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More than a game: understanding the value of funding that corporate partnership decision-makers can offer clubs within the National Women’s Soccer League

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More than a game: understanding the value of funding that corporate partnership decision-makers can offer clubs within the National Women’s Soccer League

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Content More than a game: Understanding the value of funding that corporate partnership
decision-makers can offer clubs within the National Women’s Soccer League
By
Louis Schenk
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education
May 2024

© Copyright by Louis Schenk 2024
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Louis Schenk certifies the approval of this Dissertation.
Dr. Larry Picus, Committee Member
Dr. Richard Grad, Committee Member
Dr. Dennis Hocevar, Committee Chair
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2024

iv
Abstract
This study examined how decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of
becoming a partner of a women’s professional soccer club within the National Women’s Soccer
League (NWSL). By understanding the value, decision-makers can offer equitable funding to
continue the growth and success of women’s professional soccer within the United States. Using
exchange theory as the theoretical and conceptual framework of this study; it allowed for the
researcher to design the three research questions about the study’s focus. The study’s focus is to
find the reasons that a decision-maker would or would not want to partner with a women’s
professional soccer club. The focus is also designed to understand the inequality in partnership
funding between men’s and women’s professional sports by decision-makers. The participants of
the study included individuals who are full-time corporate partnership sales professionals and
work day-to-day with corporate partnership decision-makers. The participants were chosen
because they can offer input as to what decision-makers are looking for when deciding to
become a partner of a women’s professional soccer club. As most of the participants alluded to,
decision-makers need to be properly educated, made aware of their alignment to form the
partnership, and how their contributions will continue the success of the NWSL. Themes that
emerged from the research are discussed and recommendations suggested.
Keywords: value, funding, exchange theory, NWSL, women’s professional sports, United
States, women’s professional soccer clubs, inequality, gender pay gap, equality

v
Dedication
To my family. I could not have achieved this without your love and support! Thank you for
keeping me motivated and to help me remember my “why” as to what made me want to pursue
this journey in the first place.
To my pops. We did it man, something we never thought we could do. Love you pops. And I
promise to get season tickets to Trojans games one day.
To my mom. Thank you for keeping me strong and challenging me to do this program because
you knew how much I would look back on this journey and never regret being able to finally call
myself an official Trojan! Love you Mom.
To my sister. Thank you, Kelly, for giving me the support I needed to continue to be a good
brother to you and helping us both believe anything we want to do we can accomplish with each
other, and the way mom and dad raised us.
To my friends. Thank you for your support as I put my life on hold for the past three years
pursuing this personal achievement. I appreciate your understanding as to why I needed to
complete this degree and become an official Trojan!

vi
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Taylor Patton, Brittany Parrish, and Esteban Arriola who all took time out
of your lives to write me a letter of recommendation as you knew how much I needed to pursue
this degree for myself, my family, and my future aspirations. I used you all as motivation as I
continued to work my hardest in pursuit of finishing this degree and not letting you all down
along the journey as I got to the finish line.
Thank you to my family, mom (Laurie), pops (Lou), sister (Kelly), for your support and
understanding to allow for me to grind this out for three years as it will be something that I will
cherish for the rest of my life.
Thank you to my hard working and motivating fellow Cohort 21 classmates. A wild but
thrilling ride we all embarked on to now be able to call ourselves Dr.’s of Organizational Change
and Leadership! I appreciated all the check-ins and reassurances we can accomplish this feat
when sometimes it seemed like it was all starting to be too much.
Thank you to all those who inspired me throughout my life to want to complete this
degree and become someone who could accomplish a task he never thought he would be able to
do.
Thank you to my friends who were apart of this journey with me, as someone who
needed to put my life on hold to complete this degree, I promise to make you all proud of what I
plan to do with this newfound knowledge I received for future change and leadership.

vii
Table of Contents
Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication....................................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................ vi
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. xi
List of Figures..............................................................................................................................xiii
Chapter One: Overview of the Study.............................................................................................. 1
Background of the Problem ................................................................................................ 3
Statement of the Problem.................................................................................................... 5
Purpose of the Study ........................................................................................................... 6
Research Method ................................................................................................................ 8
Significance of the Study .................................................................................................... 9
Definition of Terms........................................................................................................... 11
Organization of the Study ................................................................................................. 12
Chapter Two: Literature Review .................................................................................................. 15
Purpose of the Study ......................................................................................................... 16
Historical Context ............................................................................................................. 16
History of Women's Sport Partnership ................................................................. 17
2016 Women's National Soccer Team Lawsuit.................................................... 18
Lack of Funding.................................................................................................... 21
2022 Gender Pay Gap ........................................................................................... 22
Corporate Partnerships.......................................................................................... 25
Corporate Sponsorships........................................................................................ 26
National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) ......................................................... 28
Reasons for Underlying Problem of Practice.................................................................... 33

viii
Decision-Makers................................................................................................... 34
Owners of Women's Professional Sports Teams.................................................. 35
Women's Professional Sport Partnerships ............................................................ 36
Theoretical/Conceptual Framework.................................................................................. 38
Theoretical Framework: Exchange Theory .......................................................... 39
Conceptual Framework of Exchange Theory ....................................................... 40
Communication..................................................................................................... 41
Value ..................................................................................................................... 43
Trust and Credibility............................................................................................. 44
Summary........................................................................................................................... 44
Chapter Three: Methodology........................................................................................................ 46
Research Questions........................................................................................................... 47
Overview of the Research Design..................................................................................... 47
Research Setting................................................................................................................ 50
Data Sources ..................................................................................................................... 51
Method 1: Qualitative Semi-Structured Interview Questions............................... 52
Participants............................................................................................................ 53
Instrumentation ..................................................................................................... 54
Data Collection ................................................................................................................. 55
Data Analysis.................................................................................................................... 56
Researcher Positionality.................................................................................................... 56
Researcher Trust and Credibility ...................................................................................... 57
Researcher Ethics.............................................................................................................. 58
Summary....................................................................................................................................... 59
Chapter Four: Findings................................................................................................................. 61

ix
Participants........................................................................................................................ 62
Findings: Research Question One................................................................................................. 62
Theme One:Return on Investment (ROI) ......................................................................... 63
Theme Two: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ....................................................... 66
Theme Three: Relational Alignment ................................................................................ 68
Discussion: Research Question One ............................................................................................. 69
Key Take Aways............................................................................................................... 70
Findings: Research Question Two................................................................................................ 70
Theme One: Education ..................................................................................................... 71
Theme Two: Communication ........................................................................................... 74
Theme Three: Budget ....................................................................................................... 75
Discussion: Research Question Two ............................................................................................ 77
Key Take Aways............................................................................................................... 77
Findings: Research Question Three .............................................................................................. 78
Theme One: Broadcast Exposure...................................................................................... 79
Theme Two: Influence...................................................................................................... 80
Theme Three: Growth....................................................................................................... 81
Discussion: Research Question Three .......................................................................................... 83
Key Take Aways............................................................................................................... 84
Summary....................................................................................................................................... 84
Chapter Five: Recommendations.................................................................................................. 86
Research Questions........................................................................................................... 86
Conceptual/Theoretical Framework Overview................................................................. 87
Summary of Research Findings........................................................................................ 87

x
Reccomendations Overview ............................................................................................. 88
Recommendation 1: Purposeful strategic engagement initiatives surrounding the
National Women's Soccer League .................................................................................... 89
Recommendation 2: Offer end of season recaps for current and future decisionmakers of corporate partnerships...................................................................................... 91
Recommendation 3: Establish more opportunities for the visibility of the National
Women's Soccer League................................................................................................... 93
Limitations.................................................................................................................................... 96
Delimitations................................................................................................................................. 97
Recommendations for Future Research ........................................................................................ 98
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 99
References................................................................................................................................... 101
Appendix A: Figures................................................................................................................... 109
Appendix B: Draft Qualitative Semi-Structured Interview Questions ...................................... 112

xi
List of Tables
Table 1: 2022 Top 10 Men’s professional athlete earnings 23
Table 2: 2022 Top 10 Women’s professional athlete earnings 24
Table 3: 2022 Top 10 Men’s and Women’s professional athlete earnings 24
Table 4: Data Sources 50
Table 5: Summary of Interview Participants, n=6 62
Appendix A: Figures 109
Appendix B: Draft qualitative semi-structured interview questions 112

xii
List of Figures
Figure1(a): Exchange Theory Framework 14
Figure 1(b):
Figure 2:
Exchange Theory Framework
Fan bases and positive responses to sponsorship (see Appendix A)
39
109
Figure 3: Year-over-year new fan growth rate by league (see Appendix A) 110
Figure 4: NWSL engagement rate comparison across leagues (see Appendix A) 111

1
Chapter One: Overview of the Study
Women’s professional sports constantly face equity issues that need to be addressed for
change to occur within the sports industry (Springer, 2022a). Equity issues highlighted in this
study are shown through the ways corporate partnership decision-makers have undervalued
women’s professional sports, primarily professional soccer within the National Women’s Soccer
League. By being undervalued from corporate partnership decision-makers, women’s
professional leagues and athletes have been victimized to inequitable funding and unequal pay
compared to their men’s professional athlete counterparts as will be discussed throughout the
chapters of the study.
The study will explore multiple ways these equity issues have become a major concern
within the sports industry for professional women’s athletes and leagues. For example, the study
will focus on the way women’s professional sports are being measured against men’s
professional sports by corporate partnership decision-makers. These decision-makers have
caused equity concerns as they have not been able to understand the value of investing in
women’s professional sports and not being able to offer equitable investments as they do for
men’s sports. When corporate partnership decision-makers cannot offer equitable funding for the
growth and success of women’s professional leagues and athletes to compete at the highest level,
then these women’s professional leagues will never have the means to be successful, grow, and
gain the equitable funding they deserve (Springer, 2022a).
Corporate partnership decision-makers have primarily been under the belief that women’s
professional sports cannot be measured on the same level of investment as men’s professional
sports (Madkour, 2022a). Women’s professional sports, specifically professional soccer, needs to
be treated as a separate entity from men’s professional sports by corporate partnership decision-

2
makers that has tremendous value within their own creativity, fans, markets, and demographics
(Madkour, 2022a). The equity concerns, the ways in which corporate partnership decisionmakers understand the value of investing in women’s professional soccer, and the
recommendations for future success will be made more clearly throughout the remaining
chapters of the study.
Professional women’s athletes have always had to prove their worth and are asked to do
more with less. Women athletes are required to perform better and attract more partnership
viewers, while being awarded less pay, less media coverage, and fewer opportunities for
partnerships by decision-makers to fund their athletic needs (Gersch, 2021). Being adequately
funded is a means to an end for enabling professional women’s athletes to feel valued, respected,
and achieve equality. To achieve equality, a step in the right direction would be to bridge the gap
by decision-makers for corporate partnership funding and indicate the trust a decision-maker has
in a women’s professional sport, such as soccer, when they choose to make a significant
investment in the league and the athletes apart of the league (Gersch, 2021).
This study aims to understand what decision-makers of corporate partnerships value
when choosing to partner with a women’s professional sport, specifically women’s professional
soccer within the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). The study will be using a
qualitative semi-structured interview approach to explore reasons decision-makers of corporate
partnerships partner with a women’s professional soccer club. While further uncovering the
struggles women’s professional athletes face when it comes to inequitable funding for the future
growth and success of their sport by decision-makers of corporate partnerships compared to their
men’s professional athlete counterparts. Followed by recommendations on how to possibly find

3
the ways in which corporate partnership decision-makers may understand the influence they hold
for the equity issues they have caused thus far.
Background of the Problem
Corporate partnerships with professional sports leagues and players are one of the fastestgrowing financial alliances in sports sponsorship (Lei, Ghosh, & Srinivasan, 2010). As an
example, through this alliance, in 2022, corporate partnerships accounted for over 75% ($17.5B)
of partnership spending in North America by funding professional sports teams and players
(primarily men’s professional sports) (Doellman, Walkup, Bouchet, & Chabowski, 2022).
Professional women’s teams and athletes are far less likely to receive corporate partnerships,
even with the abundance of financial backing attributed to sports partnerships thus far.
According to a 2018 Statista report, women’s professional sports received only 0.4 percent of
total partnerships (Rodriguez, 2021). To put that into a dollar figure, global sports partnership
was worth $106.8 billion, and an estimated $427.2 million was spent on professional women’s
sports (Rogers, 2018). Without the equitable funding attributed to women’s professional sports it
sends a message that there is lack of value, interest, and justification for decision-makers of
corporate partnerships to solidify the investment for a partnership. This investment can help fund
salaries, facility upgrades, travel accommodations, jersey upgrades, and media presence for
future growth that team owners cannot adequately maintain, and need the assistance of corporate
partnership decision-makers to properly fund the areas they cannot for future growth and success
(Rogers, 2018).
Laura Weston, board member and trustee of the Women’s Sports Trust (WST) spoke at a
women’s conference in 2018 about the way in which women’s sports have not been adequately
funded through partnerships like men’s sports are currently (Rogers, 2018). Laura Weston

4
suggested that decision-makers of corporate partnerships are not confident enough when
assessing the opportunity and value of partnering with women’s professional sports. She also
suggested that decision-makers are looking for traditional metrics of sports partnerships for
women’s sports because of what they have seen by success outputs with men’s sports. The
traditional valuation metrics (wins and losses, game by game fan attendance, standings within
the league etc.) that are still used by decision-makers of corporate partnerships are outdated and
need to be changed. Yes, these areas can still be used as valuation metrics for women’s sports,
but as the sports industry, and the demand for women’s professional sports have already begun to
change even with the lack of opportunity and funding that women’s professional sports receive,
decision-makers need to change as well. They need to stop valuing women’s sports strictly on a
traditional valuation metric, and more on the creativity and change these women athletes and
leagues are creating for the future. Laura Weston concluded, “if a decision-maker measures
women’s sports by the same metrics as men’s sports, it’s going to be difficult for a partnership to
be made with women’s sports leagues and/or players. Decision-makers must look at the broad
opportunity women’s sports offers, as it is much more accessible than men’s sports and produces
much more interesting content. For a decision-maker to want to partner with a women’s
professional sport or player, it’s about having a different vision to find the value within women’s
sports” (Rogers, 2018).
When women’s professional sports are expected to adhere to the same valuation and
performance as men’s professional sports, but without an equitable resource base, women’s
sports will continue to struggle. Decision-makers of corporate partnerships need to be properly
educated on the value to fund women’s sports and be able to offer equitable opportunities as
men’s sports receive (Didulica, 2019). Media attention plays an integral part in the outcome in

5
terms of financial success. That is; the more exposure a team receives nationally, the more value
decision-makers of corporate partnerships place on a successful partnership between the sponsor
and a sponsee (Didulica, 2019). In the early 21st Century, women’s professional sports struggled
to achieve the necessary media coverage and exposure needed to demonstrate it was a viable
product for corporate partnerships (Hardin, 2005). Receiving equal opportunity through media
coverage will enable decision-makers to realize the value women’s sports place on partnerships
(Gersch, 2021). In addition, decision-makers of corporate partnerships who choose to invest in
women’s professional sports can facilitate financial opportunities to achieve equality, depict
value, and close the gender pay gap that is widely understood within the sports industry (Gersch,
2021).
Statement of the Problem
Despite the attention decision-makers of corporate partnerships have received, several
areas remain theoretically and empirically underdeveloped. One of the most notable shortfalls in
the extant research is that very little attention has been given to the funding of women’s sports
leagues, clubs, and athletes (Morgan, 2019). The focus of this research study will explore the
lack of funding by decision-makers of corporate partnerships on women’s professional soccer
within the NWSL. From this lack of funding within women’s professional sports, specifically
women’s professional soccer within the NWSL, this affects the future growth and opportunities
for the players within the league. Lastly, the focus will explore what causes (if any) decisionmakers of corporate partnerships to want to partner with a professional soccer club within the
NWSL and how the partnership can contribute to the inequitable funding women’s professional
soccer clubs and athletes have constantly faced in comparison to their men’s professional athlete
counterparts.

