The franchise entry fee for Division 2-hopefuls WPSL PRO is lower than anything else in the market. In part 2 of our interview with Project Director Benno Nagel, he explains the finances behind the league. (You can catch up with Part 1 here)That's really amazing. At the same time, when you look at how much it costs to operate these teams, and you go back to the premise that we have of "how do we be an athlete first league? How are we a club community first league?" If you give us $5 million to join, I'd rather that $4 million go to your market and go to your community and go to your athletes and go to your staff and just go to your project to make sure that it's gonna be sustainable. We don't need $50 million to run the league. It'd be great to take $50 million and claim $40 million as profit and give it back to your investors and your shareholders, but would that service soccer or would that just service the owners of our league?We really want to do this to serve soccer and we had to make a number that was gonna be realistic because we do need some resources to operate as a league and we're very lucky that we've got investors at the league level that are gonna support the league operation.Everything is geared towards how we make it affordable for clubs. So we felt that a million dollars was a healthy number. We're gonna spread it over several years. Anything beyond that, we just felt that it was an overreach.How do you put your money to work in your community? That's really the most important thing for us, communities and players. You got all the money in the world or you got no money in the world, it's almost equally difficult to go get a facility project.I think if you look at a group like Carolina Core. Obviously look at a group like Cleveland, those can be the high benchmarks. Look at Sioux Falls. Look at markets like Oklahoma City and Dallas. Think about the Bay Area where I'm at. There's a lot of groups and we don't just want to be a league for the 500,000 plus markets, but how do we penetrate into Little Rock, AR, Wichita, KS, Omaha, NE. There's just so many places that should have teams like this.
If we feel that there's a player that's gonna really impact the league, whether that's a big household name that's going for their final final dance or it was time to spend 10 years in the league and they want to come over to play for us or a top prospect that's gonna maybe become an asset and be a player, we can maybe support that.
If we feel that there's a player that's gonna really impact the league, whether that's a big household name that's going for their final final dance or it was time to spend 10 years in the league and they want to come over to play for us or a top prospect that's gonna maybe become an asset and be a player, we can maybe support that.
