The NWSL has two seasons under its belt now and one to go until it matches the lifespan of WUSA and WPS. With seemingly all teams returning for the second season in a row, and a World Cup to build off of next year, it seems likely that the NWSL will surpass both previous efforts at a women’s professional soccer league.

Year two of the NWSL was better than year one in many respects, including the addition of a second franchise linked to MLS (the Houston Dash), a TV deal with ESPN, steady improvement in streaming quality of matches and an exciting final between Seattle and FC Kansas City.

In other aspects, NWSL still has a very long way to go. The quality of officiating remains poor, the location of a number of the stadiums is less than desirable and the visual and playing quality of some of the pitches is abysmal.

The biggest area of need, of course, lies in attracting fans to the stadiums (as well as the webcasts). In year two, attendance remained relatively flat compared to year one. Seattle and Chicago showed healthy gains, while FC Kansas City and Western New York showed large declines. Houston joined the league and finished second overall in attendance, but with a figure that was generally deemed as disappointing by the Dash organization.

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Naturally improvement in the the area’s noted by many in the NWSL community as needing improvement will help to attract fans. However, across the league the NWSL needs to come to grips with who its ideal target fan base is and how to attract that base.

There has often been a belief that the target market for women’s soccer is families with young female soccer players. Targeting this demographic was the approach the Houston Dash took in year one of their existence.

What the Dash found, however, has also proven to be true in other markets: soccer families are a nice group to tap into but they cannot constitute the core of the fan base. Soccer families typically do not come to midweek games, they take summer vacations, their attendance is hit or miss.

In addition, as evidenced when the Seattle Reign came to town to face the Dash, young female soccer players often have a tendency to be fans of players (Alex Morgan, Sydney Leroux, Hope Solo, etc.) rather than fans of teams.

For NWSL to grow, it has to tap into the same urban singles soccer fan base that MLS targets. This is easier said than done, of course, as within the male contingent of soccer fans there remain all too many who view women’s soccer as being vastly inferior to the men’s game (even if they have seen very little women’s soccer to back up that view).

Create the right atmosphere, however, and draw them into giving the league a chance, and some (not all) of those fans can be captured. I defy anyone to watch the likes of Kim Little, Vero Boquete, Jess Fishlock and others and claim that the women’s game is not exciting to watch.

How can NWSL go about more successfully tapping into this fan base outside of Portland, which has done so reasonably well? One possible way to do so is to give the average soccer fan the things that they lament about MLS. For one, that means greater transparency in the way the league functions and less of the obscure make it up as you go approach that MLS has adopted. Going into more detail on this subject might take several articles, however.

Perhaps one of the best ways to create more intrigue around the league would be to implement the promotion and relegation system that MLS likely will never implement. Create a multi-tiered league that generates excitement at both the top and the bottom of the table and traditionalist soccer fans will take notice and pay attention out of curiosity.

There are very real barriers to pro/rel in MLS ranging from the monies invested by owners and their understandable unwillingness to put that investment at risk to TV contracts and the importance of the New York City and Los Angeles markets to those TV deals.

NWSL is not burdened by such issues. Investment by teams is minimal – there are no substantial franchise fees, no multi-million dollar stadiums being built. TV contracts are rather limited and not driven by the traditional TV markets – neither Los Angeles nor New York City currently even hosts an NWSL franchise.

There are already relevant models in existence for how NWSL might go about implementing a pro/rel system. The FA-WSL in England, for example, has been in existence since 2011. Initially, eight teams competed in the league; the same number of teams that NWSL started with.

In 2014, WSL 2 was introduced with ten teams and a pro/rel system between WSL 1 and WSL 2 along with it. At the end of the 2014 WSL season, the 8th place team in WSL 1 will be relegated to WSL 2 while the top finisher in WSL 2 will get promoted to WSL 1.

The WSL faces the same cost related concerns and caution that NWSL teams face. Wage budgets are comparable to NWSL with only a handful of players per team earning a decent living, in the range of 20-30k British Pounds per year on average. Most player earn far less as the league looks to avoid the financial meltdown that it observed with previous professional leagues in the United States.

NWSL could rapidly move to an 8-10 team top flight league and cooperate with W-League and WPSL to create a second tier of similar size that ultimately could in turn link to WPSL and W-League in a pro/rel system that goes beyond just two levels.

A pro/rel system provides flexibility to expand league size over time. Want to grow the number of teams in NWSL 1 from 10 to 12? No problem, just add two more promotion spots from NWSL 2 for one season.

Multiple approaches to the pro/rel system could be implemented that would generate more interest and perhaps more TV revenue. For example, in a ten team league, 10th place might be automatic relegation with 9th place going into a relegation playoff against the 2nd place team in NWSL 2.

The largest barrier to pro/rel in the current NWSL system might be the allocated player system. However, eventually NWSL will need to move away from the system of allocating players and the alternative for supporting clubs financially is already in place in the FA-WSL. The FA partially funds teams, allocating £70,000 to WSL 1 teams and £23,000 to WSL 2 teams this season.

Is pro/rel the end all, be all? Will it result in 20-30k fans in stadiums? No, of course not. However, it will attract new fans and create some additional intrigue and excitement for the league. There are few compelling reasons not to take advantage of being a young league that has the flexibility to go about implementing pro/rel and many compelling reasons to move in that direction over the next few seasons.