The PWHL is trying so as to add two extra franchises to start as early as 2025, a fast growth for the ladies’s hockey league that final 12 months.
The league is launching a request for proposal (RFP) course of for potential new golf equipment, in line with Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s senior vp of enterprise operations. They’ve requested teams to submit plans for a way the single-entity league, financed initially by Mark and Kimbra Walter, would possibly finest speak in confidence to new followers, companions and athletes.
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“Growth is the primary query we get requested, at each occasion we’re at,” Scheer mentioned in an interview. “It simply looks as if the proper time to look into it. And I feel as soon as we now have these conversations and perceive what the true curiosity is, we’ll perceive if that is the proper time or not. However it was the proper time to place the phrase out.”
The PWHL’s groups don’t have “house owners” in the way in which that single-entity constructions like MLS or NWSL do—every workforce has a enterprise director and employees, all employed by the league—and this RFP course of doesn’t embody growth charges which are widespread in these leagues. As a substitute, the PWHL is hoping to guage markets on a handful of standards: 1) market measurement and media attain, 2) accessible amenities and infrastructure, 3) native financial alternative and company sponsorship leads, and 4) group fan base and youth hockey presence. Scheer mentioned the RFP’s respondents may very well be arenas themselves, metropolis governments or people which have a facility plan.
Growth may also add area for the PWHL to draw extra of the perfect girls’s gamers on the planet. Present rosters are 23 energetic gamers per workforce, plus three reserves, for a complete of 156 athletes. There’s been elevated curiosity from European gamers, in line with Jayna Hefford, SVP of hockey operations, and the NCAA has yet another 12 months of graduating a bigger class of seniors because of the additional 12 months of eligibility granted throughout COVID.
“Beginning with six groups, we knew it was going to be very troublesome to make a roster,” Hefford mentioned in an interview. “The depth of expertise is admittedly excessive proper now. So from a hockey standpoint, we wish to ensure we are able to match that stage. If there are good feminine hockey gamers on the market, we would like them within the league.”
Born out of years of instability in North American girls’s skilled hockey, the PWHL after Walter’s agency bought belongings from the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) and reached an settlement with athletes within the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey Gamers’ Affiliation (PWHPA). The PHF had seven groups in North America and operated for nearly a decade, however the PWHPA included most of the sport’s largest names, members of the U.S. and Canadian nationwide groups that had refused to play within the league over issues concerning the stage of funding. The creation of the PWHL was the ultimate consolidated entity that many across the sport had desired for years.
The PWHL’s advisory board consists of former tennis gamers Ilana Kloss and Billie Jean King; Dodgers president Stan Kasten and Dodgers SVP Royce Cohen.
The PWHL launched with its inaugural six groups final 12 months, every enjoying with a generic identify of their dwelling market: Toronto, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, New York and Minnesota. In September, they their workforce names and logos. The 2024-25 season begins subsequent month.
The league is hoping to have proposals in hand by the top of the 12 months, with choices coming in 2025.
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