Excellent Read: How A Fan Community United To Send Indie Women’s Soccer Media To The World Cup

How a fan community united to send indie women's soccer media to the World Cup: https://t.co/s9KyFB9tQs

— Defector (@DefectorMedia) July 23, 2023

Something cheerful from Defector, for soccer (and social media) fans:

Most of the USWNT’s most exciting young players are Black. Trinity Rodman, Sophia Smith, Naomi Girma, Alana Cook, and Alyssa Thompson will be vital pieces as the team strives for a third title in as many tournaments. Outside the national team, young Black players like Jaedyn Shaw, Amirah Ali, and Michelle Cooper are making waves in the NWSL. But being a young star is no glamorous thing, especially when the media landscape around women’s soccer has had a troubling track record covering non-white players.

A few years ago, André Carlisle and Courtney Stith foresaw this rush of young Black and brown players into the pro game, and worried that the players would find themselves in, as Carlisle put it, “a harsh media space.” Those concerns led to the launch of Carlisle and Stith’s podcast, Diaspora United, in January 2021. The podcast is fueled by their desire to see women’s soccer covered adequately and passionately in the years between World Cups, and to center Black athletes within the game…

Shea Butter FC, another podcast, launched shortly thereafter in April 2021. Hosts SkyE Jordan and Sylvs Bullock share Diaspora United’s desire to focus on Black players and to offer informative, in-depth analysis of women’s soccer to its listeners. “Part of how we even connected is like, ‘Are we watching the same soccer?’” says Jordan. “We were seeing how we see soccer different from what we were seeing in the media.” Jordan says she and Bullock focus on “actually breaking down the game from our different perspectives, and then add a little culture.”

Highlighting excellent Black and brown players—as well as racist incidents and systems—is a critical part of accurate analysis, especially as more and more such players join the NWSL and USWNT. As Bullock says, people covering women’s soccer will have to consider that “the kids are here, and there’s more coming. And a lot of them are not white. And so what does it look like to cover this team who for the entirety of its existence has been a predominantly white team?” …

Seeing gaps in coverage, then asking Why don’t we just make something ourselves? is a sequence that has helped grow a lively ecosystem of independent media outlets covering women’s soccer. A couple years before the creation of Diaspora United and Shea Butter FC, Lesley Ryder and Emily Anderson set out on their own project. Ryder and Anderson were in France during the 2019 World Cup, and found themselves disappointed by how little coverage the games seemed to be getting. And what coverage they did see left them cold. “The coverage that we were getting was a lot of like, ‘Look at her go! She’s so strong!’” says Ryder, well aware that the tone of women’s sports coverage often and too easily tips over from empowering to patronizing.

So the pair—who are now married but had just moved in together at the time—thought, as Anderson puts it, “What if we have a silly time and make some stuff ourselves?” Now, four years later, Gal Pal Sports produces a steady stream of tweets, videos, and podcast episodes that aim to, in Ryder’s words, “fill that space between the super serious on-the-ground journalism and being totally uninformed.” Gal Pal just wants to be a nice space where all kinds of people can celebrate, gripe about, and laugh at women’s sports.

What’s grown around Diaspora United, Shea Butter FC, and Gal Pal over the last few years is a community of passionate soccer fans with a voracious appetite for dedicated coverage of the women’s game. The creators of these outlets see that passion in their daily engagement with fans. All of them recently were presented with, and shocked by, another example of just how much the community values their coverage: The sudden arrival of a fully funded trip to Australia and New Zealand to cover the 2023 World Cup.

For months the three podcasts’ hosts had—sometimes separately, often together—had talks with bigger companies about securing funding to travel to Australia and New Zealand to cover this year’s World Cup. These discussions ultimately went nowhere. “They were all like, ‘This is so cool. Love the idea of a group of journalists going to cover the World Cup. But unfortunately, we don’t have the budget,’” says Ryder…

Morgan Lavan, a self-professed “very online person,” soccer fan, and original supporter of both Diaspora United and Shea Butter FC, saw Gal Pal’s thread and asked if it would be OK for her to set up a fundraiser to send Diaspora United and Shea Butter FC down under. “It was just like, why not?” Lavan says. “Because, you know, it couldn’t hurt if it didn’t pan out. I definitely knew the women’s soccer community was going to support them. But the amount of support in the short amount of time was just wild. It was so cool to see.”

Lavan posted a tweet announcing the fundraiser at 9:17 p.m. on June 21. She says it raised $2,500 within an hour. “That’s when I was like, OK, I’m going to broaden it to $10,000,” she says. “I was like, $10,000 is so wild, but we hit $10,000 by midnight.” As of this writing, the fundraiser has reached $29,580.

It’s no surprise that the fundraiser took off on Twitter. The platform has long been the connective tissue of the women’s soccer community, allowing fans, journalists, and players to interact and share stories. Ryder notes that Gal Pal has “built up to a space where we’re making millions of impressions, which is awesome.” Anderson adds that she finds it useful while she’s photographing Chicago Red Stars games: “I’ll check Twitter to see who folks are talking about and make sure I get photos of that person, so it is like a lovely live feedback loop.” Bullock shares the same sentiment, calling the platform “gold” for Shea Butter FC. Diaspora United uses Twitter to share clips and highlights. “We can share, spread things when players do impressive things: great saves, nutmegs, disrespectful things, goals, whatever,” Carlisle says. “It’s just knowing that you’re a hub for things to celebrate what the players are doing.”…

Jordan notes that people did more than donate: “[People] reached out and were like, ‘Do you need help planning trips?’ ‘Do you need help doing XYZ?’ ‘We got free tickets!’”

For Lavan, having Diaspora United, Shea Butter FC, and Gal Pal on the ground at the World Cup opens up new possibilities for how the tournament can be covered. “Do you really want the story [of the World Cup] to be told only by specific, big media outlets who don’t seem very invested in women’s soccer, quite frankly?” Lavan asks. “I would rather be told by the people we know are invested and doing the work and really care about the players, and also have a diverse point of view.” …

Running an independent media outlet focused on women’s soccer is not easy. It requires a lot of what Bullock calls “sweat equity,” and a lot of often thankless hours poured into an industry where sustainability is hard to come by. The people behind each of the three outlets spend an absurd amount of time on their projects. One estimates that they spend up to 30 hours a week for their site, another calls it a second full-time job, and another avoids assigning a number of hours to their efforts so that colleagues from their day job don’t see this blog and get mathematically suspicious.

But in the absence of financial security and sustainability, there is the power of community. Even before the success of the fundraiser, these hosts and writers benefited from being a part of a strong network of women’s soccer fans and commentators. “I don’t think there’s anyone [in this community] who you would text or message and say, ‘Hey, can I pick your brain about something for a minute?’ who wouldn’t immediately be like, ‘Yeah, let’s figure it out.’” says Anderson. “And that’s been imperative for us to get to where we are.” Bullock mentions other media members who have “absolutely sent us information to make our lives easier.” …

*Much* more at the link!