League in Limbo

In Bend It like Beckham, the soccer movie that has grossed more than $100 million worldwide since 2002 and now incessantly runs on HBO, the two main characters, British teenage girls who dream of becoming the next Mia Hamm, stare at a television screen, jaws agape. They are watching a promo for the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA), the American professional league that featured the best female players in the world, including Hamm, Brazil's Katia and Bai Jie of China. Brandi Chastain knocks a header into the net. England's Kelly Smith shakes a defender. Unbelievable, the girls say. We can make a living in the game we love.

That scene is now as dated as Pel and skirted soccer gear. A year ago, just months after the hit film's U.S. release, the WUSA folded, citing crippling debt and $20 million in annual losses. Among other problems, the league spent itself into oblivion, having budgeted $40 million to finance its first five years yet laid out $100 million in the first three. Says industry consultant David Carter, founder of Sports Business Group, based in Redondo Beach, Calif.: "The WUSA blew through money like drunken dotcommers."

But now, with an Olympic gold medal for the U.S. fanning interest, the WUSA is showing new signs of life. Tony DiCicco, coach of the 1999 women's World Cup champions and the WUSA's last commissioner, is leading an effort to relaunch the league, targeting an exhibition tour by next spring and a full season by 2006.

It's an ambitious plan, to be sure. And DiCicco is fighting more than the WUSA's history. Despite record numbers of girls participating in sports and U.S. dominance in soccer, softball and basketball on the international stage, four of the five major women's professional leagues launched since 1996 have folded. (Only the WNBA, the women's basketball league subsidized by the NBA, remains. The American Basketball League, the Women's Pro Softball League and United States Professional Volleyball have, like the WUSA, gone under.) Plus, the WUSA is trying to come back when it's losing its Michael Jordan: Hamm is hanging up her cleats. "I made that promise to myself, but I also made it to my family," says Hamm, wife of Chicago Cubs star Nomar Garciaparra. Four other favorites who led the Olympic team in Athens, including captain Julie Foudy and shirt-shedding cover girl Chastain, are also likely to retire.

So what in the world is this league thinking? Surprisingly, most experts believe a new WUSA can kick. "They are not crazy," says Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp Ltd., a Chicago marketing firm. "They just have to align their expectations with reality." DiCicco has heeded that advice. In July he called a meeting of about 30 ex — WUSA officials, sports leaders and consultants to revamp the league's business model. Gone are the five-year financial projections relied upon in the old league, which was founded on Web-like hysteria after the 1999 World Cup victory. (John Hendricks, chairman of Discovery Communications, was so "intoxicated" by the World Cup victory, he persuaded his cable brethren at Comcast, Cox and Time Warner, which owns TIME magazine, to help fund the start-up.) This time around, DiCicco says, the WUSA will rely on modest one-year figures. "Potential owners told us they're not going to believe anything we project," he explains. "They said, 'Don't waste your time.'" And even the one-year numbers are more conservative. For example, when the WUSA debuted, top players were paid salaries of up to $93,000. Says league player representative John Langel: "I don't see that happening again." (By comparison, the 2002 maximum salary in the WNBA, a more established, healthier league, was about $80,000.)