With all of Chicago’s craft breweries and near-endless pizza options, there isn’t much reason to make a Budweiser and a Jet’s pie your go-to choices.
But if you’re a Red Stars fan — or a fan of the National Women’s Soccer League in general — you buy into the companies that buy into your team.
“They get it, they’re smart,” Vicky Lynch, the team’s chief business officer, said of that women’s soccer fan dynamic. “They understand that every little bit is going to help the club and the league grow and help the players attain a level of professionalism that they deserve. That’s why they go all in and they want to support those partners.”
Lynch was hired in April and is tasked with overseeing the business side of the club — everything from revenue and tickets to sponsorship and marketing.
The Tribune recently spoke with Lynch in a wide-ranging interview. Here are some of the highlights.
1. The Red Stars hope to have a local TV deal next season and have been in talks with several broadcasters, including CBS-2.
Most NWSL matches are streamed on Paramount+ with some broadcast on CBS or CBS Sports Network in the U.S. Some teams, such as the Portland Thorns, have a local TV option in addition to the league deal.
That’s something the Red Stars — who had select matches on NBC Sports Chicago in 2019 — are viewing as a “definite” priority for 2022, Lynch said.
“The challenge is that the league deal does not allow for streaming,” she said. “We’ve talked to some local folks here about broadcast, but … we just haven’t found a partner who wants to do linear with us. That’s been the challenge, but we’ve had conversations. There’s interest and I know we will have local broadcasts next year. It was a little late in the game to try to get something off the ground when I came on board.”
One of those conversations was with CBS-2, but by the time Lynch joined the Red Stars, the NWSL schedule was set, leaving little wiggle room to adjust for broadcast windows, she said.
“They have an interest in trying to do something with us again,” Lynch said of CBS-2. “I think it’ll be 2022 when we can look at the schedule and say, ‘OK, yes, we like that match or that date for what we can do, but we need it to be a 5 o’clock kick instead of a 7 o’clock kick,’ or something like that. Once we can have those conversations and tweak the schedule to fit within broadcast windows, I think you’ll see us on local broadcast next year.”
Lynch cited the Fire’s WGN-9 deal as the kind of exposure that “would be tremendous” for the Red Stars, but she said they aren’t opposed to a cable deal.
Meanwhile, the Red Stars last Monday announced their Sept. 25 match against the Thorns will be simulcast in Spanish on UniMás, TUDN and WRTO-AM 1200, the first time the team has partnered with Univision.
2. ‘Devastating’ pandemic losses haven’t been completely restored, but the Red Stars are on the right track.
Red Stars majority owner Arnim Whisler was open about the financial impact that hit the team at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the match-day revenues that women’s sports rely heavily on were cut out.
Those losses incurred by a 2020 season without spectators haven’t been completely restored, but the return of fans coupled with new investors have helped put the Red Stars on track, Lynch said.
“We’ve definitely made strides in that direction,” she said. “We haven’t recovered completely from that because it was pretty devastating.”
The Red Stars didn’t lose any corporate sponsors, Lynch said, and none asked for money back when “we couldn’t deliver on their contracts last season because of COVID.”
An increase in season ticket holders to about 980 — just shy of their goal of 1,000 — also has helped.
“That’s pretty much almost double what historically has been done,” Lynch said. “I think you saw the fans wanting to have live events again and see the Red Stars again. You saw people really commit to season tickets. We’ve had strong growth there.”
That growth is something the Red Stars know they need to build off.
“We are moving forward with the idea that the recovery started this year,” she said. “But we know that we just have to keep going at it in order to fully recover from what COVID did to us.”
3. Lynch has come full circle in soccer, working World Cups and getting a master’s at the University of Liverpool.
Lynch hails from St. Louis, the traditional hotbed of American soccer, and got her first job in the sport with the Chicago-based U.S. Soccer Federation for the 1994 men’s World Cup.
At the time, Lynch, who has a finance background, worked at a bank and volunteered for U.S. Soccer at night. When she inquired about a full-time position with the federation, there happened to be an opening to manage volunteer services. Naturally, it was unpaid.
“I walked in the bank the next day and I resigned,” Lynch said. “My father was less than pleased. I got a waitressing job to get some money coming in. But it all worked out. Three months later they put me on salary, and from there my career just snowballed.”
After working the ’94 World Cup — ask her about that time Diana Ross trod on a freshly sodded Soldier Field to rehearse for the opening ceremony to the chagrin of U.S Soccer — Lynch was the director of competition for the 1999 Women’s World Cup, famously won by the U.S. over China in penalties in front of 90,185 at the Rose Bowl.
That more than 90,000 were in attendance for the final is significant compared with which venues initially were under consideration.
“One of our go-to stadiums was a high school outside of Atlanta,” Lynch said of women’s national team games at the time. “I mean, it was literally a high school football stadium, 4,000 seats. But that’s what we were going to, that’s what we were doing. And all of a sudden we’re getting 90,000 people in the Rose Bowl and everybody thought, ‘Well, this is it,’ and then you start the WUSA.”
The Women’s United Soccer Association was the first fully professional women’s soccer league and debuted in 2001. But by 2003, the league was millions in debt, spending more than $100 million in three years instead of the $40 million over five as planned, according to the Washington Post. The league suspended play in 2003 and was replaced in 2009 by the Women’s Professional Soccer league. The WPS met a similar fate in 2012 and was replaced the next year by the NWSL.
“The thing that I always say about the WUSA is that the product did not fail,” said Lynch, who oversaw operations for the San Diego Spirit. “The WUSA should still be around because it was very good. In San Diego we averaged close to 6,000 fans a game.
“And we had other teams that were doing very well, (but) I think the leadership at the league level just wasn’t ready for what needed to be done, the hard decisions, so it failed.”
After the WUSA folded, Lynch took what she called a “life break” and in 2003 enrolled in a one-year program at the University of Liverpool to get an MBA in Football Industries, a master’s degree focused on the business side of soccer.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that Lynch already was a Liverpool fan and got the chance to watch matches at Anfield.
“I saw a lot of good football,” she said. “It was a wonderful experience because there were 32 of us in the program, counting myself. There were two women but we had probably like 11 different countries represented in our group.”
After returning to the U.S., Lynch worked several jobs in the sports business and marketing industries, including with Relevent Sports Group, which oversees the annual International Champions Cup exhibitions.
But that WUSA experience — and trying to prevent a repeat — drew Lynch back to women’s soccer.
“I’ve always felt that I have had unfinished business with regards to women’s soccer,” she said. “To have this opportunity to come into an organization like the Red Stars, in a city where I’ve lived for most of my adult life, it was the perfect opportunity for me.”
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