Halfway through the NWSL’s 13th regular season, the league reported TV ratings were trending down. But August has already shown glimmers of recovery and context adds important caveats to that downward slope.
As first reported by Sports Business Journal, when the league took a month-long break midway through the year this July, ratings were down by 8% across their multi-platform media partnership. That partnership, which is now in its second year, was signed in November 2023 with CBS, ESPN, ION (Scripps Sports) and Prime Video for a deal worth $240m– a huge increase from their previous one-party partnership with CBS worth $4.5m. In its first year, the league saw a big uptick in viewing numbers as matches proliferated across a variety of outlets, reaching a wider audience.
At the close of the 2024 season, Nielsen measured a five-fold increase in total viewership (18.7m) across all platforms from the previous year. The championship match became the most-watched game in league history, peaking at 1.1m viewers and averaging 967,000 on CBS. That match– which saw a record-breaking Orlando Pride squad defeat the Washington Spirit, marking Brazilian veteran Marta’s first NWSL championship on a field packed with recent Olympians – clocked an 18% increase in average viewers from 2023.
A variety of factors may have been behind this year’s mid-season dip, with the league pointing towards missing stars as one potential impact. As an example, all three members of the USWNT’s forward line, who combined for 10 goals at last year’s Olympics – Sophia Wilson (née Smith), Mallory Swanson and Trinity Rodman – have been absent for most of the 2025 season as the first two are on maternity leave and Rodman in rehab for chronic back pain. Rodman has since returned to the field for the Spirit and there are hopes her star power may aid end-of-season momentum.
Notably, NWSL in 2025 is a league with an exciting array of international stars who represented their countries in record numbers at a spate of international tournaments this July. Their return to the league after big performances at the Women’s Euros, Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, and Copa América Femenina may also help boost interest.
For example, ION’s numbers had been trending down in 2025 (as opposed to ESPN, which has trended up so far this season) but an early look at ION viewing numbers for August show a healthy increase, with an average of 162,750 viewers through the first four weekends of August. ION’s Saturday allotment of games features a weekly slate of back-to-back matchups, with this month’s 16 August duo clocking an average audience of 188,000 – the highest of the first four weeks in August. Among that evening’s games was a California confrontation between San Diego Wave and Bay FC, which saw newly returned international players on either side, including the Zambia forward Racheal Kundananji.
San Diego Wave featured a few Euro 2025 quarter-finalists in Sweden defender Hanna Lundkvist and France forward Delphine Cascarino. With Mexican forward Lizbeth Ovalle set to join Orlando Pride for the latter half of the season after breaking the women’s transfer record yet again in 2025, and Spanish striker Esther González (who finished top scorer at Euro 2025) going toe-to-toe each weekend with Malawi forward Temwa Chawinga in a closely contested Golden Boot race, observers can expect exciting international stars outside of the USWNT to continue driving eyeballs the closer the league gets to the playoffs.
With viewing numbers yet to be confirmed for all of August’s matches, there have still been a few curveballs affecting plans. That includes a more than three-hour weather delay to a highly-touted televised match between Kansas City Current and Orlando Pride (which was eventually played amid scorching Missouri heat in a match that saw Orlando Pride top scorer Barbra Banda depart the pitch with a season-ending injury). But the league has its eye on end-of-season games that seem likely to boost overall numbers for the 2025 season. Most immediately, that includes Alex Morgan’s retirement ceremony match airing this weekend on ESPN.
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Asked for comment, the league maintained confidence that viewing numbers would grow as we near the final weeks of the season. As Jennifer Levine, vice-president of public relations and communications at the NWSL, said: “As the race to the shield intensifies and playoffs get closer, we anticipate that even more viewers will want to tune in to the competition.”
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