6
This study describes the historical complexities of women’s professional sports
partnerships, as well as a lawsuit that changed the course of women’s professional sports. It will
then compare women’s and men’s professional sports funding, which reveals the gender pay gap
affecting women’s professional sports. Lastly, the study will examine the National Women’s
Soccer League and explain why the league and players have shown that adequate value underlies
the consideration for more funding by corporate partnership decision-makers. This study further
discusses the problem of practice and lays out the qualitative methodology that addresses the
research questions of the study.
Purpose of the Study
This study employs exchange theory to highlight the importance of the value that
decision-makers of corporate partnerships and sports organizations exchange amongst one
another when deciding to complete a business partnership for greater funding measures.
Exchange theory is useful in this study because it will highlight the business resources used by
all parties involved to facilitate an exchange (i.e., business awareness, communication, ego,
image enhancement, marketing, equity, product trial or sale opportunities, investments of money,
media exposure, in-kind services, and viewership etc.). Lastly, exchange theory suggests that a
corporate partner will ask two questions, ‘what’s in it for me?’ and ‘how much will it cost me?’
The value in the partnership is determined in a twofold manner, by weighing what is gained to
what is being given up in the tradeoff for the partnership (Crompton, 2004). This process is much
like what a decision-maker determines when partnering with a women’s professional soccer
club.
The study relies on a qualitative semi-structured interview approach to understand the
value that decision-makers of corporate partnerships place on partnering with a women’s

7
professional soccer club within the National Women’s Soccer League. Decision-makers of
corporate partnerships typically utilize comparable valuation to examine the value of an asset
like a corporate partnership with a women’s professional sport (Harrison & Bukstein, 2017).
However, this study seeks to interview full-time corporate partnership sales professionals within
the partnership departments of the NWSL. By doing so, this helps to understand their
perspectives on what decision-makers value for a partnership and what they express if they
choose to partner with a women’s professional soccer club within the NWSL.
There are a multitude of reasons as to why decision-makers of corporate partnerships
adhere to the hesitation of investing in women’s professional sports and have difficulties
understanding the value of women’s professional sports. These reasons are highlighted in greater
detail from the interview data by each of the six participants that I as the researcher will analyze.
From the interview responses by the participants, I will offer recommendations in connection
with the research questions of the study. The six participants (each from different clubs) are fulltime front office corporate partnership sales professionals working within the partnership
departments from at least six of the twelve clubs within the NWSL. These participants were
voluntarily chosen because of the constant interactions they have with corporate partnership
decision-makers to find out what it is that these decision-makers look for when (if at all) they
choose to partner with a club within the NWSL. I will then use a codebook from the responses to
find the themes and correlations of the research questions guiding the study which is further
explained in Chapter Three. By using a qualitative approach, I will look outside the numbers (as
is typically done through a quantitative approach looking to study value) and find a different
perspective through communication. Communication is essential as an identified guiding

8
principle in the conceptual framework of exchange theory and linked to the research questions of
the study.
The research questions guiding the study:
• RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of corporate partnerships require when
choosing to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to want to partner with a
club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of
becoming a partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer
equitable funding in comparison to men’s professional sports?
Research Method
This research study will use a qualitative semi-structured interview approach to find the
premise behind the lack of funding and value that decision-makers of corporate partnerships
place among women’s professional sports, particularly women’s professional soccer within the
National Women’s Soccer League. The participants in this study will be full-time corporate
partnership sales professionals within the corporate partnership departments among the twelve
NWSL clubs. A minimum of six participants (from different clubs within the league) will be
interviewed via a platform known as Zoom to answer the questions pertaining to the research
questions of this study. I, as the researcher, anticipated that among the twelve NWSL clubs each
corporate partnership department will have roughly four to six full-time staff members to be
prospected for an interview. These full-time staff members will be prospected through e-mail
outreach to obtain the opportunity to interview them to offer answers of the three research
questions of this study. The participants will not be chosen based on race, gender, age, or sexual

9
orientation. The participants will be selected who fit the criteria that I am in search of. The most
important characteristic is that they are full-time corporate partnership sales professionals who
work for one of the twelve NWSL clubs within the United States. Each participant needs to be
able to be located on the current staff directory of the corporate partnership department within
the club for credibility. Further, these participants will be asked questions pertaining to their
experience with decision-makers of corporate partners, what decision-makers are looking for in a
partnership and will provide input (if any) towards the lack of equality in funding by corporate
partnership decision-makers that this study is out to discover.
Significance of the Study
Women’s professional sports need to be considered big business worth the time and
money from decision-makers of corporate partnerships. In 2022, significant investments of
millions of dollars were used to partner with multiple men’s professional sports while women’s
professional sports are constantly struggling with funding, equality, and lack of opportunities that
men’s sports do not regularly face (Springer, 2022b). When large investments by decisionmakers of corporate partnerships are being put into players and leagues, these big investments
can communicate value with other decision-makers who may have been hesitant in wanting to
partner with a professional sports team, especially with a women’s professional sports team who
does not receive the same type of exposure on and off the field that men’s sports do. When value
is depicted through a financial investment or increased media exposure, teams and leagues will
be considered “big business” in the sports industry (Springer, 2022b). In addition, women’s
professional sports owners cannot solely fund the needs of their teams and need the assistance of
corporate partnerships as they offer greater financial means for a multi-year period (Knight &
Birnbaum, 2022). Most importantly, corporate partnerships offer an opportunity financially that

10
can give professional women’s athletes who receive limited media exposure, limited on-field
broadcasting, and limited marketing investments a way to close the gender pay gap that currently
looms over women’s professional sports (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022).
This study is significant for two reasons, the first being the focus on the lack of funding
that decision-makers of corporate partnerships offer to women’s professional sports, specifically
women’s professional soccer within the National Women’s Soccer League. The second reason is
to understand what decision-makers of corporate partnerships value when and if they want to
partner with a team within the NWSL. As Bob Lynch, CEO and Founder of Sponsor United
alluded to, women’s sports have always faced a variety of disparities in the sports industry. Bob
went on to say, “Still, their ability to win over audiences and drive exceptionally high levels of
engagement for partnerships is undeniable and valuable” (Sponsor United, 2022a).
Decision-makers of corporate partnerships, much like the media, not only invest in
popular athletes, but also contribute to increasing athletes’ popularity and making consumers
want to invest in what they see when a decision-maker and a sports property form a partnership.
Specifics of a corporate partnership can allow for consumers of the brand to see professional
women’s athletes in advertisements and media coverage, which can enable women’s professional
sports to become as popular as men’s professional sports currently (Kight & Birnbaum, 2022).
When decision-makers and media outlets choose not to invest in women’s sports, that hinders
professional women’s athletes and leagues from achieving the value and pay they deserve
(Zerunyan, 2014). Decision-makers of corporate partnerships have the capability to change the
lack of funding opportunities within women’s professional sports. This study is designed to help
identify the financial value that women’s professional soccer within the National Women’s
Soccer League can offer these decision-makers.

11
Definition of Terms
Corporate Partnership
The ability to offer greater potential amenities than sponsorship to support a sustained
marketing relationship between two entities, generate greater economies of scale, and provide an
opportunity to implement strategic goals through learning (Lei et al., 2010). It has also been
described by Mohr and Spekman (1994) as a strategic relationship between independent
organizations that share compatible goals, strive for mutual benefits, and acknowledge a high
level of mutual interdependence. They identify five major synergy and value creation sources
from partnerships: relationship marketing, transaction cost reduction, resource dependency,
strategic behavior, and organizational learning.
Partnership
A strategic alliance that is intended to move each of the partners towards the achievement
of some long-term strategic goal (Meenaghan, 2002).
Sport Sponsorship
The relationships of sport properties and corporate partners. Sport properties are the
rights holders of assets that can be sold to corporate partners. Properties are usually teams,
leagues, schools, competitions, or events. Corporate partners are companies or organizations that
buy these assets to achieve their sales, advertising, marketing, and brand goals (Harrison &
Bukstein, 2017).
Value
Three specific drivers that have emerged within women’s professional sports: first, there
is significant growth opportunity, second brands are demanding sport organizations focus on

12
women’s sport and provide access to female fans, and finally there is growing demand on sport
to be seen as socially conscious and promoting equality (The Nielson Company, 2018b).
National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL)
The professional women’s soccer league started in 2012 with twelve teams competing in
the league (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022).
World Cup
The championship match for a trophy since the 1930’s between the two national team
finalists emergent from twenty-four qualifying national teams globally. The World Cup is held
every four years (Abello, 2017).
Gender Pay Gap
Corporate partners discrimination against female professional athletes when awarding
sponsorships (Gersch, 2021).
Wages
A professional athlete’s base pay, much of a player’s pay comes from athlete
sponsorships and endorsement deals (Haas, 2021).
Club
Another word used in soccer meaning the same thing as a team. For example: What club
do you work for? This can also be read as, what team do you work for? (Knight & Birnbaum,
2022).
Organization of the Study
Chapter One provides the background, statement of the problem, purpose, significance,
research questions, theoretical framework, and the definition of terms. Chapter One is the
roadmap leading the study to find the value decision-makers of corporate partnerships place on

13
women’s professional sports, specifically women’s professional soccer within the National
Women’s Soccer League. In addition, Chapter One lays the groundwork of what this study is to
assess through qualitative semi-structured interview questions to obtain the data from the
participants chosen to analyze the foundational research questions guiding this study.
Chapter Two focuses on the literature that has already been made available surrounding
corporate partnerships for professional sports (men’s or women’s), comparisons of men’s and
women’s professional athlete pay gaps, and understanding the significance of the NWSL to find
the value that decision-makers place on partnering with a team or player from the National
Women’s Soccer League. The literature review is designed to give a background and find the
existing gaps from previous research that can be used to guide the significance of this study’s
problem of practice and research questions. Building on the foundation within Chapter One and
the literature in Chapter Two, leads to the research methodology discussed in more detail in
Chapter Three.
Chapter Three focuses on the methodology to get a greater perspective of the exchange
theory (as Figure 1 below indicates), which is used in this study as the theoretical and conceptual
framework to highlight the obstacles taken to reach the decision-makers of corporate
partnerships. Exchange theory is also used as a way to conceptual indicate what needs to be done
to have decision-makers understand the value of partnering with a women’s professional soccer
team within the NWSL.

14
Figure 1(a): Exchange Theory Framework
Note: Exchange Theory Framework is derived from Crompton, L. (2004). This is a
conceptualization and alternate operationalizations of the measurement of partnership
effectiveness by the decision-maker and the sport property. (Crompton, L. (2004) Leisure Studies,
23(3), 267-281).
Chapter Three will also analyze the method of qualitative interview questions,
sampling/population, data analysis, and research summary.
Chapter Four outlines the analysis of the data collected for the research questions,
significance, and problem of practice in this study. Lastly, Chapter Five will discuss the results,
the limitations and delimitations, the future research recommendations, and the study’s
conclusion.
DecisionMakers
Senior
Executives
Gatekeepers
NWSL
Corporate
Partnerships
Departments
Relationships/Communication
What's in it for me?
Gender Pay Gap
VALUE

15
Chapter Two: Literature Review
According to Morgan (2019), partnership literature has identified numerous potential
outcomes for understanding what a partnership is and can do for shareholders. These potential
outcomes include the following: cutting through the clutter of traditional advertising (Shilbury,
Westerbeek & Funk, 2019); communicating directly with various stakeholders (Lagae, 2005);
increasing brand awareness, image, and loyalty (Levin, Beasley, & Gamble, 2004); and
ultimately, improving financial performance (Mazodier & Rezaee, 2013). This chapter aims to
adopt the literature that has already been focused on corporate partnerships and use that as a
reference point to understand the historical context of this study’s focal points.
The focal points within Chapter Two consist of the history of women’s sports
partnership, the 2016 U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team lawsuit that was a turning point in
women’s professional soccer, and the lack of equitable funding for women’s professional
athletes compared to men’s. The study will then identify the specifics of corporate partnerships
and sponsorships, as both are similar but need to be more well-defined. Lastly, rounding out the
historical context with the history and accolades thus far of the National Women’s Soccer
League and how the value of the league and the twelve clubs within the league deserve more
attention for funding purposes from decision-makers of corporate partnerships.
Chapter Two analyzes the literature research behind the study’s problem of practice
through decision-makers of corporate partnerships, owners of women’s professional sporting
teams, and the history of women’s professional sports partnerships. Lastly, the theoretical and
conceptual framework concepts are discussed in more detail. This is followed by the summary
portraying the research questions that serve as the foundation of this study, and the methodology
discussed in more detail in Chapter Three.

16
Purpose of the Study
The research questions guiding this study:
• RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of corporate partnerships require when
choosing to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to want to partner with a
club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of
becoming a partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer
equitable funding in comparison to men’s professional sports?
Using the research questions guiding this study and having a greater perspective of the
historical context of women’s professional sports, one of the turning points in women’s
professional soccer, the understanding of partnerships and sponsorships, and the history of the
NWSL will paint the picture of why women’s professional soccer should be properly valued and
adequately funded by decision-makers of corporate partnerships.
Historical Context
Understanding the background of women’s professional sports partnerships and what has
contributed to the lack of funding in women’s professional sports, specifically in women’s
professional soccer, is essential to set up this literature review. Without knowing the challenges
women in sports have experienced, it does not allow for a greater understanding as to why
corporate partnerships offer a strong, equitable balance through funding and why women’s
professional soccer needs to be thought of as a valuable “big business” entity (Springer, 2022b).

17
History of Women’s Sport Partnership
Sports have had a patriarchal identity ever since sport emerged (Pope, 2012). With this
identity, sports were seen more as a leisurely activity for elite men. While women were to
maintain more of a feminine persona that required them to stay at home and adhere to the social
norm of accommodating the desires, needs, and wants of men and their dominance of sport
(Pope, 2012; Ridinger & Funk, 2006). However, in 1972, the passing of Title IX- a law in which
prohibited discrimination based on sex in education and activities (i.e., sport) that receive federal
financial assistance- created the ever-demanding popularity of sports for women in the years to
follow (Funk et al., 2002; Newland & Hayduk, 2020; Ridinger & Funk, 2006).
Title IX paved the way for women in sports to have an opportunity to compete like men
do and gave women the voice to fight for their equality in what was previously a men’s
dominated sporting landscape (Gersch, 2021). Currently, however, not only do women have to
fight for equality, but they also must fight for self-respect due to how women who participate in
sport are perceived. Women’s sports and professional women’s athletes have historically been
objectified in a sexualized fashion of their bodies and have struggled to meet the demands of
femininity that women were required to maintain, even dating back before Title IX (Harris,
2005).
Professional women’s athletes not only have to prove their worth on the field, but they
also must prove their worth off the field. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that social media started
taking over the world, and partnerships understood the value of professional women’s athletes
through their social media engagement and “sex appeal” (Morgan, 2019, p. 212). From this
realization by decision-makers of corporate partnerships, a shift in partnership attention towards
professional women’s athletes began.

18
Professional women’s athletes were allowed to receive compensation through
sponsorships in addition to their salaries. Most of these sponsorships paid more than their
salaries, and professional women’s athletes began to rely more heavily upon the financial safety
net of the compensation from the sponsorships offered by decision-makers who invested in
corporate partnerships (Morgan, 2019). The shift in the early 2000s caused greater attendance
and broadcasting demand through the social media engagement of women’s professional
athletes, and more corporate investments in women’s professional sports started to surface. The
social media engagement era was only a starting point for a movement within women’s
professional sports that would demand equal pay and self-respect for their play on the field and
not solely on their appearance off the field (Morgan, 2019).
2016 Women’s National Soccer Team Lawsuit
As the shift in the 2000s continued to progress and professional women’s athletes
demanded more equitable funding opportunities based on production and not on appearance, one
of the most significant lawsuits for modern-day women’s professional sports and soccer occurred
in 2016 between the United States women’s national soccer team (USWNT) versus the United
States Soccer Federation. The United States Soccer Federation, Inc v. the United States
Women’s National Soccer Team Players Association; (No. 1:2016cv01923-Document 56) case
sparked the attention of not only sports fans through social media; but also, national media
attention worldwide as the premise of this case was focused on the United States women’s
national team fight for their equality. The USWNT has been considered, one of, if not the most
successful national teams the United States Soccer Federation has ever had, and this lawsuit
ignited the mistreatment of their rights by the United States Soccer Federation. The USWNT was
being treated unfairly due to pay and opportunities that their men’s national team counterparts

19
did not have to deal with while under the leadership of the United States Soccer Federation
(Gersch, 2021).
In 2016, five U.S. women’s national soccer players filed wage discrimination complaints
against the United States Soccer Federation, which employs professional soccer players for the
men’s and women’s national teams (Fox, 2016). The USWNT sought to be paid the same wages
as their men’s national team counterparts and be given the same rights as the men had. These
rights included equal playing and training conditions, equal travel and comfortability
accommodations, equal promotion through media and the US Soccer Federation, and lastly,
equal support from decision-makers of corporate partnerships for their matches and financial
needs outside of salaries (Fox, 2016). The USWNT still had to fight for these rights even after
they excelled for the United States and United Soccer Federation by placing in the top three
teams in every Women’s World Cup since 1991 and winning four titles between 1991 and 2016.
Their men’s national team counterparts placed in the top three teams once dating back to the
1930 games, and had no titles for the United States, but were still compensated and given more
opportunity for growth and financial success than the USWNT had received (Moritz-Rabson,
2019).
Women’s professional athletes have always had to do more with less, but six years
following the start of the lawsuit, in February of 2022, the USWNT were finally given their
opportunity to be heard and seen as a valuable sport in the men’s sporting landscape not just
based on their appearance but based on their performance. The U.S. women’s national soccer
team won their lawsuit. It was found that the United States Soccer Federation was treating the
USWNT with unfair practices compared to their men’s national team counterparts and both
parties resolved the suit with back pay and additional compensation by agreeing to a $24 million

20
settlement. In addition to the settlement, they also signed a new collective-bargaining agreement
that ensured they earned the same compensation and exposure as the men’s national team via
equitable funding from corporate partnerships and the media for all future matches (Silverman,
2022). The ruling of the settlement ensured the USWNT would receive the same compensation
as the men’s via salary and corporate partnership funding, and to make it justifiable the women’s
and men’s national teams would split the winnings of their respective World Cups compensation
between both teams. This was a historic win for the sporting landscape and made media
headlines nationwide as U.S. Soccer became the first federation in the world to equalize world
cup prize money awarded to men’s and women’s teams for participating in their respective
World Cups (Foster, 2022). U.S. soccer president, Cindy Parlow said, “The new collective
bargaining agreement has changed the game forever in the United States and has the potential to
change the game of soccer around the world” (Foster, 2022).
In 2022, the men’s national team went as far as the round of 16 as it is called in the
World Cup, and from that advancement, the women’s national team earned $6.5million in total
compensation to be split between all players and other stakeholders within the USWNT (Foster,
2022). In 2015, when the women won the entire women’s World Cup tournament, they received
$2 million in total, and in 2019, following their win for a second World Cup championship, they
received $4 million (Foster, 2022). With the new collective bargaining agreement created from
this historical lawsuit, the USWNT received equitable pay without stepping on the field, a true
win for the women’s national soccer team and women’s professional sports.
Although this was a monumental change for the women’s national soccer team, not all
women’s professional teams have found the same success in their fight for justice as the
USWNT received. The significance of the women’s national soccer team lawsuit draws

21
important attention to gender gaps despite society’s desire to see professional women’s sports
being treated equally to professional men’s sports (Gersch, 2021). The gender pay gap embedded
within the lawsuit stems from unequal pay, lack of rights, lack of partnerships, and lack of value
by decision-makers towards women’s professional sports and athletes.
Lack of Funding
Professional men’s sports receive significantly more partnerships and media coverage
than professional women’s sports (Zerunyan, 2018). Decision-makers of corporate partnerships
lack the understanding of partnering with a professional women’s sport when awarding
partnerships because, they see limited visibility on national broadcasts and a minimal fan base
compared to men’s sports. The way most decision-makers of corporate partnerships view
women’s sports, has been a major cause for concern for decision-makers who cannot justify
equitably sponsoring professional women’s sports and simultaneously closing the gender pay
gap with the increase in funding they can provide (Gersch, 2021). Arguments preventing
women’s sports from receiving the necessary coverage to attract partners center around decisionmakers believing that there is no demand from audiences and that men historically do not want to
watch women’s sports as they find it slower and less enjoyable (Rogers, 2018).
Corporate partnership decision-makers seem to lack the necessary knowledge and fan
demographics of women’s professional sports, which has been a major cause for concern when
offering equitable partnerships. Decision-makers need to understand that most studies have
proven that the demand for women’s professional sports has excelled, and fan demographics of
women’s sports are continuing to grow and change year by year (Gersch, 2021). For example,
studies have shown that roughly 56% of the TV audience for the Women’s Rugby World Cup
final were men versus 44% women, and the Women’s Euros soccer semi-final were 58% men to

22
42% women (Rogers, 2018). In addition, the women’s national soccer team’s performance in
Lyon, France, at the 2019 World Cup final drew 14.3 million television viewers in the United
States (Fox Sports reported an increase of roughly 20 million viewers once streaming services
were included). This made the 2019 Women’s World Cup final the most-watched soccer match
on English-language television since the 2015 Women’s World Cup Final, which had 25.4
million viewers and split amongst women and men of all ages tuning in (Hess, 2019). The
demand and fandom for women’s professional sports are at an all-time high. However, a major
cause for concern is the lack of funding and unequal pay caused by decision-makers of corporate
partnerships who do not understand the overall value placed on women’s professional sports
(Hess, 2019). If decision-makers of corporate partnerships could understand the significance and
power they hold to help women’s professional sports with more funding, these decision-makers
could theoretically bridge the pay gap and offer the value and funding women’s professional
sports deserve to receive (Gersch, 2021).
2022 Gender Pay Gap
Table 1 below shows the 2022 top ten men’s professional athlete earnings (before taxes),
depicting their on-field earnings (salaries), off-field earnings (sponsorships), and total net worth.

