team stand in relation to each other going into year 4. Perhaps the easiest measure is attendance year-over-year, but I think it is more nuanced than that (although it is probably that simple when you get down to it). Let’s save that metric until the end because I think it needs some context.

Fighting an uphill battle, but winning…from a certain point of view

Louisville is the smallest market in the NWSL when you compare the MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Area) of the teams in the league. Only the Raliegh-Cary NC is close at about 1.5 million people compared to Louisville’s 1.3 million. No other team plays in a market of less than 2 million people. Salt Lake City will join next year and have roughly the same population as Louisville. Let’s look at how Louisville stands up to the other markets when compared to how many fans per 10,000 people in the MSA attend their home matches.

Louisville did really well pulling in its population to matches in 2023 when compared to the rest of the league. It was in 4th place with a pretty healthy lead over 5th place Raleigh-Cary. It pulled in 3 times the rate of supposedly “soccer-mad” Los Angeles. However, Angel City pulled in 3 times the number of fans to its home matches this season. You can see the big issue: places like Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle have so many more people to pull from.

The bright side is the Louisville’s attendance is on par with some much larger cities. I have a feeling that Chicago will soon have its issues sorted. Gotham’s stadium is in a suboptimal location. If things stay about the same elsewhere, then Louisville can probably sustain and match the Orlando, Houston, and Raleigh-Cary numbers.

I think 10,000 is probably the ultimate attendance goal for Racing, so let’s see how close applying the rate from the cities above them get them to 10,000.

Ultimately, Louisville would have to eclipse Portland’s current level of enthusiasm for the Thorns to reach 10,000.

Did the World Cup Help?

The short answer is “Yes”, but not to the same degree as in other markets. The table below includes the averages of pre- and post-World Cup attendance, but not “during”. Racing’s "Fill the Fam” occurred in the “during” section. I would have excluded it anyway, since it was not a “natural” attendance match. You can take issue with that if you like, and I will even give you alternative data points (attendance was 6,993 and the growth rate was 33% if you include “Fill the Fam”). I will discuss “Fill the Fam” later and explain in more detail why I would exclude it regardless of when it occurred.

I will forgo the semantic debate of whether 28% constitutes a “huge” boost in attendance, but it is distinctly measurable and could go up (or back down) next season. There could be even more debate if the numbers would have been better if the USWNT had performed “up to expectations” (personally, I think the rest of the world has started to catch up but will concede that I don’t follow international soccer enough or really at all, so my opinion here is not valuable).

My main concern is that the best figure that I have seen is that currently 13% of the country is “interested in women’s soccer. That number is surely growing, but the majority of the focus seems to be mostly targeted at the supposed 13% and trying to get a larger portion of that 13% to matches (13% of 1.3 million is roughly 170,000 by the way). If you are focused on the World Cup being a promotion engine for club soccer, and it definitely is, you are still leaving the unengaged off the table. Large cities can afford to do that, but Louisville cannot. Getting local women’s soccer fans to Lynn Family Stadium is and always should be the primary focus and growing the 13% higher year-by-year is the best way to boost attendance. However, you can’t forgo the people who might just come for the “Louisville” part of “Racing Louisville Football Club” and completely focus on the “(Women’s) Football” part.

The people who care, care deeply

I think Racing is disproportionately blessed by the number of people willing to give of their time to enhance the overall fan experience surrounding Racing. Bekki Morgan is one of the top-tier content creators for the NWSL as a whole and we are blessed to have her spend the lion’s share of her time covering Racing. There are several podcasts that cover Racing to a certain degree, but Racing has two that are fully dedicated to it in Butchertown Rundown (Bekki, Kaitlyn Whiteside and Tom Benson) and Lavender Louisville (Cody Ruth and Joe Havelda). Tyler Greever is almost always there when he can be to cover Racing for WDRB (WLKY previously). The main supporters group, the Lavender Legion, strives to make every player feel welcome and tries to make sure every player has their own banner (tougher than it sounds). There are countless hours spent writing, talking or contributing to Racing that you will probably never know about.

