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A 30-item Sport Interest Inventory (SII) was developed and validated for measuring ten unique motives related to consumer interest at an international sporting event. Spectators (N=1,321) attending five different US venues during the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup were administered the SII. Analysis revealed that sport and team interest, excitement, supporting women's opportunity in sport, aesthetics and vicarious achievement explained 35 per cent of the variance in spectators' interest in the event. Results provide sport marketers with consumer-based marketing strategies, particularly for women's sport.

The Women’s US Soccer team in 2016 entered into the summer Olympics with a dark cloud over their heads, the lack of pay equity in the sport of soccer. Despite being heralded as the best female team in the world, the team’s compensation does not reflect their winning record or average work performance. Complex contractual negotiations and compensation intricacies surround this situation and the legal proceedings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that include discrepancies between gender preferences for compensation, benefits packages and terms of the overall collective bargaining agreement in a monopsony. The financial impact of lost wages and the role of the fan base are also examined.

This case has been created through the eyes of past and current members of the US Women’s Soccer team using scholarly and periodical sources.

This case is designed for upper level, undergraduate human resource management, labor economics and employment law courses, specifically, principles of human resource management, gender equity courses, business law, labor economics, law & economics.

This chapter examines the interconnected social, political and economic forces that are shaping and reshaping contemporary football. It identifies drivers but, critically, attributes commercialisation to structural (and not solely) economic differentiation, including the greater interdependence of the sexes in the game. First is a brief overview of the growing significance of women's football within the global sport system. Two zones of prestige exist currently for the professional game, in the United States and England. Questions are raised concerning the uneven effects of commercialisation and the contested values that underpin changes in the women's game. The chapter concludes with some reflections on future developments and research avenues that might be explored.

One of the most visible discussion points around international level, professional women's football in recent years has been that of gender equitable payment of players. This chapter presents some of the cornerstones of the equal pay debates at play in women's football. First, the emergence of international women's football as a major force in the global sport nexus is highlighted, which has enabled women to be paid to play football as a profession. Second, the historical roots of equal pay debates are presented, before turning to the most public and high-profile remuneration dispute in the sport of football, that of the USWNT versus the United States Soccer Federation (USSF). In this chapter, we outline how the drawn-out legal process has undoubtedly contributed to greater pay parity on the international stage for many professional women footballers and conclude the chapter by offering our thoughts as to the significance, and future, of gendered pay debates in football.

The Women's Empowerment League, or WE League, was officially launched in September of 2021 as Japan's ‘first professional women's league’. While the WE League was indeed new and categorically different from previous semi-professional leagues in Japan, the declaration that it was the first professional league belied the fact that women's football in Japan had witnessed various forms and degrees of professionalisation over the course of more than 30 years. While full professionalisation is a logical and important goal as women seek equity with men on football pitches and in other sports, I propose that revisiting the history of Japan's women's League provides useful material for contemplating the diverse factors that have motivated support for women's football, driven and derailed international success, and prompted increased professionalisation. Additionally, I argue here that although commercial and advertising interests in women's football have grown in recent years in Japan, the WE League's platform of social welfare and ‘women's empowerment’ is simply the newest iteration of a discourse packaging women's football as emblematic of progressive politics and ‘first-world’ gender norms, which has motivated much of the financial backing – from both the Japan Football Association (JFA) and corporate ranks – of teams and women professionals for the last three decades. Numerous stakeholders have sincere desires to improve not only the status of women's football but also of women in their country; however, the marketing and promotional messaging aimed at furthering those goals commodify critical issues such as women's empowerment and equal opportunity, and thus run the risk of depoliticising them.

On 2 February 2020, 99.9 million viewers learnt about the Women's Football Alliance (WFA), the largest women's American football league in the United States, when former player Katie Sowers became the first woman to coach in the Super Bowl. In the same month, the WFA announced several corporate partnerships and a new television deal with statements that connected the support for women's American football to advancing gender equity.

This chapter examines the professionalisation of women's American football in the United States through the lens of mediated visibilities. We use the term mediated visibilities, rather than media coverage, to move beyond how journalists are writing about sport (or ‘covering’ sport) and account for the complex ways in which content about women's sport circulates across producers and platforms in the digital media environment. In particular, our analysis examines the opportunities and limitations of digital media in the process of (semi-)professionalisation of women's American football.

The WFA joined the broader ‘momentum’ of women's sport in the United States as both the league's social media platforms and the sponsors aligned their messages with cultural narratives around women's sport to invoke gender equity in promoting women's American football. Moreover, the league positioned the strategy to enhance mediated visibility the sport as an integral step in the process of (semi-)professionalisation. However, the role of the WFA's digital media platforms alone appears to be limited without substantial structural change.

While there is evidence that team captainship in intercollegiate sports can lead to leadership development, there is little evidence about the role that task dependence may play on that effect. The individual or team nature of sports may offer different leadership experiences for team captains, leading to differential outcomes. In this exploratory study, 31 NCAA Division III team captains reported their leadership practice using Kouzes and Posner’s Student Leadership Practices Inventory (2^nd ed., 2005) at the beginning and end of one playing season. Results indicate that team captains developed their use of their leadership practices during the playing season regardless of whether they led an interdependent or independent team. The implications for leadership educators interested in the potentially unique contributions of various leadership experiences are discussed.