23
Table 1
2022 Top 10 Men’s professional athlete earnings (Knight et al., 2023)
Names Professional
Sport
On-field
earnings
Off-field
earnings
Net Worth
Lionel Messi Soccer $75M $55M $130M
LeBron James Basketball $41.2M $80M $121.2M
Cristiano Ronaldo Soccer $60M $55M $115M
Neymar Soccer $70M $25M $95M
Stephen Curry Basketball $45.8M $47M $92.8M
Kevin Durant Basketball $42.1M $50M $92.1M
Roger Federer Tennis $700K $90M $90.7M
Canelo Alvarez Boxing $85M $5M $90M
Tom Brady Football $31.9M $52M $83.9M
Giannis Antetokoumpo Basketball $39.9M $41M $80.9M
Total (Estimated before taxes): $491.6M $500M $990M
The top ten men’s professional athletes collectively earned roughly $990 million in
twelve months, with off-field earnings of $500 million from endorsements, appearances,
memorabilia, and licensing fees, as well as the cash returns from businesses they operate and
equity stakes they sold (Knight, Birnbaum & Craig, 2023). The top ten men’s athletes are also
the world’s highest-paid athletes and collectively combined for an astounding $2.97 billion
(before taxes and agent’s fees) over the last twelve months (Knight et al., 2023).
Table 2 below shows the 2022 top ten women’s professional athlete earnings (before
taxes) depicting their on-field earnings (salaries), off-field earnings (sponsorships), and total net
worth.

24
Table 2 Title Case Name of Tab
2022 Top 10 Women’s Professional Athlete Earnings (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022)
Names Professional
Sport
On-field
earnings
Off-field
earnings
Net Worth
Naomi Osaka Tennis $1.1M $50M $51.1M
Serena Williams Tennis $0.3M $41M $41.3M
Eileen Gu Skiing $0.1M $20M $20.1M
Emma Raducanu Tennis $0.7M $18M $18.7M
Iga Swiatek Tennis $9.9M $5M $14.9M
Venus Williams Tennis $0.1M $12M $12.1M
Coco Gauff Tennis $3.1M $8M $11.1M
Simone Biles Gymnastics $0 $10M $10M
Jessica Pegula Tennis $3.6M $4M $7.6M
Minjee Lee Golf $4.8M $2.5M $7.3M
Total (Estimated before taxes): $23.7M $170.5M $194.2M
Much like the top 10 men’s athletes, the off-field earnings for the top 10 women’s
athletes are estimated and determined through conversations with industry insiders to reflect
annual cash from endorsements, licensing, appearances, memorabilia, and any cash ventures
from businesses these professional women’s athletes may own (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022). The
financial outlook of the top 10 women’s athletes compared to the top 10 men’s athletes are
severely less, and the overall gender pay gap will be shown in comparison in Table 3 below.
Table 3 depicts the comparisons between the 2022 top 10 men’s and women’s
professional athlete earnings (before taxes).
Table 3Title Case Name of Table
2022 top 10 Men’s and Women’s Professional Athlete Earnings (Knight et al., 2023).
Men vs. Women
(Estimated before taxes):
On-field
earnings:
Off-field
earnings:
Net
Worth:
Total:
Top 10 men’s athletes $491.6M $500M $990M $2.97B
Top 10 women’s athletes $23.7M $170.5M $194.2M $388.4M
Pay gap: $467.9M $329.5M $795.8M $2.58B

25
Table 3 represents the pay gap between men’s and women’s professional athletes, who
excel as the top ten performers in their respective sports. There seems to be an opportunity as the
off-field earnings (sponsorships) can be identified as an indicator that the pay gap can close.
Still, it will only happen if decision-makers of corporate partnerships can find the value in
women’s professional sports and offer more funding. Decision-makers need to sponsor more
women’s professional sports and athletes to close the gender pay gap and depict the financial
value of women’s professional sports through corporate partnerships (Gersch, 2021).
Corporate Partnerships
A corporate partnership offers greater potential than a sponsorship to support a sustained
marketing and financial relationship between two entities, generate greater economies of scale,
and provide an opportunity to implement strategic goals through learning (Lei et al., 2010).
Partnership contracts that involve sport leagues take a long-term perspective through multiyear
commitments. Partnerships entail more substantial costs and media exposure than general
sponsorship contracts, even though both contribute to the league players, or a specific league.
For example- leaders of the Major League Baseball (MLB) corporate partnership program
typically sign three-year contracts with partnering brands. And in 2006, Adidas signed an 11-
year contract worth $400 million with the National Basketball Association (NBA) to be the
league’s global partner (Lei et al., 2010).
Corporate partnership programs are significantly different from traditional sponsorship
initiatives, such as title, event, or team sponsor. The reason for this difference is because a
partnership is a true strategic alliance that is intended through trust and communication to move
each of the partners towards achieving a long-term strategic goal (Meenaghan, 2002). This
strategic relationship between independent organizations must share compatible goals, strive for

26
mutual benefits, and acknowledge a high level of interdependence. The relationship must also
identify five major sources of synergy and value creation, which consists of- relationship
marketing, transaction cost reduction, resource dependency, strategic behavior and
communication, and organizational learning (Mohr & Spekman, 1994). Corporate partnerships
may use logos of the league or team for appropriate designations on products or services,
hospitality opportunities, direct advertising, promotional opportunities, on-site
concessions/franchises, and product sale/showcase opportunities. All these factors combine to
make corporate partnerships more strategic and value-enhancing than traditional sponsorship
arrangements (Lei et al., 2010).
Based on the dollar amount and long-term commitments established by these contractual
obligations for a partnership between a business and a team or player, this does cause some
concern for decision-makers of corporate partnerships. Most decision-makers of businesses who
make up corporate partnerships do not want to invest in a long-term contract. Reason being, most
decision-makers want an opportunity for a shorter contract and less financial spending towards
an entity like a team or player and decide to opt for a sponsorship contract instead of a
partnership contract as is shorter in length and financial investment (Haas, 2021). Although a
partnership can still be made between a business and a sports organization, most decision-makers
would rather spend less. Decision-makers want to have the opportunity to renew at a later date
once the shorter sponsorship contract has completed and decision-makers have more time to
evaluate the value of the team and or player in which they are investing (Haas, 2021).
Corporate Sponsorships
Early corporate sponsorship (aka sponsorships), literature defined sponsorships as the
provision of assistance either financially or in kind to an activity by a commercial organization to

27
achieve commercial objectives at a shorter contractual obligation than a partnership contract
(Meenaghan, 2002). Currently, sport sponsorship is defined through the relationship between
sport properties and corporate partners working together to sustain an obligation for shorter
periods (Harrison & Bukstein, 2017). Sport properties are considered the rights holders of assets
that can be sold to corporate partners. Decision-makers of corporate partnerships are individuals
within companies or organizations that buy these assets to achieve their sales, advertising,
marketing, and brand goals for longer and then choose to sponsor an entity for a contractual
period (Harrison & Bukstein, 2017).
When a decision-maker of a corporate partnership does not want to invest significant
financial backing in a team, league, or player for multi-year contractual obligations, they turn to
sponsorships to complete a different transaction between two parties. Sponsorships can still
receive the same types of entities as a corporate partnership, for example- name, image, and
brand recognition, but the sponsor is not tied to a long contractual obligation. Most sponsorship
agreements are typically no more than a year at best in most cases, unlike a multiyear corporate
partnership contractual obligation (Lei et al., 2010). Sponsorship inventory that can still be
utilized under these agreements can either be sold with the team or player. In addition to venue
(signage and naming rights), traditional media (advertising), digital and mobile media (digital
billboards, social media, and geographic targeting campaigns), intellectual property (using
team’s or leagues logos for advertising), experiential (events, booths, or displays inside and out
of the venues), and jersey (brand or logo somewhere located on the jersey) (Harrison &
Bukstein, 2017).
Many decision-makers of corporate partnerships want to use sponsorship contracts
because the sports organization’s sponsorships can still target their customers in unique ways and

28
initially cost the company less. Occasionally, decision-makers of corporate partnerships want to
take advantage of the powerful emotional connection that fans have with their favorite leagues,
teams, athletes, or events. Decision-makers want to have their name associated with the sport
organization’s brand without choosing a multi-year contract to do so (Harrison & Bukstein,
2017). While motivations vary, one thing is clear, sport sponsorship is now a strategic business
relationship, increasingly referred to as a co-marketing partnership or strategic alliance (Dolphin,
2003). With corporate partnership decision-makers finding ways like the use of sponsorship
short-term contracts to still work toward a strategic alliance, decision-makers have an
opportunity to gauge value of a women’s professional sports team without being held to a multiyear contract. Decision-makers can make a large investment with a bigger, more financial
contract for less years but still have the opportunity to renew once the contract concludes that
could change the lack of funding that women’s professional sports have navigated for countless
years (Dolphin, 2003). Decision-makers of corporate partnerships should aspire to better
understand what women’s professional sports leagues like the NWSL have accomplished even
with the lack of funding and hesitation to invest their budgets into the league, clubs, and players.
National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL)
Women’s professional soccer was started in the United States in 2001 by the Women’s
United Soccer Association. This association was taken over in 2007 by the Women’s
Professional Soccer League, then in 2012 by the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), the
current league for women’s professional soccer in the United States (Abello, 2017). When the
league officially started in 2013, the NWSL consisted of eight teams (Boston Breakers, Chicago
Red Stars, FC Kansas City, Western New York Flash, Portland Thorns FC, Seattle Reign FC,
Sky Blue FC, and the Washington Spirit), and the very first match ever played was April 13,

29
2013, in front of a crowd of 6,784 fans (Abello, 2017). The average regular season attendance
that first year was roughly 4,270 (Abello, 2017). Moving into the 2023 regular season, the league
has twelve teams (Angel City FC, Houston Dash, NJ/NY Gotham FC, OL Reign, Portland
Thorns FC, San Diego Wave FC, Chicago Red Stars, Kansas City Current, North Carolina
Courage, Orlando Pride, Racing Louisville FC, and Washington Spirit) with the potential to
grow by two or four more teams in the next couple of years as the value of the league has
significantly increased in the eyes of investors (Springer, 2022c).
The league’s growth is paramount to the success and interest decision-makers of
corporate partnerships need to see throughout women’s professional soccer. When the league
began in 2013, the team salary cap was $200,000, and the minimum player salary was $6,000,
with the maximum being $30,000. In 2017, the team salary cap grew to $315,000, with the
minimum player salary being $15,000 and the maximum of $41,000 (Abello, 2017). The
commissioner of the NWSL, Jessica Berman, signed a new collective bargaining agreement in
2022 to give the league and the players more rights and financial backing. Berman confirmed a
25% raise in the league’s salary cap and that teams could spend up to $1.38 million per season
on salary. They could acquire $600,000 in allocation money to trade for players from other teams
or use that money to add to their salary cap for future use (Anderson, 2023). While the
exponential growth in salary has increased, so have the media deals. By the end of the 2023
regular season, the commissioner will need to renegotiate the league’s media contract, worth
$4.5 million over the decade of the league’s existence (Madkour, 2023).
Teams within the NWSL are doing their part to prove their value. For example- Angel
City FC, one of two newly formed expansion teams within the NWSL in 2022, had more than
16,000 season ticket holders and attracted many well-known celebrity investors (i.e., Jennifer

30
Garner, Mia Hamm, Eva Longoria, and Candace Parker) while also securing $45 million in
sponsorship commitments with twenty-one corporate partners (Springer, 2022c). Another
example comes from the second newly formed expansion team of the league, San Diego Wave
FC, who in 2022 set the NWSL’s single-game attendance record with a sellout crowd of 32,000
fans at Snapdragon Stadium (the largest attendance on record for a women’s professional
sporting event outside of a World Cup showing which drew over 90,000 fans at the Rosebowl
Stadium in Pasadena, California in the early 2000s) (Springer, 2022c).
What Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC did for the league and decision-makers of
corporate partnerships gave proof that there is real value in women’s professional soccer in the
United States, and decision-makers of corporate partnerships need to start noticing even more so
than they already have. Even with the breaking of the single-game attendance record in 2022,
San Diego Wave FC only held twelve partnership deals, which is average at best throughout the
entire league (SponsorUnited, 2022b). The NWSL had a combined total of 496 partnership deals
in 2022, and to put that into perspective, compared to Major League Soccer (MLS), the men’s
counterpart of the NWSL, the MLS generates 2,000 deals a year and roughly $0.5B in
sponsorship revenue (SponsorUnited, 2022b) even without the same innovation, creativity, and
fan engagement that teams within the NWSL need to offer to prove their worth (SponsorUnited,
2022b). As Figure 2 in Appendix A shows, fan engagement with the brands associated with the
NWSL in 2022 lead the sponsorship market (followed closely by the LPGA) by fans who
associate themselves with the brands sponsored within the NWSL.
Even though there is still uncertainty and hesitation by decision-makers of corporate
partnerships to want to partner with a team within the NWSL because of the lack of media
coverage and attendance for financial certainty between the partner and the league (Allison,

31
2016), the NWSL has seen significant media and fan engagement over the decade of the league’s
existence. During the 2022 NWSL championship, the match drew an audience of 915,000
viewers on a national broadcast media channel (CBS) and even doing so while competing against
college football and the (MLB) World Series at the same time, which has millions of viewers
each week tuning in. This viewership alone for the 2022 championship match was a 71%
increase from the 2021 viewing of the championship match (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022). Guest
and Luijten’s (2018) study of fans of women’s soccer in the United States found that fans wanted
to consume a quality sporting product and valued the opportunity to identify with the “gender
empowerment, diversity, and inclusion” of the women’s sports product (Guest & Luijten, 2018).
Figure 3 in Appendix A highlights the year-to-year growth from 2019-2021 of fan attendance by
league breakdown of seven professional sporting leagues. It has been shown that the growth of
the NWSL is taking over, and decision-makers of corporate partnerships need to understand the
value behind this growth.
The NWSL in 2022 had the highest season attendance of over a million fans who
attended matches throughout the league (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022). Fans and consumers of
women’s sports rated contextual factors favorably, which included professional women’s players
as role models, supporting competitive opportunities for women, and the presence of a familyfriendly environment at their sporting events (Funk et al., 2003), which have all been measures
as to the enormous success of the fandom surrounding the NWSL.
Social media and marketing have also been major contributors to the success of the
NWSL over the years. Women’s professional soccer does not receive the same marketing funds
and promotional efforts as their professional men’s counterparts (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022). If
given the equal marketing investment that men’s professional soccer receives, then women’s

32
professional soccer could collectively generate as much, if not more, than men’s do, which will
increase revenue and prove women’s soccer warrants higher wages and more value through
corporate partnerships (Rodriguez, 2021).
As Figure 3 in Appendix A shows, the NWSL’s league engagement via social media,
even without a proper marketing budget, ranks second in all major women’s professional sports
with over 7,500 social media posts (SponsorUnited, 2022b). The value that the NWSL and
players within the league offer to partnerships must not go unnoticed, as Figure 4 in Appendix A
indicates.
The NWSL has seen record growth in revenue, fan attendance, expansion, social media
brand enhancement, and media coverage over the years (Springer, 2022c). The numbers shown
above can explain why the league has become a valuable asset within the sporting landscape to
be properly funded by decision-makers of companies who could become corporate partners and
end the lack of funding for women’s professional soccer. Throughout this study, it will be
discussed as to why, even though these numbers are accessible to decision-makers of corporate
partnerships, they continue to undervalue and offer unequitable funding to women’s professional
sports, specifically women’s professional soccer within the NWSL. Each research question and
the findings within Chapter Four examines what causes decision-makers to lack the
understanding of the value within women’s professional soccer to adequately fund them as they
have been known to do for men’s professional sports.
As sports economists have pointed out, getting people into games, makes it more likely to
get investors in, and when you get investors in, you can make product upgrades through
partnerships and enable more financial opportunities (Springer, 2022c). Describing the creation
and growth of the NWSL over the years is essential in understanding why the National Women’s

33
Soccer League and the players within the league should be valued accordingly and be
compensated equally to their professional men’s soccer counterparts. The NWSL has been able
to show that the creativity, investments, revenue, attendance, media coverage, and social media
engagement are all relevant, it is now up to the decision-makers of potential corporate
partnerships to close the pay gap for the continued success of the league and the clubs within the
league. These decision-makers can help bring an end to the lack of funding and perceived lack of
value barriers standing in the way of equality for women’s professional soccer, especially within
the NWSL.
Reasons for Underlying Problem of Practice
This study’s problem of practice is designed to highlight why decision-makers of
corporate partnerships lack the understanding of how their impact of funding in women’s
professional sports, particularly in women’s professional soccer, can offer adequate change in
sports equality, gender pay gaps, and future success for the growth of women’s professional
sports. To be able to grasp greater attention on why this has become a problem, this study will
use previous literature to indicate what decision-makers find valuable when partnering with
professional sports teams, what barriers owners of women’s professional sports teams encounter,
and the overall value of partnering with a women’s professional sports team or player. Based on
the previous literature and the theoretical and conceptual framework of this study, the literature
found within this subsection will help identify the problem and find potential recommendations
for solutions of this study which will be described in more detail throughout Chapter’s Four and
Five.