In return, the players care deeply about the community. Nothing against the first-year team, but I felt like there was a mass exodus out of Louisville as soon as the season was over. This year, while players will take vacations, many of them have homes in the community and should be around prior to training camp next season. Jae Howell has done tireless work with Down Syndrome of Louisville, and it is in great shape to get the $10,000 from the Nationwide Community Impact Award (vote here). Katie Lund and Carson Pickett raised over $14,000 for Norton’s Children’s Hospital Foundation. Almost every player that has been interviewed on Butchertown Rundown or Lavender Louisville has gone out of their way to compliment Louisville and the fan interactions they have around town. The club opens up its practices for season ticket holders to attend from time to time and has held townhalls/forums to hear from season ticket holders as well. Every fanbase thinks its special and they all are in their own way, but Louisville’s small town fell is unique for the league.

But the casual fans pay the bills.

When your league becomes big enough (think the NFL currently) there is almost no need to try to grow beyond die-hard fans from an attendance perspective. However, the NFL continues to grow and expand globally through fans who watch from home (or elsewhere). The media partnership contracts border on ridiculous. The NWSL isn’t near that size, so it still needs casual fans to fill the stadium. For simplicity’s sake, (even though I will admit that is a vast over-simplification) let’s say that the season ticket holders constitute the clear majority of die-hard fans. Through clear logic, we can assume that Racing’s season ticket holder base is less than 4,000 with the lowest attendance match of the year being 4,143. If the club were to consistently draw only 4,000 fans, I am not sure how sustainable the club would be long term, especially with a current valuation of $47 million on a 2023 revenue of 5.9 million (the data is behind a paywall some of the time but take my word for it.) The club is in no danger of folding, but relocation is another matter. Racing is likely still at the point where the majority of its ticket sales revenue comes from season ticket holders, but the casual fans make of the difference between likely being precarious to presumably being somewhat comfortable. The club will try to grow both, but they will need the casual fans to actually start paying for value, so…

Let’s talk Fill the Fam

Of the roughly 4,400 fans above the average who attended the Fill the Fam match I wonder how many paid face value to attend, and beyond that how many attended for free. I heard multiple anecdotes from people who bought tickets just to give them away. In the grand scheme of things, I wonder if this does more harm than good. Once you get something for free the first time, will you ever be willing to pay for it. I think there are many perspectives on this, with the “free-trial” seemingly being the current most popular marketing tool. However, a single match attendance to a Racing match doesn’t require you to take action to back out of attending the next one. There isn’t really an analogous comparison in my mind when it comes to tickets to a sporting event. The post “Fill the Fam” attendance rose 630 from 5,280 to 5,920. You can argue that the 630 lift came from “Fill the Fam”, but then you would have to completely ignore the World Cup lift. The truth is probably that there was some lift from both, but likely some that also had nothing to do with either.

Active non-attenders

Lou City, averaged 10,547 fans per match this season. I find it highly dubious that any more that 5% of those people are unaware of Racing Louisville FC. I’m not going to tell anyone how to spend their money, especially their disposable income, but I believe that there are 4,000 to 5,000 people who make the active, conscious decision not to attend Racing matches on a regular basis. I get that because I make the active decision to not attend Lou City matches (it looks like a picked a good year to stop based on the on-field performance too). If you are a regular reader of this space, you know that I don’t beat around the bush. Frankly, some of those 4,000 to 5,000 are making a misogynist decision. It’s not just the men either. I have talked to plenty of women too who without coming out and saying it, basically tell me that they aren’t interested in women’s sports. The same article where I got the 13% number says that fans of women’s soccer are 54% male. Regardless of gender, Lou City still essentially doubles Racing’s attendance. The point is that “awareness” of Racing in the local soccer community is probably high enough, so the team needs to figure out how to broaden awareness.

What’s (not) in a name?

