Matheson says ‘exciting’ player announcements coming from NSL

New year, new league.

Kickoff for the Northern Super League (NSL), the first professional women’s soccer league in Canada, is just three months away, with this past Monday marking the start of the 100-day countdown to the opening game on Apr. 16.

Six teams will take part in the inaugural season: Vancouver Rise, Calgary Wild, AFC Toronto, Ottawa Rapid, Montreal Roses, and Halifax Tide.

Over the past few months, Canadian soccer fans have enjoyed a steady stream of news from the budding league. All six clubs have named head coaches, and they continue to fill out their rosters.

Preparations are in full swing, with a schedule announcement forthcoming, but there are still logistical hurdles to overcome. Vancouver and Montreal have yet to announce where they will play their home game, although the Roses have indicated that several stadiums will be used.

TSN spoke to Diana Matheson, co-founder of the NSL, regarding what announcements fans can expect in the coming weeks.

The former Canadian international, who now operates as the league’s chief growth officer, also offered insight regarding interest in the NSL from players on the Canadian women’s national team, as well as recounting her own experience playing in the early days of the U.S.-based National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TSN: We're now less than 100 days away from kickoff. How are the preparations coming?

Matheson: They're coming. I think we're right where we need to be. There's been a ton of things done. Obviously, lots of announcements last year for partnerships, for players, for coaches, for staffing, for venues, and I think those are really just going to keep continuing until kickoff.

Obviously, the clubs need to announce the rest of their players. Announcements always lag a bit behind signings. So, there's many more players signed that haven’t been announced.

The schedule announcement comes out likely beginning of February, which I know everyone is eagerly waiting for. We can share where our opening game is and championship game.

We're in an exciting time. It's like 30 days away, in most cases, for the players getting in market for preseason. So, the clubs are in their final home stretch of preparation, and then the league office is busy preparing everything for visiting the clubs during preseason, and then, obviously, for that opening day on April 16. So, I think we're going to all blink and it's going to be kickoff on April 16.

TSN: In terms of the schedule announcement, have there been many hurdles in putting together a schedule?

Matheson: Yes, of course. We live in a country that has a huge deficit of sport infrastructure. I know PWHL is struggling with this. On the soccer side, the reality is most of the other world’s professional leagues have a mid-sized stadium, sort of that 8,000 to 18,000 seat stadium, for soccer. They have one of those for every half million people. In Canada, we have about one of those for every 8 million people. So, we've got a huge, huge gap in this country, and that causes us problems.

There are not enough places to play, so we have to play in stadiums that are shared, venues that are wrong size. We then become second or third tenant in those venues. We then have to wait for other sport leagues and broadcasters to set their schedule.

We were kind of second or third or fourth in line to do that. So, that means we're not able to get our season schedule out as soon as we'd like, as soon as the fans would like. But obviously that's something we want to hopefully move the needle on in the future, years to come – getting more investment into soccer-specific stadiums, in those mid-sized stadiums where we can have preferred game times, preferred broadcast times, and also the right venues and atmospheres to build an incredible fan base.

TSN: So, the schedule announcement is forthcoming. You mentioned player signings will continue to happen. Are there any other big announcements that fans can expect?

Matheson: I think the player ones are the ones the fans are going to be most excited about. We've got some exciting player contracts I know have passed my desk that I think Canadians will be excited about. So, those will be coming out in the next number of weeks.

And I think that's the most important thing, right? Canadians getting to know the players that are going to be playing in this league, whether it's a name they know from the national team, or maybe it's a younger name they've been following that's going to be a future star for Canada, or maybe it's an international player that's coming to this country that they hadn't heard of that is going to be a star in this league too. I think the closer we get to game time, the more and more it is about the players and the fans getting to know the players.

TSN: I wanted to build on that a bit, because one of the bigger names we saw recently sign [with AFC Toronto] was Emma Regan, the first active national team player to join the NSL. I know you were with the national team a few months ago in one of the camps. What have you been able to gauge regarding interest in the league from national team players?

Matheson: I've tried to keep the national team up to date, really from the beginning of the project, just letting them know where we are, what the plans are, letting them know more and more about the clubs and the opportunities here. It's hard when you play for Canada to really get the pulse of what's happening in Canada. So, the players wouldn't even, most of the time, have a good feel for what the PWHL has done in market, or the excitement around the NSL, or the excitement around the WNBA. So, I've tried to share that as much as possible.

