SVG Sit-Down: USL's Amanda Vandervort on Launching a League, Building a Brand in Women's Sports

SVG Sit-Down: USL's Amanda Vandervort on Launching a League, Building a Brand in Women's Sports Having debuted in August, the USL Super League currently has eight teams By Samantha Gabay, Digital Content and Social Media Manager

Friday, March 7, 2025 - 10:20 am

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United Soccer League President, Super League, Amanda Vandervort oversees the entire USL pathway for women, including the W League and the Academy for Girls. As a soccer coach, player and sports business executive with a 20-year track record of soccer leadership stretching across the youth, high school, college and professional game, she is a service-oriented leader who believes in a diverse and inclusive world where anyone who wants to get involved in soccer has the access and opportunity to do so - and then the education and support to succeed.

As President of the USL Super League, Vanderbort leads the fastest growing connected women's soccer network in the world including the professional Super League, pre-professional USL W League, and USL Academy for girls. Through engaging with communities, brands and partners, Amanda is driving the Super League's strategic growth, building a people-centric pathway from youth to pro and creating a long-term sustainable business for the future of women's soccer. She previously served executvie roles with FIFPRO, MLS, and Women's Professional Soccer (WPS).

SVG sat down with Vandervort to discuss what it takes to launch a league, growing a brand in a new world filled with social-media channels and influencers, her own career, and more.

Wilkes: Tell us about your job at USL.

Vandervort: I'm the president of the USL Super League, and this is a project I started in 2021 at United Soccer League, which is based in Tampa. We've just kicked off our inaugural season as of August with eight teams across the country: fully professional Division I women's soccer.

To give a little context about the USL, the United Soccer League, we run and manage about seven leagues. Three of them are professional: two men's professional leagues and our Women's Professional League. We also have pre-professional underneath that and a whole series of academy and youth programming across the country. It's pretty extensive, with 250-odd communities that we're in.

The women's side alone is probably 150 teams underneath the pathway, which I oversee at the USL. Super League, which we're talking about today, is our top-tier property. It's sanctioned by U.S. Soccer Division I, which includes a set of standards that are clearly the highest standards in professional soccer in the U.S. That's what we aspired to be from the moment we started this project.

Wilkes: Where do you come from, and how do you fit into all this in terms of sports?

Vandervort: I played soccer as a kid growing up. I played collegiately at the University of Wyoming. I moved to New York and was head coach at NYU for a couple of years, before I decided to move into the pro game. In 2008, I was slinging tweets for Women's Professional Soccer, running social media. Then I moved back to New York City and was at Major League Soccer for 10 years. I started as a director of social media and moved through the ranks to VP of fan engagement. I was overseeing all our direct-to-consumer media properties from social to direct messages to the data infrastructure, email, etc.

Wilkes: You were a one-woman band?

Vandervort: At MLS, we had a whole team. But I was also doing work at FIFA. I was doing a lot of traveling and consulting about how to market the women's game so we can get away from shrink it and pink it to actually talking about athletes around the world, [talking about] women soccer players in a way that respects and values them as athletes. And I was the president of our coaches association here in the U.S.

So I had my hands in a lot of soccer. In 2019, I decided I wanted to work in the international game and get back into women's soccer. I always felt that's where my heart was. So I moved to Europe. I was the chief women's football officer at the Global Players Union called Fief Pro. I spent some time there before this project came on my radar, and then I moved home and launched the Super League. I've been in soccer but in everything from labor relations and executive management to social media and data architecture.

Wilkes: You've seen it from the ground up. Your experiences are varied in terms of women's soccer here as opposed to women's football in Europe. How do the two versions match up?

Vandervort: The Americans historically are the best in the world. Part of our mission at the Super League is to help that continue. You know, before we started this project, there were 12 women's pro teams in the U.S., with the NWSL, but more than 40,000 players in college.

What was happening was that so many of our amazing American talent would go abroad and play their pro careers in Europe, Asia, South America -wherever they could find a team. But now, with eight more teams, we have 200, maybe 210 professional players who have jobs as pros and who, we believe, will help support and bolster the U.S. through the future so that we retain our No. 1 status in the world.

Wilkes: How do you do this? Where does one start in terms of creating the league and then selling the league?

Vandervort: Creating the league is about vision and seeing the gaps. In my career, I'm a builder. I see opportunity. I see white space, and I fill it. I can't describe it any other way. [Creating the league meant] identifying ownership groups and markets with potential from a consumer/fanbase perspective. Obviously, our great partnership with [streaming service] Peacock ensures that the league is accessible by people who wa

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/03/07/svg-sit-down-usls-amanda-vander...
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