Thread by @MorningBrew

Steve Baldwin, the controlling owner and CEO of the Washington Spirit women’s soccer team, resigned yesterday as a sexual harassment scandal deepened across the NWSL, the top women’s pro soccer league in the US.

A thread explaining what's going on.

Baldwin was facing pressure to step down after Spirit coach Richie Burke was fired when a @washingtonpost report revealed he verbally and emotionally abused players.

He was the second NWSL coach to get fired last week. The North Carolina Courage sacked Paul Riley following a report by @TheAthletic, which spoke to more than a dozen athletes who played under Riley and accused him of sexual coercion.

Last Friday, the league’s commissioner, Lisa Baird, resigned and multiple games were canceled over the weekend.

On the surface, the NWSL had never been more successful.

It was the first US pro sports league to return from a pandemic hiatus in June 2020, and it found a much bigger audience: Viewership surged nearly 300% last season thanks to partnerships with CBS Sports and Twitch.

At the same time, the NWSL went Hollywood. An expansion team based in LA, is owned by A-listers including Serena Williams, Natalie Portman, and Mia Hamm. Naomi Osaka bought a stake in the NC Courage. The league locked in sponsorship deals with Verizon, P&G, and Google.

Players had a different experience. On the Today Show yesterday, women’s soccer legend Alex Morgan criticized the NWSL’s (lack of) response to sexual harassment complaints, calling it a “systemic failure.”

And the players are still negotiating for fair pay—the league’s basic structure pays players $22,000–$52,500 this season. Players have said their financially precarious situation has made it more challenging to speak out against abuse, the WSJ wrote.

Looking ahead...the NWSL plans to resume games today, but under a storm of investigations from the likes of FIFA and the US Soccer Federation.

morningbrew.com/daily/stories/…