Lisa Baird could be a great commissioner for the NWSL. But will the league give her every chance to succeed? (Photo by Ker Robertson/Getty Images)

The National Women’s Soccer League has been busy in this offseason. It prepared to add an expansion team, created a spending mechanism to attract top-dollar stars and is on the cusp of announcing a new broadcast deal.

But the biggest offseason decision by far — the one that may determine the NWSL’s growth, or lack thereof, for years to come — was finding a commissioner after three years of plodding along without one.

A chief complaint among insiders connected to U.S. Soccer, the league operator, and among NWSL players has been the lack of a strong commissioner to steer the league into its next phase.

U.S. women’s national team star Megan Rapinoe, for instance, has drawn a comparison to NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who’s been credited with making his league one of the most popular in the world. The NWSL, she argued, needs someone like him.

“People aren’t hardcore basketball fans — they are fans of the NBA,” she told Yahoo Sports in November. “These guys are cool, and Adam Silver and the league office has empowered these athletes to be the biggest stars, to express themselves and have opinions and be socially conscious. We have all of that — we just don’t have the operators.

“We need a big-vision person who is going to sell the potential of the NWSL and sell the future of it,” Rapinoe added. “You can leverage the moment and the movement of what’s going on right now into a larger business plan. People want to invest in a way that’s socially conscious — people want to get behind women businesses. There’s a way to have a very capitalistic and mission-driven approach all at once but you need someone who understands that and how to think big like that.”

The NWSL owners are hoping they found that person, announcing last week they had hired Lisa Baird as the league’s commissioner.

What Lisa Baird can bring to the NWSL

Baird’s resume is impressive. She spent a decade at the U.S. Olympic Committee doing all the things that the NWSL needs to focus on: signing broadcast, sponsorship and licensing deals. She helped launch the “Team USA” brand, and before that she worked in marketing and licensing for the NFL. She leaves a role as New York Public Radio’s chief marketing officer.

Where she hasn’t worked before is in soccer.

Though she has experience working with U.S. Soccer in her role at the USOC, that’s not the primary focus of her experience — and that might be a good thing. After all, the NWSL in the past turned to “soccer people” to lead the way, but the results were mixed at best.

Former commissioner Jeff Plush, who stepped down in 2017, previously worked for the Colorado Rapids as a managing director, and his resume included serving on the Board of Governors for MLS and Soccer United Marketing. Amanda Duffy, the de facto commissioner after Plush’s exit, had been the head of operations at Louisville City in the USL.

But when it came to capitalizing on events like the World Cup, which the USWNT won twice in the NWSL’s seven-season existence, the NWSL always seemed to somehow be caught flat-footed.

View photos Megan Rapinoe and the USWNT players are marketable, something on which the NWSL needs to capitalize. (Photo by VI Images via Getty Images) More

Deals with major national sponsorships were never brokered, despite the players of the USWNT and the team itself becoming the hottest spokeswomen around. The NWSL’s current marquee brand deal with Budweiser was brokered by U.S. Soccer and Soccer United Marketing, the commercial arm of MLS.

The product has never been the problem for the NWSL. Fans showed up to games in increasing numbers, clamoring to see many of the best athletes in the world. But the league’s ability to market itself and help non-believers see its best qualities has been lacking.

With Baird, the NWSL has someone whose core competencies are the areas where the league needs to grow. No, she hasn’t done these things in soccer, but she has proven she can do them, which is what counts.

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