34
Decision-Makers
Decision-makers direct involvement and often enthusiastic participation in sponsored
events have raised concerns as to whether partnership decisions are backed by fundamental
marketing, analysis, and investment principles or if partnerships of sporting teams are influenced
by the ego and personal interests of the CEO of the partnering business (Cornwell, 2008). Sports
leagues like the NWSL have scrutinized decision-makers as it has been believed that most
partnering choices by the decision-makers to partner with professional sports teams is based
solely on self-interest and not on the sound judgement of value (Cornwell, 2008). Shaw and
Amis (2001) examined why firms choose men’s or women’s sports partnerships and found that
decisions were based on the values and beliefs of decision-makers’ self-interests and the ‘what’s
in it for me’ mentality. Shaw and Amis (2001) also found that decision-makers want to partner
with a sport player or league that is more frequently on television as a way for the decisionmakers to not only have their brands seen but the decision-makers may get their “five seconds of
fame” as well. In addition, most decision-makers base their decisions on traditional measures
that have primarily worked for men’s professional sports and have not considered what other
metrics women’s professional sports can offer (Shaw & Amis, 2001).
Holy Cross professor and sports economist, Victor Matheson indicates that the glory
maximizers (aka decision-makers of corporate partnerships) live for the moment. He further
expressed, when the game broadcast cuts to decision-makers suites or courtside seats, or as they
are standing next to the star players as a championship trophy is being presented with the brands
name plastered all over the jerseys and signage in the background, they aspire for those moments
(Springer, 2022b). Metrics like innovation and creativity do not seem to have a factor when
decision-makers decide to partner with a women’s professional sports team as is known to be

35
features that women’s professional sports can offer. As Lee and Ross (2012) discussed, there
remains a great deal of research-investigation on the decision-making processes in partnerships
with a professional sports team. From this research-investigation, there needs to be a greater
emphasis on women’s professional sports, and why decision-makers let their egos get in the way
of not understanding the value of partnering with a women’s professional sport.
Owners of Women’s Professional Sports Teams
Team owners of women’s professional sports have not been able to enjoy the egos and
glory maximization as many men’s professional sports owners do. It can be hard to create value
when the media does not show women’s sporting games, especially national broadcasts where
most viewers can easily tune in. It is difficult being a team owner of a women’s professional
sports team when most media outlets and partnership’s view women’s sports as more of a cause
than a competition. Also, team owners of women’s professional sports cannot financially back
the team or league which causes an epidemic failure in the team and the league overall (Springer,
2022b).
Even with the hardships that owners of women’s professional sports face, these owners
stay optimistic as women’s sports are on the rise of an ever-changing sports landscape of the
future (Andrews, 2018). The increase in positive ratings and reviews of women’s sports leagues
around the world are intriguing prospects for this new age of sports and have caught the attention
of corporate partnership decision-makers to understand there is value in women’s professional
sports. The sooner that more decision-makers invest in women’s sports, the sooner the lack of
funding will end, and women’s sports will be seen just as valuable as men’s sports (Andrews,
2018). There is a real shift in momentum with women’s sports, and eventually that will lead to
more corporate partnership funding for women’s sports leagues and players. The future of sport

36
is demanding for women’s success. Audiences are eager for women’s sports, the demand is high
for consumption of women’s professional soccer, and those decision-makers that get involved
early will reap the benefits of doing good and just business at the same time (Knight &
Birnbaum, 2022). Owners of women’s professional sports are thirsting for the assistance of more
funding by decision-makers of corporate partnerships. Team owners cannot fund the financial
needs of the entire club on their own and require more financial assistance from corporate
partnerships as a way to continue the growth of not only their teams, but women’s professional
sports (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022).
Women’s Professional Sport Partnerships
Over the years, women’s sports have seen three tremendous growth drivers: (1)
innovation and outreach that men’s sport does not typically have to do. For example-with the
historic lack of media exposure and partnership funding for women’s sports, Manchester City
Women’s FC decided to take measures into their own hands and became the first women’s
professional soccer team to stream a competitive game on Facebook Live in 2016. By doing so,
they were able to reach nearly 12 million viewers (Rogers, 2018). Manchester City Women’s FC
used innovation to change the landscape of their sport and their fans. Followed by (2)
partnerships have taken notice that women’s sports have provided access to more fans from all
demographics. For example, the UEFA 2022 Women’s Euro Tournament final match drew
90,000 fans (which was the largest attendance ever in Wembley Stadium for either a men’s or
women’s match) and brought in a new thriving demographic audience of more than 100,000 fans
who were believed to have been under the age of twelve (Madkour, 2022). Also, the final match
fan ratio was said to be 53% men and 47% women, with a television viewing and social media
engagement audience of 17.4 million fans ranging from all different types of demographics

37
(Madkour, 2022). Lastly, (3) the astounding support that has been received for women’s
professional sports to achieve a socially conscious and equitable future through social media and
national television broadcasts cannot go unnoticed by decision-makers of corporate partnerships
any longer (The Nielson Company, 2018b).
Due to these growth drivers, partnerships have evolved from a philanthropic outlook to a
short- or long-term strategical goal between two parties that form an alliance to understand the
value of the investment (Ryan & Fahy, 2012). The partnership is structured in a way that makes
both constituents contribute towards achieving a personal and/or shared goal of equal and just
intentions much like women’s professional sports partnerships deserve (Urriolagoitia &
Planellas, 2007). To achieve the shared goals of the partnership, trust and openness need to be
established. Although trust can be broken, it is mutually agreed upon to establish trust and
openness between both parties as the positive intentions will relay to future business and
retention of the partnership in the years to come (Lund, 2010).
Communication also plays an integral part in the partnership of women’s professional
sports as communication is not only valuable for change, but it helps achieve financial and sales
purposes while also educating decision-makers on the motivations and values of women’s sports
business models, fans, and continued growth to retain the partnership and continue a longstanding financial model (Guest & Luijten, 2017). To achieve the financial growth, a decisionmaker must be educated through communication to properly highlight the value the sport
organization and partner can offer one another (Urriolagoitia & Planellas, 2007). From these
components leads to the theoretical and conceptual frameworks which will be discussed next.

38
Theoretical/Conceptual Framework
This study will be using exchange theory as the central theoretical framework to help
answer the foundational research questions. Research has shown that all theoretical perspectives
of sport partnerships and sponsorships are explicitly or implicitly found through exchange theory
(Sam et al., 2005). The primary concept of a corporate partnership by a decision-maker with a
sport property is based on an exchange of goods or services from one partner to another for
monetary value that depicts the investment and value of the investment. Through this focus,
exchange theory is integral to both the theoretical and conceptual frameworks. Conceptually,
exchange theory plays a large part in communication, trust, value, and the importance of the
partnership, which will be discussed in more detail throughout this study. To facilitate a greater
understanding of this theoretical framework, exchange theory will be defined below, followed by
a greater understanding of the conceptual framework items associated with this theory.

39
Figure 1(b): Exchange Theory Framework
Note: Exchange Theory Framework is derived from Crompton, L. (2004). This is a
conceptualization and alternate operationalizations of the measurement of partnership
effectiveness by the decision-maker and the sport property. (Crompton, L. (2004) Leisure Studies,
23(3), 267-281).
Theoretical Framework: Exchange Theory
McCarville and Copeland (1994) first examined partnerships through exchange theory as
they found that exchange in partnership arrangements involves commercial and interpersonal
exchanges between two parties for mutual value. Mutual value has long been regarded as a
critical component of a successful partnership arrangement (Sleight, 1989). With the insight
McCarville and Copeland identified, over time, exchange theory has evolved to emphasize the
two parties from a structural relationship by utilizing trust and communication.
DecisionMakers
Senior
Executives
Gatekeepers
NWSL
Corporate
Partnerships
Departments
Relationships/Communication
What's in it for me?
Gender Pay Gap
VALUE

40
Crompton (2004) expanded on the research of exchange theory and discovered two
central concepts underlying partnership through this theory: (1) two or more parties exchange
resources for the common good, and (2) the reciprocating parties must equally value the
resources offered by each party. Crompton (2004) also determined that exchange theory relates
to communication opportunities offered by a sport organization and a partner to find the benefits
sought out by both parties for equal value (as was mentioned previously), and financial gain
between both parties. To successfully build a corporate image through partnerships, not only is
the importance on the monetary investment, but a partner’s identity must be closely coordinated
through communication, trust, value, and fairness, which will be the underlying focus of the
conceptual framework of exchange theory (Cunningham et al., 2009).
Conceptual Framework of Exchange Theory
In response to the first precept of exchange theory, sport organizations, and businesses have
multiple resources that they may use as currency to facilitate an exchange of goods and services
for a partnership. The sport organization may offer businesses increased awareness, image
enhancement, and product trial or sale opportunities. In return for the partnership, companies will
offer support through money investments, media exposure, or in-kind services (Crompton,
2004).
The second precept of exchange theory suggests that a corporate partner will ask two
questions, both depicting value- “what’s in it for me?” and “how much will it cost me?” The
trade-off is weighed between what will be gained and what will have to be given up. A key
feature of this second precept is that the exchange is perceived to be fair by both sides so that the
exchange of goods benefits both parties from a value and financial persona (Crompton, 2004).
Lastly, communication opportunities play an integral part as the sport organization and partner

41
need to explain the business-to-business context and be able to identify the value being created
whether it is through media coverage, attendance, revenue, or social engagement (Austin &
Seitanidi, 2012).
Communication
While communication is an integral component between a decision-maker and a sports
organization to form a partnership, it is not always equally reciprocated on both ends. Many
considerations need to be understood within the communication process, which will enable a
partnership to be created by a decision-maker and a sports property. Considerations such as, who
comprises the audience to speak on behalf of the partnership assets and how to determine the
audiences’ level of understanding of value from both the decision-maker and the sports
organization to properly communicate the goals and objectives that the decision-maker is looking
for to consider forming a partnership (Grossman & Rein, 2016). The right types of individuals
need to be involved in the communication process for a decision-maker to consider a sports
partnership, and if sports representatives within teams or leagues fail to communicate to those
individuals then it is very unlikely for a partnership to form. Without properly communicating to
decision-makers who have the final say and can understand the value of a team through the
sports organization’s sales team or executive staff, then a partnership will have a much harder
time being approved. Without this understanding, this will continuously cause a lack of funding
for sports teams and leagues needing extra revenue which can be found through the investments
of corporate partnerships (Grossman & Rein, 2016).
Other considerations of communication to decision-makers about corporate partnerships
come in the form of institutional rhetoric. Institutional rhetoric is made up of both the formal and
informal communication patterns of daily and large-scale interactions. Formal communication is

42
the typical face-to-face meetings and phone calls; however, informal communication that
decision-makers consider comes in the form of non-verbal communication (Grossman & Rein,
2016). Non-verbal communication areas that are noticed by decision-makers consist of matters
such as the time it takes to respond to emails or phone calls, and the way the front office of the
organization dresses and even presents themselves in public outside of working hours. Nonverbal communication can also consist of how fans comment on social media posts presented by
the organization (Grossman & Rein, 2016). All these factors play a role in the communication
process of forming a meaningful partnership with decision-makers who can properly fund teams
or players in whatever capacity the decision-maker is looking to spend.
A major consideration of communication that needs to be expressed to decision-makers
of corporate partnerships involves clarity. There needs to be clarity on what is being presented to
decision-makers of corporate partnerships so they themselves understand what they are investing
in and how much this investment will cost them over a certain period with the option to renew
for their budgetary and fiscal reasons (Grossman, 2015). Decision-makers want intelligence that
translates into action and when they are being presented a package to become a partner of an
organization, they want to know they are being presented with the facts pertaining to “what’s in
it for me”, “how is this going to help me”, and “how much will this cost me” concepts which are
all found throughout the exchange theory (Crompton, 2004).
Lastly, as relationships change over time communicators need to recognize that not only
will value propositions change for better or worse, but communication touchpoints like basic
follow up’s, sending research pieces about how the brand measures amongst other brands,
feedback from the fan base, and making in-person appearances for lunch or coffee are all

43
components of communication that need to be considered when making a decision-maker want
to partner with a sports organization (Grossman & Rein, 2016).
Value
Much like communication, being able to truly measure value with a decision-maker is
extremely difficult. Many biases can play a factor in value as one decision-maker may value
unique concepts towards a specific demographic, while another decision-maker may value
exposure through signage, television, or social media (Lefton, 2015). Being able to find this
value through proper communication channels like presentations, sales pitches, networking, and
in-person meetings will help discover the right type of value for the right decision-maker and
allow them to ask follow-up questions and have the opportunity to learn more about the product
during that time (Grossman & Rein, 2016). Partnership valuation metrics are not the only
important factor determining whether a decision-maker will sign a large contract to partner with
a professional sports team. Decision-makers want to understand the emotional connection of the
target audience of the specific sports team or league they are considering. These connections will
ensure that even if a team does poorly during the season, the fans will continue to come back and
the decision-maker who signed a large monetary contract would still be getting a proper return
on investment (ROI) to show to their shareholders as fans continue to purchase the brand
(Lefton, 2015).
Most of the time decision-makers of corporate partnerships are not just looking out for
themselves; they are wanting to find a balance of fairness between the sports organization and
their investment, which could help to close the gender pay gap between men’s and women’s
professional sports (Grossman & Rein, 2016). However, being able to maximize revenue is an
integral part of the partnership. While also having a relationship to make sure that both the sports

44
organization and the decision-maker are fair and just to allow for a new target demographic,
enhance brand perception, and show credibility with the brand and brand’s shareholders. These
are all value pieces that need to be properly communicated to a decision-maker to make that
individual want to partner with a sports organization (Grossman & Rein, 2016).
Trust and Credibility
Communication and value may be areas that are seen as beneficial in a partnership, but
without the trust and credibility that a sports organization personifies, a decision-maker may not
want to do business with an organization (Grossman, 2015). Credibility cannot be faked; it,
centers on the audience’s perception of the communicator, and without it, meaningful connection
is difficult to accomplish, and trust will never be established to want to form a partnership
(Grossman & Rein, 2016). From this perception, corporate partnership decision-makers
interactions with the sports organizations sales or executive individuals will communicate their
wants and needs to achieve a partnership. Once those wants and needs are established, the
decision-maker needs to be able to trust the organization to make good on their side of the deal.
These actions can be displayed through past behavior, an ability to communicate transparently,
sensitivity to audience needs, and following through on promises which were or were not
displayed in the partnership contract agreements but were discussed in meetings (Grossman &
Rein, 2016). Through this communication outlook trust and credibility are used as vital concepts
in forming a meaningful and long-lasting partnership with a decision-maker and a sports
organization.
Summary
Through the literature review provided, the previous research has created a greater
measure as to how the central research questions are integral to understanding the lack of

45
funding in women’s professional sports, specifically women’s professional soccer within the
NWSL by decision-makers of corporate partnerships. The literature review is designed to paint
the picture of how difficult it has been for women’s professional athletes, more importantly
women’s professional soccer players to gain the necessary value from corporate partnership
decision-makers to obtain equitable funding in pay and partnerships. This study will now move
into explaining the methodology of testing the research questions in Chapter Three and using a
qualitative semi-structured interview approach to do so.

46
Chapter Three: Methodology
Chapter Three is used as a roadmap to guide the researcher on the path towards analyzing
the underlying problem of practice within this study. As described in Chapter One, decisionmakers of corporate partnerships that partner with professional sports have received a great deal
of attention, but several areas remain under-developed theoretically and empirically that need to
be addressed within women’s professional sports. One of the most notable shortfalls in extant
research on funding by corporate partnerships is in women’s professional sports where very little
attention has been given specifically to women’s sports leagues, clubs, or athletes (Morgan,
2019). The focus of this research study explores the lack of funding by decision-makers of
corporate partnerships within women’s professional sports, specifically women’s professional
soccer within the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).
As Chapter Two discussed, exchange theory has been used as the theoretical and
conceptual framework surrounding this study. Exchange theory discusses two central concepts
underlying partnerships and the investments relating to forming the partnership: (1) two or more
parties exchange resources for the common good, and (2) the resources offered by each party
must be equally valued by the reciprocating parties (Crompton, 2004). Crompton (2004)
discovered that exchange theory relates to communication opportunities offered by a sport
organization and a partner to find the benefits sought out by both parties for equal value and
funding. To successfully build a corporate image through partnerships, a partner’s identity must
be closely coordinated through communication, value, trust, and credibility within the sport
organization that the partner is collaborating with for adequate investment in the partnership
(Cunningham et al., 2009).

47
Chapter Three uses the information discussed in Chapters One and Two and offers a clear
direction towards analyzing the methodology of this study, which was built around exchange
theory to help guide the underlying research questions mentioned below. Chapter Three
discusses the overview of the design of the methodology and provides background information
on the research setting, followed by the positionality of the researcher. It is important to
understand the researcher’s positionality as this will be used to mitigate any biases or
assumptions that may be reflected in the researcher’s work. Finally, Chapter Three addresses the
trust and credibility of the study, and discusses the ethics portrayed by the researcher used to
collect the data from the participants.
Research Questions
The research questions guiding this study:
• RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of corporate partnerships require when
choosing to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to want to partner with a
club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of
becoming a partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer
equitable funding in comparison to men’s professional sports?
Overview of the Research Design
The study used a qualitative semi-structured interview approach to collect the data that
was analyzed by the selected participants (as Table 4 below indicates). The researcher
interviewed six full-time corporate partnership sales staff professionals all within the National
Women’s Soccer League and located throughout different regions of the United States (as the

48
twelve clubs associated within the NWSL are within the United States). Using semi-structured
interview questions enabled the six participants to offer any information candidly that they
wanted to share from what was being asked. They were also given the option to suggest
information for future considerations, while I, as the researcher, could ask probing (follow-up)
questions based on the responses of the participants. I asked twelve questions (not including the
probing questions) to the participants, where each of the questions related in one way or another
to one or all three research questions of the study. The premise of this approach enabled the
participants to offer their input without any sort of survey questions swaying them in one
direction. This approach allowed them to speak freely on their own behalf.
Participants were not chosen based on gender, age, sexual orientation, or years of
experience; they were chosen because they are full-time corporate partnership sales professionals
working for one of the clubs within the NWSL who can be found within the partnership
departments directory on the club’s website. The job titles of these participants ranged from an
account executive of sales to vice president of corporate sales.
These individuals were chosen because each one of the participants work with different
types of decision-makers in different regions of the United States and could offer input about
their types of experiences working with decision-makers of corporate partnerships. They were
able to discuss what these decision-makers communicate when and if they choose to partner with
a club within the National Women’s Soccer League. The participants had a wide range of
knowledge and input to offer based on their experiences of working with decision-makers and
were able to give a great deal of information as they work day-to-day with decision-makers of
corporate partnerships which offered strong credibility to the research questions being studied.

