The Chicago Red Stars Use Wrigley Field to Pitch Women’s Soccer to the City

The Chicago Red Stars see both the history and future of women’s sports in their temporary home at Wrigley Field. 

The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) makes its debut at the home of Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs on June 8, when the Red Stars match up against Bay FC. It’s the first professional women’s sports event held at the ballpark since 1943 when the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League—yep, from A League of Their Own—played Wrigley Field’s first night game with help from lights set up for a Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps recruiting event earlier in the evening.

While researching that history, the Red Stars’ partners at creative agency Havas Chicago also discovered that another Wrigley Field staple—the seventh-inning rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” once led by announcer Harry Caray—was strongly tied to women. Written in 1908, the tune was originally performed in vaudeville acts about or by a woman trying to get her date to take her to a ballgame instead of a show.

Contacted because of their close relationship with Cubs marketing leader Jennifer Martindale, Havas Chicago pulled together its research within two weeks with help from a strategy group that included former University of Maryland soccer player Andi Wenck and creative director Michelle Underwood—a former crowd-favorite arm wrestler.

The result was a campaign that featured Red Stars players taking over Wrigley to the soundtrack of a reimagined “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

“It didn’t start out as this ambition to be a little feminist or be hardcore, pro-female athlete,” said Myra Nussbaum, co-president and chief creative officer of Havas Chicago. “We want to sell out a game, and the players happened to be women.”

Havas’ stated goal of selling 40,000 tickets to the Red Stars’ Wrigley Field matchup would break the NWSL attendance record of 34,130 set by Ballon D’or winner and two-time World Cup champion Megan Rapinoe’s farewell match in Seattle. But it would also help the Red Stars’ case in rebuilding Chicago fans’ trust while seeking a home closer to them.

Joining the NWSL when it was founded in 2013, the Red Stars were the center of two separate investigations of widespread abuse in the league—resulting in a lifetime ban for a coach and a majority owner selling the team. New owner Laura Ricketts—who also co-owns the Cubs—took over in September and brought in new leadership to continue efforts at marketing the team with an eye toward the future.

However, the Red Stars still play home matches at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, Ill., roughly a half hour outside of Chicago. The team only played in Chicago itself once before—drawing 23,951 to Soldier Field for a match against the San Diego Wave, a club record.

In six matches at SeatGeek this season, the Red Stars have averaged an NWSL-low 3,864 fans per match—or less than 20% of league-leading Angel City FC’s more than 20,000 in Los Angeles. With baseball’s Chicago White Sox and football’s Chicago Bears seeking funds for new stadiums, and the WNBA’s Chicago Sky seeing opponents move games against them to larger arenas so fans can watch star draft pick Angel Reese, the Red Stars see a match at Wrigley Field—and a potential sellout—as part of a strong argument for a Chicago home of their own.

“Women’s sports are compelling. They’re culturally relevant. People like to watch them, and when you provide the opportunity for people to have convenient access to them, people will come,” Ricketts said. “It requires public investment, private investment, corporate partnerships, media investment … those are all things that men’s sports have enjoyed for many decades, to the tune of billions of dollars.”

Ricketts noted that when she and her group of owners were in negotiations to take over the Red Stars, they mentioned to the NWSL that giving the team a match at Wrigley Field could help raise its profile and grab the spotlight in the city “where the bulk of our fan base would be.”

However, making the case for a stadium built especially for the Red Stars—similar to the recently opened CPKC Stadium that houses the NWSL’s Kansas City Current—requires a marketer’s touch and a lawyer’s conviction.

That’s where Red Stars president Karen Leetzow and CMO Kay Bradley come in.

The team for the job

Leetzow served as general counsel at Nascar for more than two decades before spending three and a half years at U.S. Soccer as its chief legal officer. After seeing soccer’s governing body through struggles over its collective bargaining agreement and equal pay for men’s and women’s players—as well as an NWSL abuse scandal that directly involved the Red Stars—she joined the club and began using her skills as a negotiator to make the Red Stars’ case to legislators.