The players on the national team – it matters to them to leave the women's game, to leave soccer in this country better than they found it, and they know this pro league is a huge part of that. So, top to bottom, every person's more or less – “What can I do to help?”

And I obviously shared there's going to be playing opportunities here, and it's going to be important we get a few women's national team players that fans know the name of that are coming to this league to help build it. And that was always the goal from the beginning – to try and have kind of a recognizable name per team, and I think we're close to hitting that target.

TSN: I also wanted to get some insight from your own experiences. You were part of the inaugural NWSL season in 2013. Is there anything you were able to take away from that season and apply it now going forward to the NSL – things you liked, maybe things that didn't work so well in that first season?

Matheson: I think more so the learnings have come from my entire experience in the NWSL, and the learnings from the NWSL from year one to now. As you know, 2013 was such a different time for women’s sports. The economics, the sponsorship dollars, the broadcast and media opportunities that exist now simply did not exist then. So, it is a totally different landscape we're operating in.

Things we definitely took from that league, learnings – building in a lot of the player rights that the NWSLPA fought for the first five, six, seven years of that league. We built those in from the beginning to make sure there's a really strong athletes’ rights foundation to what we're doing here. I think that was one of the major things we wanted to get right from the very beginning.

And then learned a lot about having the right size venue, having those stadiums be downtown, having the right ownership group that doesn't just have the capital, but they believe in the growth and the purpose and the commercial opportunity that exists in women's sport, and just treat it like the investment opportunity and the business that it is. So really, we take a lot of – what can we do better than the first five, six years in the NWSL, but also learning a lot from the great things they're doing now.

TSN: You mentioned it was a completely different landscape in 2013. As a player in a new league, and especially at that time, where the NWSL was basically the third attempt at a professional women's soccer league in the U.S., did you feel any sense of responsibility to help grow the league and grow that audience, and do you think players in the NSL share that same sense of responsibility?

Matheson: That's a good question. Honestly, as a Canadian playing in a U.S. league, I don't think I necessarily felt the same drive to grow the game down there. We had an incredible fan base in Washington where I played for my first four years, and I loved to play in front of that crowd. The importance was building up that club and results. My heart, obviously, was always much more in Canada and really building what we have up here.

When we're playing, we're less aware or invested in the commercial side of it. That said, I was involved in helping out the NWSLPA when they were first entering negotiations on their CBA. I was a part of that group that was trying to move that forward.

It was important the league existed in the U.S. to have jobs and to grow the game in that respect. But I think where I cared about building the game, that was closer to my heart, was on the athlete’s side or in Canada.

TSN: For you personally, how has it been – I don't know if you're necessarily taking a step back, but taking on a different role in this league?

Matheson: Definitely not a step back, but for sure a shift in role. It was one of the bigger turning points, it feels like, for me personally and for the league, when Christina Litz came in to her position as president, because she brings such experience and knowledge and has the right character and has brought such incredible people in with her to league level.

That is exactly what we needed to keep building this thing, and it took a lot of weight off my shoulders to be the one to have to know everything when I couldn't. I haven't led a professional league before. So, for me, it was a real milestone for the league.

It's still a startup, so there's been a transition in a lot of roles and responsibilities for me, but a lot of them stay the same as to what I was doing before when it comes to trying to grow this league.

TSN: Obviously the NSL is something you've been working on for many years now. As things really start to take shape, and kickoff looms ever closer, is everything coming to fruition the way you've imagined it for the years you've been working on everything?

Matheson: Oh gosh. To some degree, yes. And then, in many other facets, I don't think I could have imagined what actually would have been the reality as we got closer to kickoff. I think the type of people I was hoping would be attracted to this project and would get involved, anywhere from investment to business leadership – those people have become a reality.

I think that's the part I feel most fortunate about, and maybe most thankful, most proud, is the top people we have that have invested in these clubs, that have become presidents and CEOs of these clubs. Our president and VPs and staff at the league, our board chair that has come in [former CFL commissioner Mark Cohon] – they're such quality people with such strong experience.

And that was a really key piece of the vision from the beginning – surround myself with people smarter and more experienced than me that knew how to do this so that it wouldn't put a ceiling on how big we can grow this in the years to come. I think I'm most proud of that piece coming to life, because I can tell you, we've got the right people behind the scenes working on this thing to make sure we hit the field in April, number one, which I'm so excited to see that game come to life. And you can ask me again after that if it was what I imagined it would be. But then, more so, keep growing from there and keep building this thing year over year.