Diana Michelle, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on the first season.

Thanks. You had some pretty exciting stats that came out sort of a year. And I want to rattle some off.

Over 3 million Canadians reached in TV broadcasts.

Approximately 275,000 tickets sold.

Top five attendance among professional women's soccer leagues globally.

Top eight in the world for league sponsorship revenue.

Almost $30 million in league wide revenue, and the average salary per player was $75,000, plus benefits including maternity leave and fertility treatments, which is among the highest around the world for professional women's soccer.

Pretty impressive. I'm sure a lot of people are like, wow, what has the feedback been after season one?

Yeah, I think it has been a lot of, wow, we didn't know this is what it would be.

Maybe that speaks to people's low expectations. I don't know.

But honestly, we the those numbers are more or less the targets for the year.

So I would say we're on track for what we were trying to do in year one, what we thought we could do in year one in Canada, even though we were building from scratch from nothing independent league, having to get every dollar pretty much from zero up.

We knew that we live in Canada, which is one of the best women's sport countries in the world, women's soccer countries in the world.

And the business here was was ready.

So here we are.

Fleming scores Canada leads in the semi-final.

After winning the gold.

I think the outside world probably was like, okay, here it comes, a women's professional soccer league.

But we as players knew that it was still going to be a fight.

Obviously our own federation, they weren't interested in being the ones to form it.

They said they would support it. But they weren't going to do the legwork to get it up and running.

And us players, I mean especially D I mean, she's crazy, but it took D and her vision to change things.

I want to go back two and a half years because that's when you started thinking in shooting this documentary. Did you did you think that this is how it would coincide with sort of the the season and how it unfolded?

Did you expect it to be such this, this beautiful story of conflicts, but also this league coming out of it with such success?

To be truthful, you know, when you start a project, there's a lot of unknowns.

And a good friend of mine from high school recruited me on the project.

She knew the importance of the story. She knew how historic it was going to be,

and I naively thought, sports, you know, there's tons of money involved in it and attached.

It's going to be easy for the league. It'll be fun. We'll just see how league is being built.

BC for me, I won't have to fundraise.

Well, that didn't work. And and then I met Diana and I thought, well, wait a second.

How come it's not the Federation, you know, heading this initiative? Why isn't it someone with deep pockets or corporations?

And that question of why is it a former player in charge and all the other players from from the national team in charge of putting together a league in Canada? That was a question that drove the documentary and led us to what we have now called The Pitch.

And I think it's an important story because, you know, without these are women who some would argue brought soccer to Canada.

They brought, you know, three Olympic medals really well loved here in Canada.

I want to bring back that number, 30 million in in revenue. You've compared the revenue made in the NWSL's first season to Sweden's professional league.

This is a league that started nearly 40 years ago, made in about 718 million, which when you do the conversion about on par for what you made. How did you do that?

You know, I think we've seen in women's sport and in women's soccer, there's actually been somewhat of an advantage to new products coming into the market.

You know, you see an Angel City FC, for example, in NWSL.

The newer clubs down there, the ones that have come into the market and sort of, you know, gone big or gone home and they've said, we're women's sport. Here are the things we stand for. And also we're going to be a well run business.

Those things have come in and done really well.

Well, some of the older properties that have been around forever and for decades haven't had maybe the investment only have had a few hundred people in the stands.

It's kind of been a harder journey for them to to capture some of the growth that's happening.

On top of that, again, we're in Canada.

And you know, I, I say that because I'm so lucky I get to leave the country. I work in soccer. It's this global industry.

So I get to look at Canada from the outside in a lot of times.

And we're this weird mix of really strong women's sport culture. We love women's soccer.

We've been watching it for, you know, 2012, if not sooner.

Watching you.

Yes. And we also we operate in the business of North American sport, which is like big business.

So all our leadership team, our sport executives, you know, Christina Litz, our president, our board chair, Mark Cohen, has worked across four major professional leagues.

They all know the business of sport.

I would say, you know, it's ingrained in them in a way that European football isn't yet.

European football is very European football, North American sports, very North American sport.

And we know the business of sport.

With that, I want to come back to one of the themes in the film, which was the challenges of juggling motherhood and being an athlete, an elite athlete.

What does including maternity leave that I mentioned and fertility benefits to a contract mean to current players, but also former players?

Well, I think what it does, it highlights what Diana just said, that this league was built by women for women.

And so that's a different approach.

You know, prior to this league and you know, as, as you know, in 2009, Amy Walsh finds herself pregnant and has to choose or more that athletes have to choose between motherhood and career.

And I just thought that that was really unfair.

And as Amy Walsh said, you know, it should be a human right to have both to replace athletes with lawyer, with journalists, with doctor.

We wouldn't accept that. You have to make a choice.

We make it work.