49
It is typical for most studies that want to conduct the approach of value and funding to
use a quantitative method, as data figures typically showcase the value of the partnership and the
sports property they are partnered with. However, this study used a qualitative approach as this
type of study wanted to identify the value of partnering with a women’s professional team from
the understanding of what is being communicated by decision-makers to individuals who work
day-to-day with these decision-makers of corporate partnerships. From these conversations, it
enabled future recommendations as will be discussed in Chapter Five of what can be done about
the lack of value within the NWSL and how decision-makers can offer equitable funding.
It is my belief that value, and funding go beyond data figures. This needed to be
addressed by understanding what is causing decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to
understand the significance of the value and offer the funding required for continued growth and
success in women’s professional soccer. By not understanding the value causes decision-makers
to not want to offer equitable funding opportunities with a women’s professional sport that has
the growth, audience, and social engagement, comparable, if not greater, than men’s professional
soccer and most men’s professional sports teams.

50
Table 4
Data Sources
Research Questions Method 1
RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of
corporate partnerships require when choosing to partner
with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
Semi-structured interview
questions
RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate
partnerships not to want to partner with a club within the
National Women’s Soccer League?
Semi-structured interview
questions
RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships
understand the value of becoming a partner with a club
within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer
equitable funding in comparison to men’s professional
sports?
Semi-structured interview
questions
Research Setting
My goal as the researcher was to prospect participants all within different regions of the
United States (as is where the twelve teams within the NWSL are located) and send interview
requests to the participants who work in the West, East, Midwest, and South regions of the U.S.
The significance behind using these participants enabled a greater understanding of the research
questions as these participants work full-time with decision-makers of corporate partnerships in

51
different regions of the United States and offered an array of experienced input as to why NWSL
clubs are valuable business models that need more funding for future success by decision-makers
of corporate partnerships.
To find these participants, I gathered the email addresses of the employees from the
individual clubs’ websites to request a Zoom meeting. Zoom meetings were used to not only
record the meeting but analyze the transcript of the interview and helped to replay the interview
afterwards so I could directly quote and properly summarize the responses from the participants
(all participant names were confidential). Zoom was the best source for an interview as most
participants were not local to my location and I could quickly and efficiently interview each
participant in an anticipated time lasting between thirty minutes to an hour.
I want to make it known, due to confidentiality purposes some clubs did not list their
entire staff and/or email addresses on the websites. I adjusted to this degree of confidentiality and
reached out to the generic corporate partnership email addresses that were found on every club’s
website that did not list their full-time staff members contact information. I then addressed an
email to the department heads asking to set up a Zoom interview with at least one member who
is a corporate partnership full-time sales staff professional of the club.
Data Sources
Using a qualitative data approach, this study was able to conduct research with
participants in their natural settings and attempted to make sense of or interpret the meanings and
credibility participants offered to the study based on their responses (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Qualitative research is an umbrella term that can interpret concepts that seek to describe, decode,
translate, and otherwise come to terms with the meaning of the research questions being studied
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This study adopted the usage of a qualitative semi-structured

52
interview technique and as previously stated was done via Zoom to conduct the interviews of the
participants.
Method 1: Qualitative Semi-Structured Interview Questions
Conducting a qualitative semi-structured interview allowed the participants to give
unstructured answers that were not already guiding their decisions with multiple choice closeended questions like a quantitative study on value typically does (Robinson & Firth, 2019).
Interview questions have a natural feeling to the participant and can provide a greater perspective
on the way a participant feels about a question by how much or how little they answer (Robinson
& Firth, 2019). Using the semi-structured interview approach from a qualitative perspective
allowed communication and behavior to take precedence, as is typical for most qualitative
studies focusing on interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Semi-structured interview approaches
allow for the researcher to ask probe (follow-up) questions to the answers the participants were
providing. Probing questions allowed the researcher to keep the interview as a steady flow of
conversation that helped the participant feel more comfortable while giving responses and asking
the participant to follow up on answers they just provided (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Decision-makers of corporate partnerships typically utilize comparable valuation (pricing
inventory with interactions or sales among fans and seeing the value in the form of dollar
figures) to understand the value of a partnership with a professional sports team. Also, most
research studies that focus on value take a quantitative approach to measure the attendance
numbers and dollar figures associated with the team and the partner to indicate the overall value
(Harrison & Bukstein, 2017). However, as exchange theory suggests, communication is a focal
point within the conceptual theory of the framework, and because of that, this study was guided
by using qualitative communication found within the participant interviews.

53
The participants communicated their representation of what decision-makers value
through the questions being asked and offered their interpretations of what guides decisionmakers when partnering with a women’s professional sports team, specifically a women’s
professional soccer club within the NWSL. The participants were able to voice their expertise
not only on what decision-makers think, but also why they think there is a lack of funding
amongst women’s professional sports by decision-makers of corporate partnerships. They
offered input on what a decision-maker needs to know to understand the value and growth of
women’s sports leagues like the NWSL that has shown significant success and financial
opportunities for corporate partnership considerations.
Participants
This study approached the setting through a purposeful sampling technique in which the
researcher used participants that were considered to have the ability to offer the understandings
and insights of corporate partnership decision-makers (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The usage of
purposeful sampling gave credibility to the participants being studied as the researcher was able
to guide the questions being asked to primarily answer the research questions focused upon this
study. The participants provided insight of what it is like working with corporate partnership
decision-makers as they work day-to-day conducting business with these individuals trying to get
them to partner with their respective clubs.
This study conducted interviews with six full-time corporate partnership sales
professionals within different regions (West, East, Midwest, and South) of the United States as
this is where the twelve clubs of the NWSL are located. The participants are full-time corporate
partnership sales professionals within their respective clubs’ corporate partnership departments
and ranged in job title from an account executive to the head of the department (it is also

54
important to note that not all clubs title their employees the same way, as long as they were fulltime corporate partnership sales professionals working in the corporate partnership department,
they were used for the study). The interviews lasted thirty minutes to an hour and was left to the
participants’ discretion if they wanted to extend or shorten their time once we began.
Instrumentation
The qualitative semi-structured interview was conducted via Zoom and scheduled
through email to all study participants. I sent emails to a max of six participants and allowed for
two weeks to hear back from the participants on an answer to be interviewed for the study. If no
answer was received, I sent email requests to other participants until I heard from at least six
different participants. The questions formulated for the interviews encompassed the research
questions guiding this study. As was mentioned, I had twelve questions ready to be asked with
probe questions (follow-up) also available if the participants allowed for the possibility of a
probe question to be followed up with for more insight to the answer they had just provided.
I, as the researcher, felt more than twelve questions would take up an inordinate amount
of time for the participants, and the participants would not want to give their full attention to
answering more than twelve questions in one sitting to fit within the designated time limit of
thirty minutes to an hour (Robinson & Firth, 2019). Lastly, to reiterate, the interviews were
conducted via the technology platform known as Zoom. Zoom enabled me as the researcher to
record the conversations and go back to listen to the transcripts to add integral parts of the
interviews and themes which will later be indicated in Chapter Four.

55
Data Collection
The data from the participants were transcribed in multiple ways: through the recordings
and transcripts from Zoom, collected by hand as I took my own notes throughout the interviews,
and using a codebook to assist in my search of themes the participants offered in their responses.
A codebook as described by Gibbs (2018), is a way a researcher using a qualitative approach
defines the data that is being analyzed, and then categorizes the transcript text into a codebook
from the participant interviews to establish a framework of thematic ideas to find the greater
concepts that each participant has alluded to regarding the research questions of a study. The
codebook enabled a greater opportunity to pinpoint the most common terms used most by the
participants. I then analyzed the transcripts of the recorded Zoom interviews to the research
questions asked. Based on what was analyzed, I took the most common expressed themes and
inserted them into my codebook. Using the codebook was essential when finding the three
themes within Chapter Four of each of the three research questions, and the future
recommendations within Chapter Five.
I, as the researcher, was the only one to confidentially collect the data and analyze the
responses. I made it known to all participants that their responses did not have the participants’
names associated with the answers given. The study indicated the participants as participant 1, 2,
3 etc. (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). All participants received instructions on who I am as the
researcher of the study, the interviews’ premise, how long the interview will take, and that all
participants would remain confidential throughout the study (Robinson & Firth, 2019). The
interview was anticipated to take no more than thirty minutes to an hour but was left to the
discretion of the participant if they chose to be interviewed for a longer or shorter period of time.

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Data Analysis
The process of making sense of the data that was collected from the participants of the
study is known as data analysis. Through data analysis, I needed to find ways to consolidate,
reduce, and interpret what the participants said in their responses, whether it justified or
contradicted the study’s research (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This study analyzed the qualitative
data from the participant responses though a five-step segmentation process. It is my job to make
sense of the information provided by the participants through this five-step segmentation process
which was adopted from Creswell and Creswell (2018): (1) organize the responses of the data,
(2) read over thoroughly of the data, (3) code the data through brackets or category
representations, (4) find the description and themes of the data, and lastly (5) indicate the themes
and data collected from the participants to the focus of the research study (Creswell & Creswell,
2018). This study aimed to complete all steps of the data analysis discussed by Creswell and
Creswell (2018), as this was a useful method to get the most out of what the participants offered
in their responses to the answers pertaining to the research questions.
Researcher Positionality
As a privileged white man within a society of oppression, unfair societal practices, and
gender discrimination, my positionality enables a voice that can help those who speak upon deaf
ears. Positionality is how one is situated through the intersection of power and the politics of
gender, race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, culture, language, and other social factors (Villaverde,
2008). In addition, I have identities shaped by being middle class, educated, spiritual, and an
athletic background, which gives me a greater opportunity to bring a real systematic change to
the problem of practice within the sports industry and this study. My positionality has been
shaped by the experiences I have encountered and the experiences I have learned through others.

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I want to make it known that my own biases should be called out as I work as a full-time
employee with one of the National Women’s Soccer League clubs within the corporate
partnership department. Due to this bias, this brought about the interest in finding the value
decision-makers of corporate partnerships place on partnering with a women’s professional
soccer club within the NWSL.
In relation to this study, through the privilege of being a white man in an oppressed
society, I cannot pretend to know what it truly feels like to be a professional women’s athlete
who deals with the struggles of identity, gender pay gap, and lack of funding that has been
identified throughout this study. I have worked in college athletics and women’s professional
soccer for over a decade and have seen the struggles firsthand that women within sports have
dealt with while also having conversations with women in sports about the hardships they face
where they have even considered wanting to never play sports or work in the sports industry
again or if at all.
I am out to bring awareness to a problem that has not changed over the years, even
though there has been similar research done on the problem of practice focused on this study. I
am hopeful that using a qualitative approach to discuss value and funding will bring a new
perspective on women’s sports by not strictly studying dollar figures but by analyzing the way
decision-makers communicate regarding not being able to adequately offer significant financial
means to women’s professional sports. Lastly, I am hopeful that through my positionality and the
privilege I hold, I can bring a voice to those who have not wanted to listen.
Researcher Trust and Credibility
According to Merriam and Tisdell (2016), ensuring trust and credibility in qualitative
research involves careful attention to a study’s conceptualization and how the data is collected,

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analyzed, and interpreted to sustain an ethical manner. This study was under two forms of trust
and credibility, starting with (1) triangulation, which increases a study’s credibility and quality
by giving more factors to analyze the data from the participants’ responses to the research
questions (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Lastly, (2) member checks were used to ensure internal
trust and credibility from respondent checks or simply feedback on the findings that the
researcher had discovered through the data analyzed from each of the participants responses
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Credibility is a concern in research because researchers have conducted studies that are
like other studies, and researchers tend to find the same results (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
However, what was different about this study is that I did not find a qualitative approach
depicting the value decision-makers place on partnering with a club within the National
Women’s Soccer League. Due to that fact, this makes this study credible for the new data that
was found from the participants, the way in which the data was analyzed, and the focus of what
the study was out to measure.
Researcher Ethics
Ethics play a large role in conducting research as it is up to me to proceed in as ethical a
manner as possible when asking and transcribing the information that is discovered by the
participants (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Ethics can also play a role when biases and assumptions
I may have prior to conducting the research emerge (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). As the
researcher, it is somewhat easy to tip the scales in the direction I want and to act in an unethical
manner by misguiding the participants or results of the data analyzed. To be an ethical researcher
biases and assumptions need to be put to the side and stay as compliant and ethical as possible
based on the facts of the data being collected, which I am claiming to do. Once the participants

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responded to the underlying research questions of this study, what I thought to discover may be
what I was expecting to uncover. However, it is important for the credibility of the study and the
reputation of myself as the researcher to stay as ethical as possible as the participants being
studied deserve that type of respect and attention to detail.
As previously mentioned, all participants were completely confidential within the study.
No participants’ names were displayed other than participants one, two, three etc. I was not out
to make the participants hesitant to respond to the questions, and because of that, before
conducting the interview, the participants read a disclaimer that all answers provided would not
have the participants’ names associated with it. Lastly, I was given approval by the IRB
(institutional review board) to conduct my qualitative study using interviews on the participants
of the study. IRB would not have approved my method of research and ethics had I shown any
signs of unethical behavior or manners to conduct my study.
Summary
The purpose of Chapter Three was to give a greater overview of how the data was
analyzed from the participants while learning what the participants had to say from each of the
three research questions in Chapter Four. Understanding the overview of the methodology, this
enables a greater perspective of the data that will be shown throughout Chapter Four by the
participants. While then being able to offer future recommendations in Chapter Five by the
researcher. The data in which is to be analyzed is shown through the theoretical and conceptual
framework of exchange theory and in the underlying research questions of this study as shown
below:
• RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of corporate partnerships require when
choosing to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?

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• RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to want to partner with a
club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of
becoming a partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer
equitable funding in comparison to men’s professional sports?
Chapter Four will depict the results of what is analyzed from the participants of the study and
how their responses correlate with the research questions to give a greater perspective on the lack
of funding and value measures that are being considered by decision-makers of corporate
partnerships within women’s professional sports, most importantly, women’s professional soccer
in the NWSL. Chapter Four will also be used as a roadmap as to how the literature review in
Chapter Two, problem of practice in Chapter One, and future recommendations in Chapter Five
correlate.

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Chapter Four: Findings
The purpose of this study is to discover how decision-makers of corporate partnerships
understand the value of women’s professional soccer, especially within the National Women’s
Soccer League (NWSL). The purpose is also designed to understand why there is a lack of
equitable funding through partnerships offered to the clubs within the NWSL by decision-makers
of corporate partnerships.
The research questions of this study (as shown below) were formed by using exchange
theory as the theoretical and conceptual frameworks which indicated the concept of a corporate
partnership (also known as “partnership” as the participants alluded to throughout the responses)
between a decision-maker and an NWSL club. As Crompton (2004) mentions, the conceptual
framework of exchange theory highlights the importance of communication, value, and trust and
credibility. These factors are used when corporate partnership decision-makers and sports
organizations are deciding to obtain and invest in a corporate partnership as discussed in more
detail in Chapter Two. These factors are also used as concepts when asking the qualitative semistructured questions to the participants which were formed from the research questions of the
study.
• RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of corporate partnerships require when
choosing to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to want to partner with a
club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of
becoming a partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer
equitable funding in comparison to men’s professional sports?

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Participants
Six participants were prospected and chosen to take part in the study where each
voluntarily agreed to be interviewed via Zoom. The participants were asked twelve semistructured questions with the possibility of probe questions to follow as described in Appendix
B. With the National Women’s Soccer League residing in the United States of America, each
participant was chosen from the West, Midwest, East, and South regions of the United States.
Participants were contacted through e-mail and were told their names and identity would remain
confidential within the study and would only be identified as Participants 1, 2, 3, etc. (in no
particular order of when they were interviewed).
Table 5. Summary of Interview Participants, n=6
Participant Role Years of Experience
1 Account Executive of Partnership Sales 1 year 6 months
2 Partnership Sales Manager 1 year
3 Director of Corporate Partnerships 6 years 6 months
4
5
6
Vice President of Partnership Sales
Senior Director of Partnership Sales
Partnership Development Director
8 years 3 months
7 years 1 month
3 years 2 months
Findings: Research Question One
RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of corporate partnerships require when choosing
to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
As one of the main focal points of the conceptual framework of this study, exchange
theory makes it clear that a decision-maker will ask two questions to form and invest in a
partnership, both depicting value- “what’s in it for me?” and “how much will it cost me?” The

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trade-off is weighed between what will be gained and what will have to be given up. A key
feature of this concept is perceived to be fair by both sides so that the exchange of goods,
benefits, and investments by both parties are seen as fair (Crompton, 2004). Based on the
concepts described within the theoretical and conceptual frameworks, research question one was
designed to understand what value(s) a decision-maker is looking for to form a corporate
partnership with a women’s professional soccer club within the NWSL and what is perceived to
be fair by both sides.
Based on the responses by the six participants for the questions pertaining to this research
question and analyzing the specificity of those responses through my codebook, three themes
emerged for the findings of research question one. These three themes, as indicated below are:
(1) return on investment (ROI), (2) diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and (3) relational
alignment. Each theme will be expressed in more detail, and direct quotes from the participants
will be used to validate the themes that emerged.
Theme One: Return on Investment (ROI)
Based on the responses from the six participants, the main objective for all decisionmakers who choose to make a significant investment and become a corporate partner of a
women’s professional soccer club is to understand the past and present results of partnerships
successes. Each participant made it clear that a decision-maker will always want to know what it
is like being a partner of their clubs and how their return on investment will be met throughout
the terms of the partnership.
“Decision-makers need to understand their return on investment (ROI) and how this will
help their business, and in doing so, it is our job as sales professionals who work day in and day
out in the space to show them that investing with our clubs will give them the results they desire,

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and do the best we can to fulfill their objectives of the partnership,” said Participant 1. As three
out of the six participants made it clear, without obtaining the data for an ROI within partnership
discussions with a decision-maker, it makes a partnership nearly impossible to formulate
between their clubs and the prospected decision-maker.
Participant 1 expressed that gathering the data for the return on investment to give to a
decision-maker is one of the most important responsibilities a corporate partnership sales
professional must do for a partnership. Without the data for the ROI, the partnership may never
happen. Participant 3 expressed the same experiences as Participant 1 with their discussion
about decision-makers needing the ROI data. Participant 3 further expressed, “We use a platform
called vision insights, which almost takes up half my day or even week trying to gather the data
for the decision-makers, but in the end, I know it will be worth it.” Participant 6 mentioned,
“once I gather the data, it is my responsibility to show the decision-makers what the return on
investment (ROI) can be through the impressions that our club receives via social media and
local or national broadcast exposure (when we get that type of exposure).” As is made clear, data
is important to a decision-maker trying to learn about the ROI of the partnership with the club.
Lastly, Participant 2 concluded on this matter, “it is important to show fan attendance,
merchandise sales, and future projections within the data if we want to make a partnership
happen with a prospected decision-maker of a brand we are interested in partnering with.”
Once the data is gathered, Participant 4 explained, “decision-makers need to hear how the
investment for a partnership with our club will impact their bottom line and bring exposure and
growth to their business based on the data provided.” It is the job of the partnership sales
professional to properly indicate value to a decision-maker expressed Participant 5. As
Participant 1 further validates said statement, “I as the sales professional, get told all the time; we

