TV viewing figures for the NWSL are down: is there cause for concern? | NWSL

In the middle of the 13th regular NWSL season, the League said that the television ratings had dropped. But August has already shown recovery lights and the context adds significant warnings to this slope down.

As reported for the first time by Sports Business Journal, when the league paused for one month in the middle of the year in July, the grades decreased by 8% in their multiplatform media partnership. This partnership, which is now in its second year, was signed in November 2023 with CBS, ESPN, ION (Sports Scripps) and Prime Video for an agreement worth 240 million dollars – a huge increase compared to their previous one -party partnership with CBS worth $ 4.5 million. During its first year, the League experienced a significant increase in visualization numbers while matches proliferate in a variety of outlets, reaching a wider audience.

At the end of the 2024 season, Nielsen measured the total number of the total number (18.7 million) on all platforms of the previous year. The league match has become the most watched match in the history of the league, culminating at 1.1 million viewers and on average 967,000 on CBS. This match – who saw a record team from Orlando Pride to defeat the spirit of Washington, marking the first championship of the Brazilian veteran Marta on a land filled with recent Olympians – recorded an 18% increase in average viewers of 2023.

Various factors may have been at the origin of the drop in mid-season this year, the league pointing to missing stars as a potential impact. For example, the three members of the USWNT line before the USWNT, who combined for 10 goals at last year’s Olympic Games – Sophia Wilson (née Smith), Mallory Swanson and Trinity Rodman – were absent for most of the 2025 season, because the first two are on maternity leave and Rodman in rehabilitation for chronic back pain. Rodman has since returned to the field for the mind and there is hope that his star power could help the end of the season momentum.

In particular, NWSL in 2025 is a league with an exciting range of international stars which represented their country in record numbers during international tournaments in July. Their return to the League after great performances at female euros, the Nations Cup in female Africa and the American COPA Femmenina can also help to arouse interest.

For example, Ion figures tended to drop in 2025 (as opposed to ESPN, which tends to reach so far this season), but an overview of the ions vision numbers for August shows a healthy increase, with an average of 162,750 viewers in the first four weekends in August. The allocation of Ion Saturday Games offers a weekly list of consecutive matches, the duo of August 16 of this month, displaying an average audience of 188,000 – the highest of the first four weeks of August. Among the matches of this evening, there was a confrontation in California between San Diego Wave and Bay FC, who saw international players recently returned on each side, including the Zambia striker Racheal Kundananji.

San Diego Wave presented a few quarter -finalists Euro 2025 in the Swedish defender Hanna Lundkvist and the French striker Delphine Cascarino. With the Mexican striker Lizbeth Ovalle who is preparing for Orlando Pride for the second half of the season after having broken the female transfer record in 2025, and the Spanish striker Esther González (who finished the top scorer at Euro 2025) who goes from the observation to Maliwi, the striker Temwa Chawinga in a climb with a closely contested Exciting observers outside the USWNT for a closely disputed start -up breed, exciting observers outside the USWNT continued to challenge Gold Racel plus the league is closer to the playoffs.

With visualization numbers that have not yet been confirmed for all August matches, there have still been some curve balls affecting the plans. This includes a meteorological delay of more than three hours in a very tuned television match between Kansas City Current and Orlando Pride (which was finally played in the middle of the Missouri heat in a match which saw the top scorer of Orlando Pride Barbra Banda leave the field with an injury at the end of the season). But the League has an eye on end-of-season matches that seem likely to increase the overall figures for the 2025 season. More immediately, this includes Alex Morgan’s retirement ceremony broadcast this weekend on ESPN.

Asked for comments, the league has maintained the confidence that vision figures would increase as we approach the last weeks of the season. Like Jennifer Levine, vice-president of public relations and communications at the NWSL, said: “While the shield race intensifies and the playoffs are getting closer, we plan that even more viewers will want to connect to the competition.”

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