The fledgling Women's Professional Soccer league will play its championship game at Cal State East Bay in Hayward on Sunday, featuring the Bay Area's FC Gold Pride. What the league will look like next year is anyone's guess.

Supporters of the league insist - with a large dose of hope - that brighter days are ahead. But the numbers are not encouraging. Two of the league's top teams folded this year and average attendance dipped from 4,500 in its inaugural season of 2009 to 3,600 this year. FC Gold Pride dipped from 3,600 in '09 to 3,000 this season.

On many fronts, the sport's struggles don't make sense. The U.S. women's national team has dominated the world for years, gaining international attention for its star-studded World Cup championship team of 1999. Players like Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain became household names, helping to bring thousands upon thousands of young girls into the sport. The Bay Area professional team even features the world's best player, Brazil's Marta, on a team of international superstars.

Yet none of those positives can make up for one major negative: People lose money investing in women's pro soccer. The Women's United Soccer Association lasted three seasons until 2003, losing an estimated $100 million. WPS has tried harder to keep expenses in check, but it launched in a terrible economy last year and has been unable to land as many national sponsors as it needed.

Needed: better economy

Now, the woman who marshaled sponsors and TV deals for WPS and kept the owners energized despite losses that, she says, averaged more than $1 million per team this year, is on her way out the door.

In an interview, Tonya Antonucci said she hoped her resignation as commissioner, effective at the end of the season, wouldn't be construed as a blow to the league's credibility. She thinks the San Francisco-based league can be a success, although it might take years and might need more help from Major League Soccer, with which the women's league has been in partnership.

"I think it can be done," she said. "The model can work. It needs improved economic conditions."

She estimated that WPS clubs need an average attendance of 5,000, which she thinks is "absolutely possible."

Gold Pride forward and World Cup veteran Tiffeny Milbrett sees the world's top men's teams as a model for the women's game.

"When you watch club teams like Barcelona and Madrid and Chelsea and Arsenal and Man U, every position has a national-team caliber player. That's what you're striving for in this league," Milbrett said. "That brings out the best talent and the best soccer."

FC Gold Pride is top club

FC Gold Pride, which plays its home games in Hayward, won the league's regular-season title with a 16-3-5 record. Led by Marta, the four-time FIFA World Player of the Year, Gold Pride won a pass to the title game. Philadelphia plays at Boston on Thursday for the other slot in the final.

"I'd like to see more awareness of the team," Antonucci said. "This is a big soccer community. They've got the championship game in their backyard, and they've got the world's best player."

The former Stanford soccer player helped build the league for the last six years and has served as commissioner since 2007. She said the time was right for her to leave, although she wasn't sure what her next job would be.

"I've dedicated my life professionally and personally to launch the league," she said. "The league is going through a transition, with less emphasis on the national league office. The owners are taking a more active role in setting a strategic agenda for the league. ... There's more of a locally focused aspect to the business plan."

She'll retain a nonvoting seat on the board of directors while WPS general counsel Anne-Marie Eileraas becomes chief executive officer.

2 teams have folded

Eileraas will inherit a difficult situation. The staff at WPS headquarters was slashed this year, and some executives took pay cuts. Antonucci said she voluntarily worked without pay for five months earlier this year. "It was a modest salary to begin with," she said.

After last season, the league lost its highest-drawing team, the Los Angeles Sol. The Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns numerous sports teams, decided to turn over its 50 percent stake in the Sol to WPS, and the league couldn't find new investors for the club.

"Personally, that was tough for me," Antonucci said. "I fought very hard with the expansion committee to find a new buyer."

To make matters worse, the St. Louis Athletica folded two months into the season because of a funding crisis, forcing the league to scramble to revise its schedule with just seven teams.

A Buffalo, N.Y., club is expected to join the league next year, and WPS is also talking to a group from Orange County. But Antonucci said, "The window (for 2011) is closing rapidly."