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(meaning the decision-maker of the brand) need to make sure the investment will be beneficial
for our business. And each time I hear that, I make sure I’m prepared with answers as it is my job
that decision-makers understand the value of partnering with our club.” Without the ROI data, as
many of the participants suggested, it is a much harder sell for the club no matter how good or
bad the club is performing during the season. “Without the data and answers, there will be no
investment by a decision-maker to form a partnership with our club as we so desperately need for
continued growth and financial stability,” proclaimed Participant 1.
In contrast to the importance of ROI, results come in other forms for a decision-maker
when they choose to partner with a women’s professional soccer club. ROI can also occur
through the attention a decision-maker will receive by gaining the exposure of the partnership
from their stakeholders, fans, and self-interests as most of the participants expressed.
Attention levels occur when decision-makers want to be noticed, as Participant 5 noted,
“Decision-makers value what we as a club can give them that other clubs cannot give.”
Participant 5’s club has some of the highest social media presence, fan attendance numbers,
youth soccer community followings, and future growth projections in the league that other clubs
do not or cannot offer. Furthermore, Participant 5 added, because of the success of the club, it
will get the attention of decision-makers who want to form a partnership that other clubs will not
receive “because it will make decision-makers look good, be a good financial move for their
company or brand, and become an easier sell to their stakeholders.”
Lastly, attention levels can fall directly on the decision-maker(s) themselves. Participant
1 expressed, “decision-makers want to feel special; they want to feel important; they want to
know they made the right decision for when they report to their leadership or board or whoever it
may be that they report to within the organization. They want the attention to be put on them

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when they sign off on the partnership and we as sales professionals, will do whatever we need to,
to make that happen for them as we know how important this trait is to get a partnership signed
for our club.” ROI is needed for data and attention that would make a decision-maker want to
partner with a women’s professional soccer club.
Theme Two: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion emerged as a theme within research question one
because each participant alluded to the fact that women’s professional sports are on the rise,
especially within women’s professional soccer in the United States, and decision-makers are
needing to diversify their sports portfolios to show good faith to their stakeholders, boards, and
consumers that they are a brand who stands behind the growth of women’s professional sports.
Participant 3 suggested, “with being a women’s professional sport, we do get a lot of
decision-makers who need to diversify their sports portfolios. It seems like a lot of decisionmakers these days need to show other types of value to their stakeholders or shareholders that
can drive more business to their brands.” Women’s professional soccer clubs and the
demographics surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion are storytelling pieces that the clubs
can offer decision-makers. DEI can help decision-makers drive more sales and awareness back to
the brand.
Participant 1 noted, “a lot of decision-makers of all types of brands want to come across
and position themselves as an equitable ally to both men’s and women’s professional sports.”
Being an ally was commonly expressed by all participants. Participant 2 further expressed,
“Decision-makers know it’s a good business model for their brand and their profits to become
more equitable and become an ally. Likewise, we know it’s a great opportunity for us to put pen
to paper on a partnership agreement and get the funding we need for our club.”

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Four out of the six participants wanted to clarify that using DEI is not necessarily a
selling point to all decision-makers. However, DEI is a value proposition that is not seen in the
men’s professional sports partnership space any longer (or if ever) and can give an edge to the
clubs within the National Women’s Soccer League to gain more funding, attention, and value by
decision-makers of corporate partnerships. “As a partnership sales professional it’s still our job
to make sure decision-makers understand it’s not just about the DEI piece of partnering with a
women’s professional soccer club, it’s about understanding that partnering with a women’s
professional soccer club is good business,” expressed Participant 4. Five out of six participants
further clarified that the opportunity to be more creative by expressing DEI helps to diversify
decision-makers sports portfolios and offer more credibility to their brands and business growth.
With the theme of DEI emerging, participants used examples of decision-makers who
have already used the concept of DEI within their current partnerships and how that indicated
value for both the brand and the clubs they partnered with. For example, Participant 5 said, “our
club and a couple other clubs have done deals with fertility companies (companies that educate
women on reproductive and health matters after playing high level competition sports) who
aren’t major revenue drivers, but they are about giving value to our players not solely on a dollar
figure but in terms of a lifestyle after soccer.” Participant 3 expressed the same concept as was
mentioned, “Fertility companies can provide opportunities for players who want to use what the
company has to offer to be able to learn how to have a family after their soccer career comes to
an end and equipping them with the proper tools to make that happen.” Many of the participants
expressed the benefits of companies like these and made it known they give fertility companies
the exposure via social media platforms, and in return they provide their services for no charge.
Participant 3 expressed, “fertility companies are valuable for all involved and does not

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necessarily equate to a large dollar investment by a decision-maker but does add value to both
parties incorporated within the partnership.” By finding creative measures that get more
decision-makers involved, allows for more opportunities of corporate partnerships to happen
because it adds good publicity and DEI status to companies in need of more diversification.
Theme Three: Relational Alignment
Relational alignment became a common theme across all six participants when discussing
what decision-makers value in a partnership to occur with a women’s professional soccer club.
Both the decision-maker and the partnership sales professional need to understand the alignment
of how each will benefit from the other. With partnerships typically being a high budget spend
for a decision-maker, properly forming a relationship and a story that aligns the club and the
brand together is a valuable piece that decision-makers may not disclose initially. But as all
participants alluded to, building the relationship and telling a story with the decision-maker and
the club is an unwritten value piece most, if not all, decision-makers look for.
As Participant 2 expressed, “we don’t just jump right into the cost of the partnership with
a decision-maker. We build a relationship with these individuals as that’s half the battle. We find
out the objectives, strategy, and who the person is that we are working with on the other side of
the conference room table.” Participant 6 expressed similar concepts, “we want the decisionmaker(s) to know it’s not just about the spend of the partnership but it’s how we can welcome
this brand to our club because of the value they will give to us and our players, and how we can
return the favor to them in the form of awareness and sales by the alignment.” As five of the six
participants then made it clear, once the relationship has been established it is their job to tell the
story of how the brand aligns with the mission and vision of the club the corporate partnership
sales individual is a part of.

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“Decision-makers may not say it upfront, but they always want to know how our club
aligns with their brands mission and vision, and vice versa” conveyed Participant 3. Another
example comes from Participant 1 who mentioned that by being a women’s professional sports
team, they are actively reaching out to decision-makers of women owned businesses or women
led executive members. The reason for this as Participant 1 expressed, “we feel these decisionmakers will understand and align with us as a women’s professional soccer club and not only get
us more funding but form multi-year partnerships with our club to help us continue to succeed.”
As most of the participants concurred, it will always come down to the alignment of the club and
the brand. This alignment will be able to convey the story as to how the brand and the club will
be able to add value for one another.
Being able to align and tell a story based on the club’s mission and vision with the
decision-makers’ brand can open more opportunities for clubs to be properly valued and funded
by decision-makers. When alignment and relationships are formed, it becomes easier for the
decision-maker to “trust and value” the club they are considering partnering with as was
expressed by Participant 5.
Discussion: Research Question One
Throughout the findings of research question one, the six participants all had similar
responses and examples as to what a decision-maker of a corporate partnership values when
deciding to partner with a women’s professional soccer club within the National Women’s
Soccer League. What was most enjoyable while listening to these participants was that it was not
just about the numbers, yes, ROI and results are very important. But the two themes in which
followed the results were more so about feelings, growth, potential, alignment, and creativity.

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These concepts would not have been found had this study been conducted solely on a
quantitative approach.
Key Takeaways:
• ROI and attention levels are the most important aspects of what decision-makers look for
when deciding to partner with a women’s professional soccer club.
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is not the only selling point by corporate
partnership sales professionals for decision-makers of corporate partnerships. However,
DEI is used to express to decision-makers that they can diversify their sports portfolios
and engage new demographics for their brands that they may not have been able to do
previously with men’s sports. DEI can add a new value metric for a decision-maker
when partnering with a women’s professional soccer club that in turn can help the brand
and the funding for a women’s professional soccer club.
• Relational alignment is an unwritten value construct that decision-makers do not outright
express, but corporate partnership sales professionals need to be ready to show the
alignment of a partnership with a brand through relationship building and storytelling.
Findings: Research Question Two
RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to want to partner with a club
within the National Women’s Soccer League?
The six participants of the study were asked questions alluding to the reasons of what
would cause a decision-maker of a corporate partnership not to want to partner with a club within
the NWSL. From the responses of the participants emerged three specific themes. These three
themes as shown below in more detail are: (1) Education, (2) Communication, and (3) Budget.

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Theme One: Education
All participants agreed that education is the number one reason a corporate partnership
decision-maker would not want to partner with a club from the National Women’s Soccer
League. The term education, in this instance, refers to the lack of basic understanding of
partnership funding for women’s professional sports and most importantly women’s professional
soccer within the National Women’s Soccer League. Each of the participants expressed that
when they speak with decision-makers, these decision-makers have very little knowledge on the
growth and success the league has had over the entirety of the NWSL’s existence. They also
mentioned, decision-makers have a lack of understanding on how much it will cost to become a
partner of a women’s professional soccer club, and believe women’s professional soccer is not
seen as a sport that should have high investment standards similar to men’s sports.
According to Participant 3’s experiences, “most decision-makers don’t have a solid
foundation of women’s sports to be able to properly value women’s professional soccer.”
Participant 3 also mentioned that when a meeting does get booked with a decision-maker, and
they get down to what the investment will cost to make the partnership happen, the decisionmaker is almost in a state of “shock” that partnering with a women’s professional soccer club
could be a high six-figure number and beyond.
Participant 1 made it clear, “when a decision-maker thinks of the idea of women’s sports
or women’s professional soccer, they have this belief or misconception that they will be able to
get a partnership at a discounted rate than they would receive from men’s professional sports.”
Decision-makers expect to be able to do more without having to pay as much as they would for
men’s professional sports, as was expressed by Participant 2. Once the price of the partnership
gets revealed to a decision-maker, “most decision-makers don’t understand how or why the cost

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of a partnership with a women’s professional sport could be so high,” expressed Participant 1.
Many of the participants made it known that decision-makers seem to have a difficult time
understanding and need to be better educated on the amount of fan attendance, social media
presence, World Cup talented players on NWSL rosters, and ROI potentials that women’s
professional soccer can offer a corporate partnership decision-maker. Participant 5 stated,
“Decision-makers that I work with have a hard time believing that women’s professional sports,
especially women’s professional soccer can be similar investments as men’s sports.” Corporate
partnership sales professionals need to find the right ways to educate decision-makers so that
they can understand the value of partnering with a professional soccer club within the NWSL.
Participant 4 noted, “I do feel like it’s our responsibility as sales professionals to educate
decision-makers either through pitch-decks (powerpoint presentations created to highlight the
intricacies of the club and league in a quick and efficient manner for a decision-maker), inperson/Zoom meetings, or sending informational emails updating them throughout the season on
the attendance numbers, impressions, and milestones the club is hitting.” Many of the
participants felt the same way as Participant 4, as it was clear that to educate decision-makers on
who their clubs are, who the league is, and how the “growth of the NWSL is like buying a stock
when it is low and watching it boom in a few years,” said Participant 5, that partnership sales
professionals need to find new ways to educate.
Three of the six participants made it known; the more educated decision-makers are to
partner with NWSL clubs, the more decision-makers will be able to understand why the
investments to partner with their clubs can be like men’s professional sports partnership
investments. Many participants still felt that the presence of the league and their clubs had
reached national headlines, have been in sports business reporting, and have been “trending”, as

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Participant 1 said. Participant 1 further expressed, most decision-makers should already have a
better understanding and expectation when discussing a partnership with a women’s professional
soccer club before the “shock factor” sets in when it comes to the investment conversation.
However, it should not be assumed that a decision-maker stays up to date on women’s
professional sports like they might for men’s sports. As previously stated, the lack of exposure
for women’s professional sports does not make it easy for a decision-maker to understand the
value of partnering with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League.
Participant 6 expressed, “I work on a club that also supports the men’s professional
soccer club in the same regional market, and we are still trying to get decision-makers to
understand that our women’s club brings in more exposure and attendance than our men’s club
does. But for reasons outside my control, the decision-makers find more value and spend higher
investments on the men’s club than our women’s.” As most participants could attest to similar
situations as this, “it’s not easy being able to discuss a partnership with a decision-maker who
doesn’t know the basics of our league or club like they would men’s professional sports” said
Participant 2. Participant 2 also went on to mention that when meetings do get booked with
decision-makers of a brand their club wants to partner with, “it seems like most decision-makers
are fans of men’s teams and we sometimes spend a chunk of time talking about this game or that
game that has nothing to do with our team. They know I work in sports, so they want to talk
about the sports that they are more familiar with. The downside of this is that based on the teams
they discuss; I already know how hard of a sell this will be for me and our club because none of
those teams were women’s teams.” The lack of education for women’s professional soccer by
decision-makers make becoming a partner nearly impossible.

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Theme Two: Communication
Lack of adequate communication became an overarching response from the six
participants on why a decision-maker would not want to partner with a club within the National
Women’s Soccer League. Lack of communication falls on a similar construct as lack of
education. Meaning, if a corporate partnership sales professional gets the education piece across
to the decision-maker, it is then the decision-makers job to express the value of the partnership
with the club to their board or stakeholders. If decision-makers do not fully comprehend what
was expressed to them, they cannot properly communicate to their boards to get the necessary
buy-in to partner with the club.
As Participant 1 mentioned, “there’s always a chance that somebody even above the
decision-maker we are working with (i.e., the board) will not understand the internal buy-in that
the decision-maker might have finally understood based on our interactions.” With a lack of
communication and understanding, this will cause a complete breakdown in the process of
obtaining a partnership. Communication for an exchange of goods and services is an integral
piece in a partnership as this study has mentioned in Chapter Two based on the conceptual
framework. Without proper communication between one party to the other, an exchange of
goods and services will not happen (Crompton, 2004).
Lack of communication can also be seen as a sign of poor leadership as three of the six
participants expressed. “As a corporate partnership sales professional, it is our job to make sure
each decision-maker we work with is equipped with the necessary tools and information that
when they leave the meeting they can speak word for word on the value of the partnership, our
club, and our league to any and all who ask,” said Participant 2. Three of the six participants also
made it clear that they are “always on.” Meaning, they make sure the decision-maker can always

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reach them to answer all questions they may have. “Decision-makers need to know they can
reach me, our club needs the funding and if I must take a call outside of traditional working
hours, then I will do so. I have experienced the pitfalls of not being able to properly
communicate with a decision-maker and seen many opportunities get erased per the result,” as
Participant 1 expressed. There is no “easy sell” in doing what we do as Participant 4 claimed.
Participant 4 further expressed, “we take pride in being able to bring in large amounts of
investments to our club and in doing so we need to make sure decision-makers are properly
communicated with. If they aren’t, it looks poorly on us, our club, and our leadership, and it
makes it very difficult to form a partnership or conduct business with that decision-maker again.”
Lack of communication has a ripple effect that could be the deciding factor when forming
a partnership with a club and a decision-maker. “Poor communication as has been the case in
some instances can be considered learning experiences, however, we don’t have the capacity to
be learning on multiple occasions. If a club or partnership sales professional doesn’t find ways to
properly communicate with a decision-maker, then a club will have a hard time receiving the
investment amounts in a timely manner needed to fund their future aspirations” said Participant
2. Communication is a deciding factor for a decision-maker to sign off on a partnership with a
club within the NWSL.
Theme Three: Budget
Much like decision-makers needing to know the return of their investment when
partnering with a women’s professional soccer club, the budget that decision-makers equate to a
partnership is another common occurrence each participant referenced when a decision-maker
does not want to partner with a club within the NWSL.

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Five of the six participants mentioned that decision-makers do want to make a
partnership happen, and for the most part, a majority can see the value in women’s professional
soccer. However, as previously mentioned, the lack of education and understanding of women’s
professional soccer causes decision-makers to not budget enough of their marketing/partnership
dollars to being able to partner with a women’s professional soccer club. Because of this
misunderstanding, decision-makers may have spent most of their budget with a men’s
professional team or not expected to have to pay such a high amount for a partnership with a
women’s soccer club as Participant 4 expressed.
“Decision-makers who have not invested in women’s sports have not been able to fully
grasp that the investment is like men’s professional sports. Most decision-makers that reach out
to me don’t even budget enough in their partnership portfolio to even be having a conversation
for a partnership with our club” said Participant 2. Even the decision-makers who can see the
value in the partnership with a women’s professional soccer club are being pressured by their
boards to not go over their budget and I constantly hear, “my hands are tied” as Participant 3
expressed. “It’s unfortunate that I speak with a lot of decision-makers who can see the value in
our women’s professional soccer club but are told they can’t spend a specific amount with us
because they need to be able to spend in other areas (i.e., men’s professional sports, player
endorsements etc.), no matter how much I try to compare and contrast the similarities and
differences of why investing in our club will give the decision-maker the value they are
needing,” said Participant 4.
“No matter how great of sellers we may be, or how successful our club is doing, at the
end of the day, most decision-makers just can’t spend the type of investment we are requiring
due to their budget” said Participant 1. Decision-makers budgets have become another roadblock

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on the path for partnership sales professionals to form a partnership and gain the necessary
funding for their clubs.
Discussion: Research Question Two
Contributing factors like lack of education, communication, and inability to budget
enough for a partnership have all been discussed as three common reasons why a decision-maker
would not want to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League. Two of the
three factors are controllable (education and communication), where the one (budget) is out of
the control of the partnership sales professionals. However, the more education and
communication decision-makers receive, quite possibly, the more budget they will allocate
towards their women’s sports partnerships and can bring a real change to the lack of funding that
women’s professional soccer clubs are currently facing.
Key Take Aways:
• Education refers to the lack of understanding that decision-makers have for women’s
professional sports, especially women’s professional soccer within the National Women’s
Soccer League. The more educated decision-makers become, the more opportunity
decision-makers can provide when being able to partner with a club within the NWSL
and see the value of the league and clubs within the NWSL.
• Lack of communication by partnership sales professionals and decision-makers can cause
a ripple effect that in turn could lead to a break down in the partnership opportunity and
end any deal before it even gets the chance to flourish. Poor communication has a
reflection on leadership which could cause decision-makers not to want to invest in a
partnership with the league or clubs associated within the league.

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• Budget is a major cause for concern in decision-makers not being able to partner and
offer adequate funding to women’s professional soccer clubs. Decision-makers do not
fully grasp that partnering with a women’s professional soccer club is along the same
investment terms as partnering with a men’s professional sports team and do not equate
enough of their marketing/partnership dollars in doing so.
Findings: Research Question Three
RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of becoming a
partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer equitable funding in
comparison to men’s professional sports?
Research question three was designed from the comparisons between men’s professional
athletes’ and women’s professional athletes’ salaries, gender pay gap, and the non-equitable
partnership spending between men’s and women’s professional sports by decision-makers which
was mentioned throughout Chapters One and Two.
The purpose of research question three is to understand the reasons that decision-makers
have not been able to find the value in women’s professional sports, especially women’s
professional soccer to offer equitable funding and partnership investments to the clubs within the
National Women’s Soccer League. Based on the responses of the six participants of the study,
and the analyzed data through the codebook, three themes emerged. These three themes which
will be displayed in more detail below are: (1) Broadcast Exposure, (2) Influence, and (3)
Growth.

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Theme One: Broadcast Exposure
Lack of broadcast exposure is a major contributor to decision-makers not wanting to offer
significant funding to women’s professional sports, most importantly women’s professional
soccer within the NWSL. The contributing factor to this is due to decision-makers not being able
to justify a large partnership spend when matches are not regularly shown on local or national
television broadcasts/popular streaming networks etc. according to Participant 1. Participant 1
also said, “our club gets roughly two to three local broadcast opportunities but the times that we
get are inconvenient for viewership. They are later in the night, or during other large events that
are taking place like MLB (Major League Baseball) playoffs, NFL (National Football League)
Sunday gamedays, or college football mid-day Saturday games.” Much like Participant 1
expressed, Participant 6 mentioned, “the exposure we get for our club and our league is not ideal
for a decision-maker to justify a large investment like they would for example with the MLS
(Major League Soccer), and I hope the league will finalize a new television deal soon to get us
the exposure we need for future success and funding opportunities.”
Decision-makers want to partner with teams who can offer them exposure as this helps to
justify partnership investments. “If media outlets will not give us the opportunity to be shown on
more broadcast stations like men’s professional teams are given, it will always be a difficult sell
for us,” explained Participant 2. Participant 6 expressed, “it’s not always the decision-makers
understanding of value for our club, it’s the broadcast stations that also need to understand the
value of our league and give us the respect we deserve with better broadcast times and more
exposure.”
Each participant mentioned how their matches, (with the select few on local broadcast or
CBS Sports Network), all fall on Paramount + (a paid subscription streaming service). And as

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Participant 3 said, “Paramount + does a poor job broadcasting our matches not only with the
production quality but the time slots they give our club.” Each one of the participants mentioned
that a new television deal was in the making, but for the time being, “as sales professionals
working with decision-makers that need to see the value of the exposure of our club, Paramount
+ is not helping the cause for justification to receive multi-year partnerships by decision-makers
who value ROI on exposure for their brand to reach larger audiences,” said Participant 5.
Participant 2 made it clear that the men’s professional soccer league, the MLS (Major
League Soccer) uses a paid subscription platform as well. Nevertheless, according to Participant
2, the MLS is on Apple TV, and “Apple TV generates more viewers not just because of the
MLS, but more viewers will purchase Apple TV because it has programs that audiences want to
watch.” As Participant 2 further expressed, “if we got on a platform like Apple TV, even if
someone was not a fan of our sport or know anything about our league, the more times you see
something, the more it sticks in your mind, and you’re interested to tune in even for a little
while.” Being able to tune in on a platform with a high level of viewership like Apple TV could
generate new fans and allow for decision-makers to see the growth and potential to offer
partnerships to women’s clubs within the NWSL. Each participant made it clear, the more
exposure, the more valuable a partnership will become.
Theme Two: Influence
The theme of influence emerged from the six participants when all kept describing how
decision-makers like to “follow the leader” as Participant 6 called it. Participant 6 also expressed
that decision-makers do not want to be used as the “guinea pigs” of the women’s professional
soccer landscape. Much like Participant 2 addressed, “decision-makers don’t want to put
significant amounts of investment down when they are unsure of the return of investment. But, if

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other brands are putting the investment in, then decision-makers will follow one another or try to
compete against one another so they are not one step behind their competitors.”
As Participant 1 so eloquently put it, “the more companies spend in women’s sports; the
more other companies will follow.” Influence plays a major role in the spend of women’s
professional soccer, as Participant 5 alluded. Furthermore, Participant 5 expressed, “nowadays
when a decision-maker makes a large investment, it has a wide array of influence on other
decision-makers, which will cause a new agenda and objectives to emerge and quite possibly
change the ecosystem of women’s professional sports and certainly women’s professional
soccer.”
More influence by decision-makers spending allows for more investment in the NWSL
and the clubs within the league. The more spending adds greater optics of the league and will
circulate a buzz of national presence. This presence will cause a supply and demand effect on the
types of partnerships and investment amounts of the partnerships by the decision-makers as was
explained by Participant 4. “The greater the influence by decision-makers investing in women’s
professional soccer, the more equitable funding a club can possibly receive” explained
Participant 6. Exposure will always be a way that decision-makers can use as a tactic to justify
partnering with a professional sports team, and in this case, women’s professional teams.
Theme Three: Growth
Each participant made it clear that the growth of the NWSL is at an all-time high which
makes corporate partnerships for the clubs within the league even more valuable. The literature
review in Chapter Two provides the same type of details to adhere to what the participants were
expressing from their responses to form this theme.

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“Investment in women’s sports is almost like creating something from the ground up that
can give a decision-maker more of an opportunity to showcase their brand in ways that men’s
professional sports may not allow or not have the capability to do,” expressed Participant 5.
Participant 1 mentioned, “Men’s professional sports have no room to grow in the partnership
space and have little opportunities to be creative that hasn’t already been done before. Forming a
partnership with a women’s team allows decision-makers to be creative as more women’s
leagues are forming and can offer new opportunities to these decision-makers.” The growth and
creativity that circulates around women’s professional soccer still equates to a large investment
for a partnership Participant 2 explained. Participant 2 continued, “the investments in corporate
partnerships for women’s professional soccer may be higher than what a decision-maker might
understand, but they are technically cheaper than a men’s partnership due to women’s sports
being undervalued in the corporate partnership space.” As of now, being undervalued by
decision-makers causes partnership investments to be less expensive than men’s sports.
However, Participant 6 made it clear that there will come a time when women’s professional
sports will be given the respect by decision-makers and those who see the value now will only
reap the benefits in the long run and grow their brand with the trajectory of success women’s
professional sports has shown.
“As sales professionals within women’s professional soccer, we have always been told
that being able to show a timeline of where the NWSL was to where it is now is a tremendous
selling opportunity to show the growth of the league and of the women’s professional soccer
landscape to a decision-maker” said Participant 1. Growth in women’s professional soccer has
not only been attributed to the success of the National Women’s Soccer League, but the
foundation in which the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) built for the future of

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the sport. For example, according to Participant 3, “If you look at attendance and opportunity for
a decision-maker of a brand to get the most bang for their investment buck, partnering with a
women’s professional soccer club enables that experience due to the number of fans each club
draws and the loyalty of the fans within the NWSL who were first USWNT fans.” Two of the six
participants had similar reactions in mentioning women’s soccer fans, as they expressed their
undivided loyalty to the players who are now playing in the NWSL who also play(ed) on the
USWNT. They mentioned women’s soccer fans are different; they are loyal, they populate a new
demographic than most men’s sports, and they have been through the ups and downs of women’s
professional soccer from the begging to the end starting with the 2016 USWNT lawsuit.
Participant 3 expressed, “women’s professional soccer fans continue to show up and set
attendance records to show the nation that women’s professional soccer is here to stay. I can only
hope that decision-makers will understand this growth and invest now before it’s too late for
them to invest later.”
Understanding the growth of the clubs within the NWSL needs to be properly identified
by decision-makers of corporate partnerships. The more investment put into women’s
professional soccer, the more valuable the sport becomes as all participants suggested.
Discussion: Research Question Three
Each participant had a suggested outcome on how to embrace opportunities of equitable
funding for decision-makers to see the value in partnering with a women’s professional soccer
club. However, the overarching occurrence from each participant is that most of these themes
can only be done when more awareness on these matters can be brought to light so that change
can occur for women’s professional soccer. Exposure relies on broadcast networks, influence

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relies on decision-makers to follow the lead of others, and growth relies on the success of the
clubs to showcase the success of the National Women’s Soccer League.
Key Takeaways:
• Without proper exposure via broadcast or streaming platforms decision-makers have a
hard time equating a large and equitable investment in corporate partnerships with
women’s professional soccer.
• Decision-makers are influenced by the way other decision-makers before them have
conducted their partnerships with clubs within the National Women’s Soccer League.
• Growth in the National Women’s Soccer League has continued to flourish, it is up to the
decision-makers to understand that growth and evaluate if that is worth the investment
that they want to spend for corporate partnerships and if so, can lead to equitable
funding.
Summary
Qualitative semi-structured interview questions were used to conduct the interviews of
the six participants for this study. Each participant was interviewed for upwards of thirty to sixty
minutes via Zoom to allow for adequate time in order for a participant to offer as much
information as they would like to answer each question asked of them.
By using a qualitative approach to understand the value that decision-makers place on
partnering with a women’s professional soccer club within the National Women’s Soccer
League, this enabled the study to move outside the quantitative approach of gathering numbers
as is commonly done (as described in Chapter Two), to understanding the narrative as to why
decision-makers lack the understanding of value and equitable funding for women’s professional
soccer.

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By using a qualitative approach to understand value and investments, this can bring more
awareness and a possible change to the lack of funding in women’s professional soccer by
corporate partnership decision-makers. The participants of this study who work day-to-day with
decision-makers of corporate partnerships within the National Women’s Soccer League can be
used as change agents to better prepare other corporate partnership sales professionals within the
NWSL when they are discussing corporate partnerships with decision-makers. In order to
become these change agents, I have offered future recommendations for practice in the following
chapter.
Lastly, being able to pinpoint the ideas and themes provided by the participants of the
study like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that was found in research question one, lack of
education which was found in research question two, and the lack of broadcast exposure that was
found in research question three are all components that will be addressed as future
recommendations for further discussion found in Chapter Five.

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Chapter Five: Recommendations
This study is significant for two reasons. The first is the focus on the lack of funding that
decision-makers of corporate partnerships offer to women’s professional sports, specifically
women’s professional soccer within the National Women’s Soccer League. The second area of
focus is to understand what causes (if any) a decision-maker of corporate partnerships to choose
to partner with a club within the NWSL. The importance of both allows partnership sales
professionals working within the clubs to properly communicate to decision-makers the value of
obtaining equitable financial opportunities similar to their men’s professional counterparts.
When decision-makers of corporate partnerships do not understand the value of women’s
professional sports, they cannot offer equitable partnership opportunities for their continued
growth and success.
Research Questions
The research questions were designed to incorporate the significance of the study and
used as a guide to offer future recommendations, as will be discussed in Chapter Five.
• RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of corporate partnerships require when
choosing to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to want to partner with a
club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of
becoming a partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer
equitable funding in comparison to men’s professional sports?

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Conceptual/Theoretical Framework Overview
Embedded within the research questions addressed the theoretical and conceptual
framework of the study, known as exchange theory. Crompton (2004) discovered that exchange
theory follows two key elements when a decision-maker and a sports property want to form a
partnership: (1) two or more parties exchange resources for the common good, and (2) the
reciprocating parties must equally value the resources offered by each party. Exchange theory
was also used to identify the conceptual framework of the study as discussed by Crompton
(2004), who determined that exchange theory relates to communication opportunities offered by
a sport organization and a partner to find the benefits sought by both parties for equal value
within a partnership. It was later discovered; that to successfully build a corporate image through
partnerships, a partner’s identity must be closely coordinated through communication, trust,
value, and fairness (Cunningham et al., 2009).
Summary of Research Findings
Based on Chapter Four’s findings, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted
via Zoom with six participants who work day-to-day with corporate partnership decision-makers.
These interviews were used to address the significance, research questions, and validation of the
theoretical and conceptual framework of the study. Using a codebook to decipher the
participants’ responses to the questions that were asked pertaining to the research questions of
this study (as described in Chapter Three), the themes in Chapter Four emerged. Embedded
within each of the recommendations found within this chapter associate the research findings
with the appropriate recommendation.

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Recommendations Overview
The three recommendations within Chapter Five: 1) purposeful strategic engagement
initiatives, 2) end-of-season recaps, and 3) more visibility opportunities are used to highlight the
importance of value that women’s professional soccer clubs within the National Women’s
Soccer League can offer a corporate partnership decision-maker to be considered for adequate
and equitable funding.
Each of the three recommendations intended to look outside the numbers of a corporate
partnership as has previously been stated in Chapter Three when researching value. According to
Harrison and Bukstein (2017), typically, when researching value, it is common to use
quantitative methods. Quantitative methods focus solely on the numbers and not the ways to
form or obtain a partnership by a sports property and a decision-maker as this study considered.
The three recommendations below; are intended to bring awareness to other components of value
that align with qualitative semi-structured data and the theoretical and conceptual framework of
exchange theory.
The three recommendations highlight what needs to occur within women’s professional
soccer for decision-makers of corporate partnerships to understand the value of the NWSL,
clubs, and players. The recommendations further express what actions need to take place for
women’s professional soccer to be considered a “big business entity” (Springer, 2022b, pg. 10).
Being considered a big business entity obtains necessary recognition by corporate partnership
decision-makers to offer equitable funding for a women’s professional soccer club within the
NWSL. Lastly, the recommendations are used to further address what the clubs and National
Women’s Soccer League can continue to do to gain the attention of corporate partnership
decision-makers for more funding opportunities. The concepts of the recommendations were

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incorporated from each of the research themes associated to the three research questions of the
study, which is discussed in Chapter Four.
Recommendation 1: Purposeful strategic engagement initiatives surrounding the National
Women’s Soccer League
As the participants suggested in Chapter Four pertaining to research question one,
corporate partnership decision-makers need to find ways to gain ROI (return on investment), DEI
(diversity, equity, and inclusion), and alignment revealing the value of partnering with a
women’s professional soccer club. When considering purposeful strategic engagement, it
incorporates the three themes associated with the findings of research question one and can alter
how corporate partnership decision-makers view the value and investments of partnering with a
women’s professional soccer club within the NWSL. It needs to be properly expressed to
corporate partnership decision-makers that as the NWSL has continued to grow, so has the
valuations of the clubs within the League (Anderson, 2023). Several of the NWSL clubs have or
soon will be sold to new owners which will raise the bar for valuations and return on investments
of partnerships (Silverman, 2024). According to Caiti Donovan, a lead growth strategy officer of
women’s pro sports, she proclaimed, “the time to invest in women’s sports was yesterday…it is
not a risk the way it might have seemed three to five years ago” (Lefton, 2024). However, if the
league does not find a purposeful strategic engagement plan, decision-makers will have a
difficult time understanding the value of the NWSL.
To make this recommendation functional, it needs to come from the NWSL headquarters
to develop at least three strategic engagement initiatives. These three initiatives are universal
touchpoints for all corporate partnership sales professionals within the twelve NWSL clubs.
These touchpoints will be used as an overall guide for partnership sales professionals when they

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engage with decision-makers of corporate partnerships. Having a solidarity strategic initiative
would positively attract decision-makers to want to invest in women’s professional soccer clubs
based on uniformity and structure.
For the NWSL headquarters to develop these purposeful strategic engagement initiatives
to be passed down to the clubs, at least three action plans need to occur. This first plan of action
would be to develop a collaborative marketing campaign that tells each club’s unique stories and
the players identities within the club. Allowing decision-makers to highlight the alignment of
their brand through the storytelling of the club, and players within the league will generate more
interest in wanting to invest in women’s professional soccer. Developing this marketing
alignment will play an integral role in the way most decision-makers can diversify their sports
portfolios. By understanding the benefits of the marketing campaigns, this will be a strong
touchpoint for why it is good business to invest in women’s professional soccer when decisionmakers need to discuss with their board members and shareholders to invest.
The second plan of action; the NWSL needs to create a unified mission and vision
statement that addresses women’s professional soccer’s impact. The impact can be highlighted
through certain areas like players being role models for young women, fan demographics, and
commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The mission and vision statements will impact
the value of a partnership in a financially positive way between a decision-maker and a women’s
professional soccer club because the decision-makers will have a clear understanding of how
their investment is growing the future of women’s professional soccer, and how they will justify
their alignment with the club.
Finally, the last plan of action for this recommendation, forming a unified youth
development program that allows for creative measures on ROI for decision-makers. The

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program will show decision-makers that by investing in a partnership with a club within the
NWSL, incorporated within the investments give back to the youth and associate the decisionmakers brand meaningfully for fans and consumers. Partnership sales professionals can tell the
story of how brands associated with the decision-makers gave an opportunity for the youth
(especially young girls) to believe that there is a future in professional sports for them one day.
Associating the brand with youth initiatives will cause more investments because decisionmakers will receive the recognition for offering more funding to women’s professional soccer
and giving opportunities to the growth of the sport.
Recommendation 2: Offer end-of-season recaps for current and future decision-makers of
corporate partnerships
Based on the participants responses in Chapter Four when discussing research question
two, the three themes: education, communication, and budget were all understood as reasons that
a decision-maker of a corporate partnership would not want to partner with a club within the
National Women’s Soccer League. Each of the six participants expressed that decision-makers
either did not know the success of the club they were invested in or did not understand the
benefits of partnering with a women’s professional soccer club. Without the proper education
and communication offered to these decision-makers by corporate partnership sales
professionals, the decision-makers cannot allocate enough of their partnership budgets to become
partners with a women’s professional soccer club. As was mentioned in Chapter One, decisionmakers of corporate partnerships need to be properly educated on the value to fund women’s
sports and be able to offer equitable opportunities as men’s sports receive (Didulica, 2019).
Based on the findings of research question two, I recommend that the National Women’s
Soccer League require each club to hold a three-day open enrollment end-of- season recap,

