Will ‘Ted Lasso’ shine a light on the evolution of women’s soccer?

Few television shows have shaped how Americans see a sport the way “Ted Lasso” did for soccer. The relentlessly optimistic former D2 football coach (football, not soccer) from Kansas City, hired to sabotage an English club by its owner’s socialite ex-wife, somehow turned football (soccer) into a cultural phenomenon during the pandemic, introducing millions of viewers who had never watched a soccer game to rivalries, fandom and rituals.

It made them BELIEVE futbolislife.

When the series ended two years ago with AFC Richmond earning promotion to the Premier League, it felt like a fitting conclusion, not only for Ted but also for the audience. Three seasons had delivered a reminder of why people fall in love with the beautiful game.

Now the series returns with an even more ambitious challenge. Rather than taking audiences back to men’s football, it turns its attention to the women’s game. But unlike in 2020, when it helped introduce millions to soccer, the women’s game no longer needs a television show to explain why it matters. The question is whether the series can capture women’s soccer’s evolution.

2020 was a strange year. As I was sending cancellation notes for my own wedding during the pandemic, I found myself becoming increasingly invested in Ted (played by Jason Sudeikis), Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) and AFC Richmond. By the final episode, I had become a pseudo-supporter of the imaginary club, embracing their underdog story. As a sports journalist, that’s a rare feeling. I spend my career covering real clubs, not fictional ones. Yet “Ted Lasso” managed to make soccer feel personal again. If it could do that to someone who already covered the sport, it’s easy to understand why millions of newcomers found themselves watching the Premier League after the credits rolled three years later.

When “Ted Lasso” premiered during the pandemic, a significant transformation was happening in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in the U.S. The league awarded an expansion team to Los Angeles. Angel City FC entered the competition, backed by a celebrity-filled ownership group led by veteran sports executive Julie Uhrman, venture capitalist Kara Nortman and actress Natalie Portman. The expansion fee was reported to be just $2 million.

Long before the team kicked a ball, the ownership group had reimagined how a women’s team could operate, putting community investment at the center of its business model while attracting sponsors and generating significant revenue. ACFC not only proved there was greater demand for women’s professional soccer but also that it was good business. That same year, in Kansas City, Angie and Chris Long made their own bet on women’s soccer. Michele Kang reset the market with her $35 million takeover of the Washington Spirit in 2022.

Then the Longs raised the stakes again, doubling down on their investment within four years by building the world’s first purpose-built women’s soccer stadium for Kansas City Current, which eventually became the inspiration for the fourth season of “Ted Lasso”. In fact, Angie Long believes the Kansas City Current provided “at least some small inspiration for how to do it right” for the show’s creators: Sudeikis, a Kansas City native, Brendan Hunt, Bill Lawrence and Joe Kelly.

Since 2020 a lot has happened. NWSL expansion fees climbed from a single-digit millions to well into nine figures, and institutional investors are pouring money into the clubs. Teams are investing in infrastructure, building stadiums and state-of-the-art training facilities instead of borrowing them from men’s teams. Attendance records are being broken every season. The NWSL has grown into a 16-team league with Boston Legacy and Denver Summit joining this season. Both clubs already have stadium projects underway while Atlanta and Columbus will enter the league in 2028 after paying expansion fees of $165 million and $205 million, respectively.

England’s reality is a little different, at least for now. The Women’s Super League (WSL) has not experienced the same level of commercial investment as the NWSL, although the momentum is building. Last year Angel City FC investor and former Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian announced he was buying an eight percent stake in Chelsea Women, valuing the London club at £245 million ($326 million).

In a country where men’s football dominates the sports landscape, that valuation would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. The economics remain more complicated than in the United States, where most NWSL clubs operate independently, while many WSL teams remain attached to their men’s counterparts, much like AFC Richmond’s fictional women’s side.

That is what makes this season of “Ted Lasso” so compelling. It arrives just as women’s soccer is beginning to occupy the space, both culturally and financially, that men’s soccer has enjoyed for generations. I found myself questioning the show’s authenticity when Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) beamed as she watched the Kansas City Current play before a packed CPKC Stadium, complete with fireworks, in the opening episode. Yet that optimism was grounded by Rebecca’s far more pragmatic concern: the financial realities of launching a women’s team in England, with few fans filling the seats.

Perhaps Keeley is right that AFC Richmond Women deserve a stadium of their own. Or perhaps, like so many women’s soccer clubs in the real world, they will have to share the men’s facilities until the business case catches up with the sporting ambition. That tension, between ambition and economic reality, is where women’s soccer actually lives today. It is a sport experiencing extraordinary growth while still confronting unequal investment, inconsistent infrastructure and an ecosystem that continues to prioritize the men’s game.

If “Ted Lasso” embraces that complexity rather than smoothing it away, it has an opportunity to do for women’s soccer what the original series did for the men’s game: introduce millions of viewers to a world they may never have explored while honestly reflecting the barriers that still remain.

Had Ted simply returned to coach Richmond’s men’s team, I probably wouldn’t have come back for a fourth season. But a story about a women’s club trying to find its place in a rapidly changing football landscape? That’s far more compelling. Over the next 10 weeks, I’ll be watching to see whether Hollywood gets it right, not because women’s soccer needs “Ted Lasso”, but because “Ted Lasso” now has a chance to show the rest of the world what women’s soccer has become.

Ted Lasso is on Apple TV

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Kansas City Current, NWSL, Sports Business, Women’s Soccer, Culture

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