And I think that showing the difference between Amy and then Aaron and then seeing babies on the field, as natural as it should be, it shows the progression, shows the value of having a league built by women, for women to be able to accommodate those needs, like having fertility clinics available for these young athletes.

Maybe at the time they don't want to be a mother, but will have the opportunity later on later in their career to have that opportunity.

So I think it really highlights the importance of equity in sports.

And of course, motherhood is the perfect example.

I want to talk a little bit about what's happening in headlines in women's sports.

Professional women's leagues like the WNBA are having sort of ongoing contract disputes, players fighting for increased salaries, revenue sharing here in Canada.

People are very excited about the Toronto Tempo and joining the WNBA.

I'm curious about the contracts that your league has set. Do you think it will set a precedent for other leagues to kind of take notice as to what you guys are doing?

I think we'd like to try. I think it's where we started.

Was building in place into the players standard player agreement before, before we had players.

So therefore before they had the chance to collectively organise into a group to be able to negotiate with us, we just put in that contract as many best practices as possible.

When it came to athletes rights, you know, guaranteed contracts, you can't be waived or cut or traded halfway through the season without your consent.

The minimum salary spoke about the benefits, maternity data rights, those things we tried to build in as many as possible.

You know, a league built by a player.

I think that I think says it all.

It feels a bit hypocritical to say it's a league built for women by women.

And I, I was lucky I came up, was part of the group that started the Women's National Team, Players Association for Canada for women's national team, and I was around when NWSL players were first negotiating our first CBA.

So I saw both sides of it. So we built in as much as we can.

I think to become a leader in this space, I think is going to hopefully over the next few years.

I think that comes down to how successfully we can work with our player committee, which is in place now. We formed it this year, and then we'll be looking to work closely together next year and the years forward.

I think if us and the players can find a way to consistently harness their voice, their ideas, their feedback and make sure we're sharing the value created in this league proportionately with the players as we grow, I think that's how we become a world leader in the place,

and if we do that well, it can absolutely be a competitive advantage.

But time will tell. Time will tell.

Maybe the some commissioners might be fielding you for some calls and some advice on on how to handle some of that stuff.

See, Michel, I want to do a little bit of history lesson. Many fans and players probably couldn't believe it took this long for a Canadian Women's League to get a professional league.

Why was Canada so hesitant to invest in women's soccer?

I don't know if it's just simply Canada, or just the idea that women's sports don't bring in revenue,

that we do have a history kind of section in the film that talks about, you know, that there is this myth out there that people don't watch women's sports, and therefore if they don't watch, there's no investment.

If there's no investment there, there's no eyeballs and there's no revenue.

So it's self-generating myth.

And they were trying to build the men's league again, as Diana mentioned, soccer wasn't you know, it's not the sport of Canada like in other nations.

So it took a time.

They saw a window that this was the time women's sports was growing internationally.

There was changes in the air in Canadian sports.

And when there's movement and change, there's an opportunity to bring something new in a new vision.

And I think they took advantage of it. And to bring in this league.

This could be our most important fight that we ever have as national team players. And it's one we're determined to win.

The Americans themselves have had their own battles now.

We saw both teams come together in a moment of solidarity. I thought it was beautiful.

There's just some things that are so much bigger than what's happening on the field, and this is one of them.

This is about just, you know, basic human rights and respect.

And we're talking about the the Olympic champions here.

So to have their federation, you know, meet them this way after winning world championship is just wild to me.

This documentary shares sort of the tumultuous relationship between players and Canada Soccer that eventually led to leadership change.

Now, looking at where we are right now, Canada Soccer has pledged $1 million each year over the next decade to the Northern Super League.

How did that relationship evolve and being in the thick of it, did you expect to be here with that sort of pledge to kind of see that change?

I did expect to be here with that sort of pledge.

I think the fact that Canada soccer, even the the previous leadership, had agreed to that agreement with our men's league, Canadian Premier League.

I can tell you there was no way we were starting this league without securing securing the same deal with leadership.

They really couldn't say no to that one.

The push was always for transparency and the push was for if we are bringing in as many dollars as the men's national team, which we did believe we were. When you looked at attendance and games, then why aren't we being compensated accordingly and just getting transparency on that picture?

That was the thing we we really struggled to get over the decades.

There was fantastic support for the women's national team in other ways that was beyond other countries.

I think we wouldn't be here without the past leaders in that respect too.

But yeah, the million dollars, the million dollars a year for nine years, I would say, was table stakes for Canada Soccer to come to the table.

And now that there's there's leadership in place now that is bringing that transparency to the table.

They have they have policies now to support the women's national team and men's national team the same.

And as they grow, hopefully in their own capacity and mature as an organisation, I hope they're in a better place to support us more,

because $1 million a year for nine years equal to the men's league is fantastic.

But again, it's table stakes inflation. It's not even the same dollars as our men's league got.

