The primary docuseries in regards to the NWSL playoffs is right here simply in time for the 2025 season.
The brand new four-part collection, For the Win: NWSL, green-lit by the league’s organisers in February, was launched in full on Amazon’s Prime Video on Thursday. The collection promised an immersive, behind-the-scenes have a look at groups’ playoff runs throughout the 2024 postseason. The collection did precisely what it got down to do. Nonetheless, it now begs the query: what’s subsequent?
For longtime followers of the NWSL, the collection relives a number of the most thrilling highlights of the postseason. For brand spanking new followers, it’s a crash course on some must-know narratives heading into the upcoming marketing campaign. It’s particularly prevalent on the eve of Friday’s Problem Cup, a rematch of final yr’s championship recreation between the Orlando Delight and Washington Spirit with a trophy on the road.
The collection is a promising begin however it caters extra to the uninitiated.
Following a personal viewing of the movie on the Paley Heart for Media in New York Metropolis on Tuesday, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman stated that reaching new followers shall be “the theme of 2025.”
“You’re going to see loads of initiatives to present not simply our present core followers however future followers, too, a possibility to find us,” Berman stated throughout a Q&A moderated by former NFL quarterback Eli Manning, a Gotham FC minority proprietor, with Gotham defender Nealy Martin and the movie’s director, Marie Margolius. “That was the entire technique behind our media deal, and that’s going to be what you’re going to see manifest all through this yr, which is to see the NWSL and our gamers displaying up in unsuspecting locations.”
A type of initiatives contains the league’s “Simply Watch” advertising and marketing marketing campaign launching subsequent week.
The thought for the docuseries got here collectively final yr, Berman stated. On the time, the league was pitched by “the entire prime producers and administrators” for tasks in regards to the NWSL, she stated. The league realized the chance it had and ultimately partnered with the manufacturing studio Phrases + Footage for the collection. Prime Video, one of many league’s media rights holders, later agreed to hold the collection.
“Telling (gamers’) tales, each on and off the pitch, is the easiest way for us to verify all people is aware of who we’re,” Berman stated, “and hopefully then drive them in the direction of watching the video games, as a result of that’s how we’re going to develop the enterprise and get these gamers paid what they’re value.”
The docuseries is only one ingredient in a bigger recipe to develop publicity for the NWSL. The hope is that the docuseries will choose up on the profitable momentum from the primary yr of the league’s historic four-year media rights deal, which incorporates ESPN, CBS, Prime Video and Scripps Sports activities.
Margolius, the collection’ director, was additionally a producer on , which adopted the U.S. girls’s nationwide staff throughout their World Cup run in 2023. In an interview with earlier than the premiere, Margolius described the brand new docuseries as a dream mission, particularly as somebody who performed collegiately at Harvard College and later professionally in Sweden.
“I performed soccer my complete life. It was and is a large a part of my id,” Margolius stated. “Attending to direct this mission was, to start with, in so some ways, like a dream come true, but additionally very easy, as a result of I’ve been a fan of the NWSL for thus lengthy.”
Margolius even performed in opposition to a number of the gamers highlighted within the movie, like Orlando’s co-captain, Kylie Strom. The 2 crossed paths when Margolius was at Harvard and Strom at Boston College. Whereas Margolius’ background was precious for the method, her aim was to make the gamers relatable to a wider viewers, so she discovered methods to attach with them on a extra private degree whereas main the mission.
“The factor that allowed me to guide the storytelling course of was the power to attach with the gamers on a human degree,” Margolius stated. “We do loads of sports activities storytelling. However we at all times say, it’s truly not in regards to the sport in any respect. The game is the automobile that strikes the factor ahead. However the purpose these tales are so enjoyable to inform and listen to and see is the human stuff.”
The collection begins in Orlando 5 weeks earlier than playoffs and concludes with highlights from this yr’s busy offseason and expectations heading into 2025. The collection is, basically, a snapshot of the highs and lows of final yr’s postseason, strolling by the rivalries that have been shaped, together with the Gotham-Spirit battle at Audi Subject throughout the semifinals, and introducing the viewers to a variety of gamers, from and Orlando defender Strom to then-Gotham ahead Lynn Williams, who has since joined Seattle Reign.
The collection additionally explores the various retirements that occurred in 2024, as many query who the subsequent faces of the NWSL shall be. Rodman was closely featured all through the collection as a kind of recent faces. There’s a clumsy second with Amazon product placement when displaying that Rodman was named to the NWSL’s Greatest XI of the month offered, in fact, by Amazon Prime.
For followers who adopted the playoffs intently, the collection can really feel repetitive. That’s the place the unprecedented entry behind the scenes comes into play, providing longtime followers little nuggets to carry onto.
There are the fixed jumps to interviews with soccer analyst Heather O’Reilly or Bay FC co-founder Brandi Chastain, who want no introduction. There are additionally glimpses into personal moments, akin to when the North Carolina Braveness squad watched Orlando topple the Chicago Crimson Stars (now Chicago Stars), 4-1, within the quarterfinals. A participant is overheard jokingly asking, “Did Chicago not scout them?”
There’s additionally a scene the place veteran gamers O’Reilly and Alex Morgan chat at Kelley O’Hara’s retirement recreation at Crimson Bull Enviornment. Discussing retirement, they declared the eight-hour workday as manner too lengthy. (Relatable.)
The collection, nonetheless, solely scratches the floor and leaves out the form of context followers of the league are drawn to. There’s a temporary point out of disgraced ex-coach Paul Riley, for instance, when the collection delves into the Portland Thorns’ historic dominance. Whereas there may be point out of the Sally Yates report and pictures proven from the participant protests that adopted studies revealed by and Washington Submit that uncovered widespread abuse within the NWSL in 2021, not a lot else was talked about about that interval for the league.
Evidently was on objective, as Margolius stated the collection’ creators made a aware effort to maintain the narrative strictly centered on the playoffs.
“Whereas I definitely had an urge to be unique and make this stand out indirectly, I used to be much more conscientious of constructing certain that I used to be not altering the storytelling ways simply because it was girls on the heart of it,” Margolius stated throughout the Q&A on Tuesday. “So typically after we cowl girls’s sports activities, we are likely to water down the competitiveness or the fervour or the failure in lieu of very worthy tales, however tales of advocacy and household and the trials and tribulations of being a feminine athlete.”
That’s why, Margolius stated, they leaned closely into the grit and tenacity of the playoffs. That was probably on the threat of being too linear for some followers.
“On this league, there are stakes and there are heroes and there are underdogs,” Margolius stated. “All of the belongings you want for an amazing story.”
The collection will definitely go away the viewers wanting extra — both extra entry, extra tales, or extra narratives —however it additionally leaves room for there to be extra. It’s an fascinating place for the NWSL, because it grapples with what the league’s future will seem like because it grows by extra media publicity, high-profile buyers and enlargement.
For Margolius, the hope is extra tales will observe.
“Collection like this may encourage extra of this sort of storytelling and in doing so, we’ll develop the game,” she stated. “That’s the fantastic thing about these kind of collection.”
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