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which will take place via Zoom for ease of purpose. The recap will occur two months after the
championship match of the current season concludes. Incorporating an end-of- season recap will
allow sales professionals to highlight the success of the twelve clubs within the NWSL. The
recap will enable more communication, relationship building, and understanding of how a
partnership performed during the season. The recap will also allow for decision-makers to
understand how much a partnership will cost for future budget allocation. When decision-makers
understand the success, they will be able to budget more and make it more obtainable to offer
equitable funding for a partnership with a club within the NWSL. Lastly, conducting an end-ofseason recap will help a decision-maker get the necessary buy-in from their stakeholders to form
a partnership, renew an existing partnership, or simply learn the benefits of partnering with a
women’s professional soccer club now or at a future date.
The NWSL is expected to grow to by another two clubs making those the thirteenth and
fourteenth clubs at the start of the 2024 regular season, the growth alone offers more investment
opportunities for decision-makers of corporate partnerships. When decision-makers understand
this growth by corporate partnership sales professionals, a greater push in partnerships with
NWSL clubs will accelerate (Silverman, 2024). To allow for this recommendation to be
implemented, the following three key procedures need to occur. The first procedure entails the
NWSL headquarters and twelve clubs within the league be required to send a mass email to all
current and future corporate partnership decision-makers. The email will obtain the necessary
information on who, what, where, and when the end-of-season recap will occur. In doing so, the
intent is that each of the corporate partnership decision-makers will want to take part in learning
more about the league and affiliated clubs within the league by offering more education,

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communication, and understanding of how much to allocate of their partnership budgets to form
a partnership with each of the clubs within the NWSL.
The second procedure entails a requirement of at least two full-time corporate partnership
sales professionals from each club and at least one National Women’s Soccer League
representative to attend the end-of-season recaps with the decision-makers (either in-person or
via Zoom). By attending these meetings, this will create more relationship-building,
understanding, and communication for each of the decision-makers of corporate partnerships to
be educated and aware of what it takes to partner with a club within the NWSL. Plus, having the
ability to connect with an individual makes it easier to build a relationship to discuss the funding
needs of women’s professional soccer.
Finally, the last procedure requires each of the corporate partnership sales professionals
to make an overview deck highlighting the success of their club, the costs of a partnership, and
the history of the NWSL. The overview deck will help a decision-maker be properly equipped
with all the information necessary to get the internal buy-in to want to partner with a club within
the National Women’s Soccer League. Having an overview deck will enable the decision-maker
to not forget any information that was discussed via the meetings, and be able to properly
educate their stakeholders when deciding on investing in women’s professional soccer.
Recommendation 3: Establish more opportunities for the visibility of the National
Women’s Soccer League
The participants made it known throughout the findings of research question three found
in Chapter Four, that inequitable funding occurs when the National Women’s Soccer League and
the clubs affiliated with the league do not receive the type of value they deserve because they do
not get enough exposure via local or national broadcast. When a decision-maker must evaluate

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between a women’s professional sport and a men’s professional sport, media exposure plays an
integral part in this decision. As was mentioned in Chapter One, media attention plays an integral
part in the outcome in terms of financial success. That is; the more exposure a club receives
nationally, the more value decision-makers of corporate partnerships place on a successful
partnership between the sponsor and a sponsee (Didulica, 2019).
Media exposure can cause a ripple effect with other decision-makers choosing to partner
because of the importance for the investment. Participants expressed how powerful influence can
be on other decision-makers, which can affect what decision-makers choose to invest their
partnership budgets in. When influence is motivated by exposure, the NWSL needs to find a way
to increase that exposure. I recommend that the NWSL headquarters find ways to receive better
broadcast rights that offer more exposure for the clubs within the league. As KC Current coowner Angie Long expressed, “The importance of a new television deal will still need to be
made clear as to what types of demographics will watch and the ease of access in which they will
be able to watch. All eyes are on us and the ability now, more than ever, to have more product
available for partners” (Silverman, 2024).
The League needs to renegotiate the current television contract and find a contract that
offers more exposure than what they are currently experiencing. The new television contract will
indicate the growth and success of the league by solidifying opportunities for more value that can
be shown through greater visibility of the players, the clubs, and the NWSL. Greater exposure
will cause more attention, and corporate partnership decision-makers will be easily influenced to
want to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League. Having more exposure
allows partnership sales professionals to have a greater chance of receiving more funding for
their club because they can communicate the growth of the league by the broadcast exposure.

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The benefits of this recommendation will have three key aspects associated with the
increase in visibility; the first aspect highlights the need of greater visibility. Greater visibility
will offer more awareness of the sport of women’s professional soccer, and it will gain a greater
audience that decision-makers will want to invest higher and more equitable investments in for
partnerships with the clubs within the NWSL. The more fans who are able to tune in from a
national broadcast exposure will become more reluctant to appreciate the brands who support
women’s professional soccer. The greater need for visibility will enable equitable partnership
funding as men’s professional sports regularly receive because decision-makers will be able to
understand the value on an even playing field.
The second aspect associated with this recommendation involves influence. The more
visibility for the National Women’s Soccer League, the more influence decision-makers will
have on one another to become a partner of the clubs within the league. With visibility comes
competition between decision-makers to ensure their brands are affiliated with the clubs. The
competition between decision-makers will allow partnership sales professionals to request
adequate funding investments and use the leverage of competing brands to do so.
Lastly, the third aspect encompasses the cost of a partnership with more visibility.
Increasing visibility will enable corporate partnership sales professionals to justify the cost of
partnering with a women’s professional soccer club. Greater exposure means more fans, the
more fans mean more purchasing power or influence the brand has on these individuals, the more
a partnership with a women’s professional soccer club will cost. The justification of the cost
because of the visibility by the decision-maker to their board will offer equitable funding that
women’s professional soccer clubs have needed for their continued growth and success.

96
Limitations
While this study aims to identify the lack of value and funding in women’s professional
sports by decision-makers of corporate partnerships it does have limitations that can be
considered for future research. This study was designed around the current structure of women’s
professional soccer when conducting the research. However, women’s professional soccer is
evolving constantly, and by the time this research was complete, there could already be changes
to the findings and recommendations of this study. This study was limited to the biases of the
sales professionals speaking on behalf of the decision-makers of corporate partnerships, which is
a cause for limiting the study’s findings because no decision-makers were interviewed. The study
was also limited to the biases of the researcher as I became the instrument of limitation as all
information flowed through myself. Furthermore, this study did not analyze the perspectives of
women’s professional soccer players within the NWSL. This limitation opens the possibilities
for future research to find out how the players view the causes of value portrayed by the
decision-makers of corporate partnerships to fund their sport. Similarly, future research should
analyze more women’s professional sports leagues as this study focused on the qualitative data
from participants within the National Women’s Soccer League. Other women’s leagues may or
may not have the same types of disparities as the National Women’s Soccer League, which is a
cause for limitation and future research.
The study’s use of qualitative data and only six participants used are also causes for
limitations as future researchers can use quantitative data and more participants to examine a
larger sample to assess the value of partnerships by decision-makers within the National
Women’s Soccer League. Lastly, this study has a limitation on the focus of the analyzed
participants as the six participants were from the United States. Conducting a similar study

97
globally outside of the United States should be a need for future research as soccer is the number
one sport globally, with 83% of countries claiming it as their top pastime sport (Sponsor United,
2022c).
Delimitations
I was able to delimit the sampling audience to be full-time corporate partnership sales
professionals who are working in the partnership offices of their respective clubs within the
NWSL. By doing so, I was able to capture the necessary data needed to answer the central
research questions surrounding this study. By focusing on the corporate partnership sales
professionals within the twelve clubs of the NWSL, this study continued to be delimited as it did
not consider other departments working within the front offices (i.e., marketing, ticket sales,
operations, etc.). The individuals not used for the interviews who are working in the clubs would
have offered outside-the-scope information on value that would not have been credible to the
study.
As most qualitative studies focus on in-person interviews, this study used the technology
platform known as Zoom to conduct the interviews to delimit the travel and time it would take
the researcher to go across the United States to interview the participants in person. Being able to
conduct the interviews over Zoom delimited the amount of time needed to evaluate the overall
study’s findings based on the participants’ responses to the twelve interview questions.
Analyzing the information provided by those who work day-to-day with decision-makers
of corporate partnerships and using participants who express the value of the NWSL was useful
to the credibility of this study. To get a true measure of value, it was imperative to delimit those
that do not work on an everyday basis with decision-makers of corporate partnerships, as they
may not have the same definition of value as the participants being analyzed in this study.

98
Lastly, most front office staff members did not have their work emails on the teams’
websites, which caused the researcher to have to send the initial email to set up the interview to a
general email address found on the team’s main home page, which was addressed to the head of
the corporate partnership sales department requesting an interview.
Recommendations for Future Research
This study was conducted to identify the lack of value and funding that decision-makers
of corporate partnerships place on women’s professional soccer. Focusing on the experiences of
the six corporate partnership sales professionals within the twelve clubs who work day-to-day
with decision-makers of corporate partnerships, enabled opportunities to expand for future
research because of the credibility each of the participants offered to the study.
Recommendations for future research include interviewing corporate partnership
decision-makers who were or will be interested in partnering with one of the twelve clubs within
the NWSL. It is recommended to continue using semi-structured qualitative interview questions
to gain a greater perspective on value by these decision-makers and what can be done to put an
end to the lack of funding they have maintained for the National Women’s Soccer League. While
considering interviewing decision-makers, it is also recommended to look outside of the National
Women’s Soccer League (which is only played in the United States), and understand why global
decision-makers have continuously undervalued women’s professional soccer long before the
existence of the National Women’s Soccer League. It would be recommended to conduct a study
to understand if economic considerations play an integral part in corporate partnership decisionmakers being able to invest in a women’s professional sport. I would also recommend
understanding the value media companies place within women’s professional sports. I would
suggest using other forms of theoretical and conceptual frameworks to conduct a study on value

99
that relates to the focus of this study, for example, Expectancy Value Theory. EVT could identify
any biases that decision-makers may have by choosing to partner with a women’s professional
sports team through the emphasis placed on value alone. And lastly, it is recommended to
compare multiple women’s professional sports leagues to decide if there is a common
denominator in the way decision-makers of corporate partnerships undervalue and offer
unequitable funding to women’s professional sports, not solely just women’s professional soccer
as this study identified.
Conclusion
Decision-makers of corporate partnerships play an integral role in the value and funding
of women’s professional soccer within the National Women’s Soccer League. Women’s
professional soccer club owners do not have the necessary means to adequately fund the needs of
the players and everyday expenses of the club, which is why they rely so heavily on corporate
partnerships (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022). Decision-makers have the power to offer an
opportunity financially that can give professional women’s athletes and leagues who receive
limited media exposure, limited on-field broadcasting, and limited marketing investments
adequate funding to indicate value to other decision-makers for greater partnership investments
(Lei et al., 2010). The influence decision-makers hold on one another can also be used as a way
to close the gender pay gap and offer equitable partnership funding (Knight & Birnbaum, 2022),
an issue that women’s professional sports have constantly experienced (Gersch, 2021).
Determining what decision-makers of corporate partnerships value, do not value, and the cause
of unequitable funding between men’s and women’s professional sports can be used as a change
agent for the future success and growth of women’s professional soccer. This understanding is
beneficial not only for women’s professional soccer but also for women’s professional sports

100
collectively. It is important to understand what the decision-makers are looking for in a
partnership. When partnership sales professionals need to speak with decision-makers on an
everyday basis, they need to be properly prepared and equipped to find a way to communicate
with a decision-maker. When proper communication is established by the partnership sales
professional and decision-maker, there is a greater chance for a decision-maker to understand the
value of women’s professional soccer while being able to offer equitable funding.
It is also essential for decision-makers to understand the importance of their funding
power on women’s professional soccer. The study is designed to speak to multiple groups of
individuals (i.e., decision-makers and corporate partnership sales professionals) so that all parties
involved can better understand the importance of women’s professional soccer. While also
understanding the influence decision-makers of corporate partnerships have on women’s
professional soccer within the National Women’s Soccer League, which is being identified as a
big business entity to make such large partnership investments (Springer, 2022b).
Value can be measured in multiple ways, for example quantitative methods designed
around understanding the numbers of success. Value can be measured in qualitative methods
designed around the who, what, where, when, and why. What is most important is to understand
that women’s professional sports, specifically women’s professional soccer within the National
Women’s Soccer League, have shown exponential growth over the years of the leagues’
existence. Further, I believe the league will only continue to grow. For the growth to continue,
financial support needs to occur, and decision-makers of corporate partnerships can be the first
of many to ensure that growth never stops.

101
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Appendix A: Figures
Figure 2:
Fan bases and positive response to sponsorship
Note: Received from Vision Insights. (2022). Fan bases and positive response to sponsorships.
Vision Insights.

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Figure 3:
Year-over-year new fan growth rate by league
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league. Sports Innovation Lab.

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Figure 4:
NWSL engagement rate comparison across leagues
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Zoomph.

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Appendix B: Draft qualitative semi-structured interview questions
Research Questions:
• RQ1. What types of values do decision-makers of corporate partnerships require when
choosing to partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ2. What causes decision-makers of corporate partnerships not to want to partner with a
club within the National Women’s Soccer League?
• RQ3. How can decision-makers of corporate partnerships understand the value of
becoming a partner with a club within the National Women’s Soccer League to offer
equitable funding in comparison to men’s professional sports?
Respondent Type: Minimum of four to a maximum of six corporate partnership full-time sales
staff members working within different regions of the United States (West, East, Midwest, and
South) as is where the twelve teams within the NWSL are located. Factors such as race, gender,
sexual orientation, years of experience will not be a factor in the types of participants to be
studied. The study will solely rely on full-time corporate partnership sales members within
different teams across different regions of the United States to offer insight of what decisionmakers value when wanting to partner with a team within the NWSL.
Introduction to the survey:
Thank you for participating in this interview to help bring awareness to the value decisionmakers place upon corporate partnerships within the National Women’s Soccer League and to
better understand the lack of funding by decision-makers of corporate partnerships within the
National Women’s Soccer League. I appreciate the time you have taken out of your schedule to
assist me, and I hope to make this exciting for you as someone who is able to use your

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experience to help shed some light on this issue at hand and bring about a possible change for the
future of this topic.
Quick background on myself, I am a USC doctoral student studying Organizational
Change and Leadership to better improve my leadership skills and do my part to help bring
change within my organization and my surrounding community. As we move through these
questions, I want to make it known that I am here as a researcher, and I am not here to judge or
offer answers to questions you may have for me. I am here to listen, take notes, record your
responses, and use this information to gain an understanding and perspective of you as my
participants, point of view.
This interview will not use your name as this will be confidential, and as a researcher I
hold an ethical standard to be fair and just in my recordings. Before we get started, I wanted to
make sure that it was alright with you that I do record your responses as this recording will be for
my use only to use as guidance so that I can capture all that you have to say in our interview.
Again, no names will be used in this study or based on your responses to the questions.
Participants will be classified as participant 1, 2, 3, etc.
From what you have just heard, do you have any questions for me about the study before
we get started? Lastly, one final question before we begin, may I have your permission to record
our conversation?

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Interview Questions Potential Probes RQ
Key Concept Addressed
*Exchange Theory*
1. Tell me about your
background in women’s
professional soccer?
a. How did you become
interested in this field?
b. How long have you
worked in this field?
1,2,3 Experience
2. What are the goals and
expectations of your role as a
full-time sales staff member
within the corporate partnership
department you work for?
a. How are you
supported to reach your
goals within the
department and team
you work for?
1, 2, 3 Experience, value,
communication
3 Can you describe your process
of prospecting a decision-maker
that you want to pitch your club
for the potential of a corporate
partnership/sponsorship?
a. How does the chain
of command go to
reach the decisionmakers?
2 Business resource,
communication, value
4. How do you prepare for your
sales pitch to the prospected
decision-maker for a
partnership/sponsorship?
a. What types of
communication
methods do you use for
the sales pitch?
2 Communication, trust, value

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5. What do you believe are the
values that decision-makers are
looking for in a
partnership/sponsorship with a
women’s professional soccer
club?
1, 2 Value, communication,
exchange of goods and
services
6. How are values of your club
and/or the NWSL communicated
to decision-makers within a sales
pitch?
a. What are other ways
that you indicate value
to decision-makers?
(i.e. social media posts,
game attendance,
television viewership,
etc.)?
1, 2 Value/ investment of funds,
and fair to both parties,
exchange of goods, trust
7. What do the decision-makers
that you are wanting to partner
with offer to your club?
a. What does your club
offer to decisionmakers you are
wanting to partner
with?
1, 2 Exchange of goods and
services, value, fair to both
parties
8. What are the reasons that a
decision-maker gives to you
when they decide not to partner
with your club?
a. What are the reasons
decision-makers give to
you when they do want
to partner with your
club?
1, 2 Value, fairness, exchange of
goods and services,
communication

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9. What do you consider to be
the comparisons that decisionmakers decide upon when
choosing to partner with a men’s
professional soccer club and a
women’s professional soccer
club?
1, 2, 3 Communication, exchange of
goods and services, trust
10. How would you describe the
equality in partnership funding
by decision-makers of corporate
partnerships between women’s
professional soccer clubs and
men’s professional soccer clubs?
a. What disparities in
the equality of
partnership funding
affect a decision-maker
from wanting to partner
with a women’s
professional soccer
club?
1, 2, 3 Value, comparison, fairness,
equity, investment of money
11. How can equality in
partnership funding for women’s
professional soccer clubs show
value to decision-makers who
have not yet partnered with
NWSL clubs?
1, 2, 3 Value, communication,
experience, ego, fairness,
compensation, investment
and money

117
12. What can be done for
decision-makers of corporate
partnerships to understand the
value of a women’s professional
soccer club within the National
Women’s Soccer League?
a. what other insights
would you like to
provide relating to
corporate partnership
funding within
women’s professional
soccer in the NWSL?
1, 2, 3 Value, communication,
compensation, experience
Conclusion to the survey:
This concludes our interview, and I cannot thank you enough for your time and your perspectives
on all that I had asked you. I appreciate the insight you provided to me to help assist my research
to bring a change on concepts that I see are problems within my industry. If I find myself
needing a follow-up question, can I contact you, and if so, is email acceptable? Again, thank you
for taking the time to speak with me, I will forever be grateful of your time, and as a reminder,
all answers are confidential, and no names will be disclosed. Thank you!

Abstract (if available)

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Asset Metadata

Creator Schenk, Louis (author)

Core Title More than a game: understanding the value of funding that corporate partnership decision-makers can offer clubs within the National Women’s Soccer League

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 03/29/2024

Defense Date 03/22/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag equality,exchange theory,funding,gender pay gap,Inequality,NWSL,OAI-PMH Harvest,United States,Value,women’s professional soccer clubs,women’s professional sports

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Hocevar, Dennis (committee chair), Grad, Richard (committee member), Picus, Lawrence (committee member)

Creator Email lllkschenk@gmail.com,lschenk@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113862146

Unique identifier UC113862146

Identifier etd-SchenkLoui-12738.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-SchenkLoui-12738

Document Type Dissertation

Format theses (aat)

Rights Schenk, Louis

Internet Media Type application/pdf

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Source 20240401-usctheses-batch-1133 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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