And if we're talking about equity not equality equity then there actually has to be more money put into women's football than there has been to start our men's league, especially looking at what women's football has done in this country.

So I'm looking for even more support in our Canadian landscape, Canadian soccer landscape as that organisation matures and gets more resources so that it can support us better.

I'm going to throw another sort of group in there. The federal government has recently pledged up to $5.45 million to help grow the league.

How will this change the future of the league? Where is that money going?

Yeah, it's it's huge. I would say, you know, this has been a journey three and a half years of just trying to get the next, yes, the next person to believe the next person on board.

And the fact that we got an official yes from the federal government, including five economic development agencies, not just one five, we got that sign off is an incredible vote of support for what we're doing.

And I think it supports the fact that Canada right now is investing in entrepreneurs.

It's investing in Canadian products, it's investing in building in Canada.

And I've spoken about it a lot. We have a huge sport infrastructure gap in Canada.

Again, it goes back to us being a pretty new soccer country.

We just don't have the soccer infrastructure that other countries do, and we're having to invest in what's existing to have enough training fields, have proper stadiums both now and in the medium long term.

So that's where these federal dollars are going.

They're going to products that all our clubs have on the go and going into next year to improve their stadiums and training facilities to benefit not just them, of course, but also the other community users that use these stadiums and training facilities.

All right. We have a couple more minutes and a couple questions I want to get through.

Michelle, one of the storylines in the documentary that I think does a really great job of contextualizing the value of a national professional league was Erin McLeod.

Can you tell us a little bit about her story that I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear?

Well, it was interesting about Erin. I mean, one of the first things when we started the documentary was the idea that most of these players, if they wanted to pursue their dreams, they had to do it. They'd have to leave the country.

And even after they retired, they still have to leave the country because there just wasn't jobs within their field.

Air McLeod had left since I think, 2003. So over 20 years she's been traveling and working abroad.

And so one of the stories we wanted to highlight the importance of the NSL and of Diana's initiative was to bring these players home.

So Erin at the time was in Iceland with her wife Connie and their newborn Baldwin.

So we went and filmed with them and brought them back to Halifax.

As soon as the Halifax team came on board, and as soon as the six teams were secured, Halifax called in and hired both Carney and Erin to to come and play in Halifax, and Erin has family there.

So for her it was really important to be able to play, even though she was close to retirement.

She decided to do that one more year to be able to play in a home crowd and also really to support the league,

because for Erin and for many of these women, it's more than just sports, it's more than just the league.

It's a whole ecosystem. It's a whole value system.

I'm curious, what did you learn from putting this film together, working with professional athletes, working with someone like Diana to put this together?

Well, I think what's important is what sports does and what these women do.

They're they're constantly striving for the best. So there's always this feeling, feeling of unity that together you can really do something that's almost impossible.

And in today's world where things are so divisive, it was so, as a filmmaker, so cathartic to work on something that does the opposite, that unifies us.

And I often say, the world caught up to Diane because at the time, she could have it would have been easier if she just found investors who were looking to do 1 or 2 expansion teams to the NWSL and had a team in Vancouver, maybe a team in Toronto, and that would have been an easy route.

But Diana wanted something here in Canada for women to grow the game here, apart from the rest of of the world.

My last question to you. You have been doing and promoting this league for the last couple years, this documentary as well.

Is there something missing from the conversation that you want to keep pushing, that you feel is not being heard? That sort of the next sort of challenge?

I think the message I'm trying to share now more than ever is that women's sport in Canada is, as we all know, it's new.

It's like two and a half years old, but the timing and the market is such that this global market, which is never, never existed before, we've never been in the era of women's professional sport before, really, we've been in events that have succeeded.

We've been in a a league here or two that's tried maybe a charity. You know, the previous women's hockey league was a charity model, wasn't even a business.

So finally we're in this era of women's pro sport. It's not going to go anywhere.

This is going to be the beginning that grows infinitely.

And we've got this global market that's already gone from $1 billion in 2024 to $2.4 billion in 2025.

And we live in Canada. That is arguably one of the best women's sport countries in the world.

Like we produce women's athletes, like we produce maple syrup.

Like you've seen it in the Olympics every two years.

And like, imagine not having a maple syrup industry. Like, does it make any sense?

And now we have one.

And you can see already like it's already world class and we're two and a half years in.

And the women's sport revenues are already at about $400 million in revenues this early in.

And like Michelle said, like it's 2000 jobs have been created, $400 million in revenue.

Two and a half years in, this will be $1 billion industry by 2030.

And when we're talking about investing in Canada and in a way that invests in careers and values and heroes and inspiration and equity and infrastructure, women's pro sport, let's go.

Very exciting times.

We are going to leave it there.

Michelle, thank you so much, Diana, thank you so much.

Wish you all the best as well as you grow this league.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks.