Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2017 · 824 posts · 1k+ votes
6y
Hi Rob -- as a former avid soccer player and fan, I can tell you that most likely you won't see much happening for commercial businesses and AirBNB for this soccer team.
Women's professional soccer -- and this is a travesty, because I find their game to be far more clinical, thought-out, and executed over the men's game -- simply has zero draw. You might have a few hundred fans come to a local college stadium to watch them, maybe, if you're lucky.
In some locales of the country where soccer is a big-time draw -- think if a European city had a clone here, like a Portland, San Francisco, etc., you might get a few thousand fans to come out and watch. But really these leagues are more about keeping the players fit for global competitions, where there is actual money for them.
So, my perspective is not to lament about the women's professional game, but to tell you not to expect much of a boon from this. The players won't inject money into the local economy as they make peanuts, fans won't come out in droves to see it, and there won't be an economic windfall from bringing the team in. I certainly could be wrong, but its just my experience with the women's league. It's also folded, re-opened, expanded, and contracted a million times.
Compare this to the MLS -- the MLS struggled mightily before finally getting a stronghold and creating markets in towns that wanted them. Now those matches can regularly draw 15-20k. I don't know how some markets operate, but typically with sports that are "minor league" (think AA and AAA baseball), the thought is "if you build it, they will come" -- well as someone who grew up near the Trenton Thunder AA baseball and then the Philadelphia (Chester) Union stadiums, I can tell you it does NOT work that way. Chester still is a rough neighborhood with almost zero investment. The stadium was plopped there and it's done virtually nothing for the city of Chester itself, except draw 15k people there a few times a week to create a traffic nightmare. Nobody "hangs out" in Chester to spend their hard earned dollars and no businesses open there. Trenton is certainly getting better and the area around their stadium is nice enough, but its not like a huge appreciation event has occurred, and that stadium has been there for 20 years. They built very nice row homes along the waterfront in Trenton, one is for sale for $95,000 on Trulia. If you bought the land 20 years ago for 2k, yeah, maybe you made some money there. :D