As a player, Ali Krieger went into NWSL Decision Day focused on one result. She was Gotham FC's captain in 2023, the first time the league played all of the final games of the regular season simultaneously. The job, she remembers, was to not worry about the other games going on.
Three years later, Krieger spent Decision Day with eyes on not one game but eight. For the first time, all of the final games of the NWSL season were aired by the same network. Krieger, now a lead analyst for ESPN, and host Kelsey Riggs Cuff anchored the coverage from headquarters in Bristol with a show that was part whiparound, part watchalong, and ultimately wholly new for the 14-year-old league.
There was no shortage of storylines. With 16 teams in action, the slate of simultaneous kickoffs was the largest in the league's history. San Diego and Gotham were fighting for the Shield; four teams were jousting for home-field advantage; three were vying for the final playoff spots. The league simulated Sunday's games 50,000 times and found more than 200 possibilities for playoff brackets, with 6,561 ways the results could go.
How do you prepare for the way that the story does spin? The network deployed 60-plus cameras and more than 150 staffers around the United States, plus about 20 in Bristol. Cuff and Krieger met with researchers, rewatched games and assembled a 12-page Google Doc of notes.
"You know that it's going to be chaos. You lean into the breaking news feel of it," Cuff said in the green room, about an hour before the games began. "And then you just sit back and enjoy it, because this is the biggest day that we have on the calendar right now, with so much on the line from top to bottom."
First-place Gotham's home match against Utah was the headliner on ESPN's main channel, with the other seven on the streaming service ESPN+ and Krieger and Cuff's studio show on ESPN2. It wasn't ESPN's first time producing a whiparound-style soccer studio show – the network has done so for the Bundesliga and US Open Cup – but it was the first for the NWSL.
"This is like a fresh canvas," said Manuel de la Fe, vice-president of production at ESPN. "We're going to paint, and we're going to see how it comes out."
A mantra for live television is to expect the unexpected, and the hosts quickly learned Sunday that the unexpected includes surprise women's college volleyball upsets. A Tennessee-Missouri five-setter meant the start of the Gotham match was pushed to the ESPN2 slot, and the studio show did not actually begin until about 25 minutes into the games.
By the time it kicked into gear, there was plenty to talk about. San Diego, in second place and facing Bay FC in San Jose, scored the day's first goal in the ninth minute; Gotham scored in their own game seconds later.
For those who prefer their whiparound shows to have the cadence of NFL RedZone's rollercoaster , this wasn't exactly that. Earlier Sunday, Krieger mentioned Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird's women's basketball watchalongs as inspiration for this show, and it called on special guests in the style of the Manningcast.
While the interviews did occasionally push the game action itself off screen, they also provided some of the day's highlights. Lead reporter Jeff Kassouf added insights into the changing table. Olivia Moultrie, recovering from an ACL injury, reacted live as her Portland Thorns scored their first goal. Megan Rapinoe called in from a suite at Seattle's Lumen Field. ("I'm not in the closet, but I am in the bathroom," Rapinoe quipped.)
There were still some snafus. During the Portland game, the feed cut while Sophia Wilson was in the run-up to a penalty kick, jumping to an interview with Heather O'Reilly and a stream of the North Carolina game. Some viewers online spoke of audio-synching issues in certain games.
But after just six first-half goals across the eight games, the second half brought more action. Angel City poured three goals on Boston Legacy; Washington scored while their game was in a triple-box display. The show popped into the Seattle match and captured the Reign's go-ahead goal, vital for their playoff hopes. A poignant moment came 14 minutes later, when Jess Fishlock subbed off and a national audience could watch the farewell of an NWSL icon.
"When you're in it, there's so much pressure to be able to perform and apply everything you've worked towards," said Krieger who, like Fishlock, played the final regular-season minutes of her career on a Decision Day. "There's a different fire that comes out in players when there's something to fight for more than just a win."
It has been a mixed time for the NWSL's media deal, which was valued at $60m per season upon signing in 2023 and runs through the 2027 campaign. The league had to drop one partner, Victory+, because of the streamer's missed payments, and the fragmented slate forces viewers to pay for many platforms. But there's also been marked growth. Across four Women's Sports Sundays telecasts on ESPN, the soccer matches averaged 255,000 viewers, up 106% against the regular-season average last year. NWSL viewership is up on all three of ESPN's linear platforms.
Of the possible scenarios, the one that played out was not the most dramatic, but it was a satisfying close. Gotham became first-time Shield winners; Kansas City and Washington ensured their home quarter-finals; Seattle clinched the final playoff spot; and Utah secured theirs for the first time in club history.
Gotham's Shield lift, with the backdrop of fireworks and their home fans at Sports Illustrated Stadium, made for an apt closing visual. (Had San Diego jumped Gotham to win, they would have received medals in San Jose, then the sterling silver trophy next week.)
The crew at ESPN signed off, posed for some pictures and then turned to work on the next assignment: sorting out plans for the playoffs, which begin Friday.
