The second misjudgment was in assuming that the “soccer mom” phenomenon had anything to do with the sport itself. The term, Chung says, is strictly political, a way to lump overextended baby-boomer moms in a voting bloc. And Gen-X moms have a strong, visceral reaction against that label. But more important is that the league banked on the assumption that soccer moms controlled the family purse strings–and, in fact, they are not the driving force behind their daughters’ interest in soccer. Rather, it’s the “soccer daddies” who are anxious to make sports an integral part of their daughters’ lives. The WUSA ignored these men, Chung says, when it should have been courting them.