She pointed out that 87% of teams in the four largest professional men’s sports in the United States have received public funding for stadiums totaling roughly $35 billion since 1970. She spoke about the growth potential of women’s sports in the U.S.—which Deloitte predicts will grow to nearly $1.28 billion in value this year, up 300% from just three years ago—and how teams and leagues should be rewarded with investment based on the numbers.

But because the history of women’s soccer is riddled with teams playing matches on poorly converted baseball fields and injuring players in the process, Leetzow also found herself negotiating with the NWSL players association and Red Star and Bay FC players. She reminded them that the Cubs grounds crew has prepared Wrigley for concerts, college football games and the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic, but Leetzow also made the argument a bit more personal.

“We did it by focusing on this league needing more brand awareness,” Leetzow said. “We have some of the best players in the world, in Chicago’s backyard—[U.S. women’s national team callups] Mal Swanson and Alyssa Naeher are just amazing—and they’re playing out in Bridgeview and people can’t get there.”

In March, the Red Stars hired Bradley, former U.S. Soccer marketing vp, as CMO. Supplementing Havas Chicago’s work on the Wrigley Field sports marketing campaign with the team’s own photographers and videographers, her team has cut together various content around the project and helped organize the fan festival outside Wrigley on Gallagher Way just before match time. 

“We’re going to be a force to be reckoned with in Chicago,” Bradley said. “We’re taking this opportunity right out of the gate this summer to plant a flag and to say, ‘Hey, things are going to be different … and we’re going to be a team that Chicago’s going to want to rally around.’”

The bigger picture

The Red Stars’ push into Wrigley comes during a period of rapid growth for the NWSL.

The league added two franchises this season—Bay FC and the Utah Royals—and is in the first year of a four-year, $240 million broadcast deal that places games on CBS Sports, ESPN, Prime Video and the E.W. Scripps Company’s ION.

For ION, the Red Stars’ Wrigley Field matchup and a Mother’s Day meeting between Gotham FC and the San Diego Wave were the type of marquee events that piqued its interest in the NWSL and seemed mutually beneficial to the league and the sports-focused network—which also has a deal with the WNBA.

“In order for ION to be successful in airing women’s sports, these leagues need to be successful. In order for these leagues to be successful, we need advertiser support,” said Brian Norris, Scripps chief revenue officer. “It creates this flywheel effect where advertiser support and ION bring more eyeballs to the games as we promote and air these marquee events. We expect greater growth every year.”

Julie Haddon, the NWSL’s chief marketing and commercial officer, has made expanded league visibility a priority since coming over from the National Football League in 2022. However, while serving as a member of the Red Stars’ ownership from 2021 until her first day at the NWSL, Haddon remembers watching soccer players from the U.S. Women’s National Team return to Chicago and wondered how fans didn’t know players of that caliber were there.

The Midwest has proven remarkably more receptive to women’s sports since.

The University of Nebraska women’s volleyball team drew more than 92,000 fans to Memorial Stadium for a doubleheader in August 2023. In October, Caitlin Clark’s University of Iowa women’s basketball team drew more than 55,000 to Kinnick Stadium for their Crossover at Kinnick game against Chicago-based DePaul.

Plus, Chicago Sky fans are still petitioning to have their team’s matchups against Clark’s Indiana Fever moved to the Chicago Bulls’ home at the United Center. (“It would be fun to host that game as well,” Ricketts joked—as the Cubs host the New York Mets in June but are away on a 10-game road trip when Clark returns Aug. 30.)

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In the Red Stars’ and NWSL’s view, it’s time for Chicago to join the club.

“It is such a sports city, and you could deliver this entertainment value of opening up the aperture to not just fans of women’s sports, not just fans of baseball, not just fans of soccer, but fans of sports overall,” Haddon said.

“With the backdrop of a Saturday night in June at Wrigley under the lights like that, it’s going to be a thrilling experience for everybody to see the athleticism, the competition and the talent of the best in the world that make their home inside this league.”