Founding
As a result of the US Women's National Team's (US WNT) first-place showing in the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup, a seemingly viable market for the sport germinated.
Feeding on the momentum of their victory, the twenty US WNT players, in partnership with John Hendricks of the Discovery Channel, sought out the investors, markets, and players necessary to form the eight-team league. The twenty founding players were: Michelle Akers, Brandi Chastain, Tracy Ducar, Lorrie Fair, Joy Fawcett, Danielle Fotopoulos, Julie Foudy, Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly, Shannon MacMillan, Tiffeny Milbrett, Carla Overbeck, Cindy Parlow, Christie Pearce, Tiffany Roberts, Briana Scurry, Kate (Markgraf) Sobrero, Tisha Venturini, Saskia Webber and Sara Whalen.
Initial investment in the league was provided by the following :
- Time Warner Cable $5 million
- Cox Enterprises $5 million
- Cox Communications $5 million
- Amos Hostetter, Jr. $5 million
- Comcast Corporation $5 million
- John Hendricks and Comcast Corporation $2.5 million each
- Amos Hostetter, Jr. and John Hendricks $2.5 million each
The US Soccer Federation approved membership of the league as a sanctioned Division 1 women's professional soccer league on August 18, 2000.
Read more about this topic: Women's United Soccer Association
Famous quotes containing the word founding:
“... there is no way of measuring the damage to a society when a whole texture of humanity is kept from realizing its own power, when the woman architect who might have reinvented our cities sits barely literate in a semilegal sweatshop on the Texas- Mexican border, when women who should be founding colleges must work their entire lives as domestics ...”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The responsible business men of this country put their shoulders to the wheel. It is in response to this universal demand that we are founding today, All-American Airways.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)