Have you ever pondered how conceptually odd it is to say “Racing Louisville” to a person who has no familiarity with the city or the NWSL and expect that person to have any idea what you are talking about? Don’t get me wrong. I still love the name despite my embargo on using it on this site unless absolutely necessary for context (I will likely remove that embargo beginning next year as a year is long enough to protest something). However, it is a barrier to entry to fandom. I am convinced that attendance growth in the WSL was uniquely assisted by their national team’s success coupled with the fact that there was already brand recognition. As an example (you know what’s coming), Arsenal’s attendance grew 332% from the 21/22 season to the 22/23 season which saw an average attendance of 15,000. This year Arsenal’s two home matches at the Emirates Stadium have drawn 54,000 and 36,000 respectively. That’s simultaneously really exciting and frankly scary. Imagine the salaries that Arsenal could afford if they averaged 40,000 for the season (they are tired of being second fiddle to Chelsea recently, and frankly may just try to buy their way to closing the small gap). There is virtually nothing from preventing a player like Emily Fox from looking to England and deciding that the grass is greener. The NWSL’s talent with be further diluted through the addition of two new teams so it definitely doesn’t need to lose any more star players.

Racing Louisville on the other hand, had little to no global profile until the World Cup. Hopefully that exposure expanded their profile some, but as previously argued I don’t think it should be the sole mechanism for recognition. Racing has plenty of “stars” and if that talent was healthy enough and played cohesively enough, the winning it would have brought might have seen an additional attendance boost. Neither enough health and nor cohesive play was demonstrated to make the playoffs, let along win on a consistent basis. To some degree, only winning matters. However, you have to be ready to capitalize on it. If Racing comes out of the gates like gangbusters, will there be enough profile to raise awareness for new fans?

No NWSL team has a name that particularly screams “women’s soccer”, so I don’t think a name change is warranted or even possible. Therefore, you have to start to tie the name “Racing Louisville” to something meaningful beyond your traditional NWSL fans. If I had a solution or the magic formula, I certainly wouldn’t give it away for free. The branding has improved year over year, but is the team doing all that it can do to promote themselves?

Thankfully, some focused leadership has arrived.

One person who I believe is doing all that he can do is Ryan Dell. He has the USWNT bona fides, so you have to believe that he is all over the ways to pluck the low hanging fruit of getting more USWNT fans to games. That’s where I would start too. On the other hand, I personally wonder that since I sit in the small part of the Venn diagram that excludes international soccer fans but contains Racing fans, is the team trying to get more fans like me or are there enough of us to even warrant targeting. I will never be an international soccer fan. I have a moral objection to all flag-based competitions and while the women’s competitions are the least offenders, they still associate themselves with shady organizations like FIFA and the IOC. I may be a population of one, so maybe it doesn’t matter. However, I think there is still a chance to convert someone to a Racing fan first, then a general women’s soccer fan next. My moral objection to international soccer stops with my conscious and mine only, so I don’t fault anyone from following the women’s game on a broader international scale. People like this have come to Racing, but I don’t know if they are being actively recruited. This is food for thought more than an active suggestion.

One thing that Ryan should get immediately credit for is turning the idea of having a split Lou City/Racing season ticket package into a reality. I think the Racing side of things has been pushing this for a while, so I am glad to finally see it get done. Racing’s visibility has definitely increased since his arrival, whether or not he deserves the full credit. I think we are in good hands…but

The real numbers are 6565, 6048, and 5920.

Those are Racing’s Year 1, 2, and 3 attendance averages. The team played better in year 3 but fewer people saw it happen. The Year 2 to Year 3 drop isn’t bad considering the number of people who said they were “done” after the Yates Report. I think you know that I would like nothing more than to hang the blame for the decline on a couple of my favorite punching bags, but I just don’t think the data is there for me to do so. I think that likely the team lost some first-year fans due to the poor performance and some that were perhaps in it for the original novelty of having a professional women’s soccer team. I wish I had an answer to how to get this team to 10,000 fans on a regular basis, but the good news is that for once I feel like at the end of the season, all of us are rowing in the same direction. That is subject to change and the NWSL is a league seemingly always in danger of the other shoe dropping. Nevertheless, I am hopeful for an increased enthusiasm for this team that boosts attendance next year. Louisville shows up for this team in virtually every other way and the players always show up for the city, so let’s all strive for better in 2024.