'Absolutely Exciting:' NJ's Rampone Thrilled As Women's Soccer League, A+E Announce Partnership

She's watched professional women's soccer leagues start up, fall apart, and start again. And now, for the first time, Christie Rampone is seeing women's soccer gain a national television contract.

Rampone, the retired captain of the U.S. Women's National Team and a defender for Sky Blue, New Jersey's team in the National Women's Soccer League, was on hand in New York Thursday as the league and A+E Networks announced a three-year partnership that will bring games to the Lifetime channel.

"This relationship is absolutely exciting," Rampone said during the press conference, where she was asked to speak on behalf of the league's players. "We (the players) are about continuing the growth of the game what better way than having a game once a week where the fans can connect and be part of this."

The partnership between the NWSL and A+E Networks is more than about broadcasting games once a week; NWSL Commissioner Jeff Plush and Nancy Dubuc, president and CEO of A+E, said A+E Networks also bought a 25 percent stake in the league.

"We are on a journey to establish a sustainable permanent soccer league in the United states and Canada," Plush said. "We are also extremely pleased to be able to present our fans with the most comprehensive national television and streaming packages in our history."

The deal means Lifetime will broadcast an NWSL Game of the Week every Saturday at 4 p.m. Those games will be preceded by a 30-minute pregame show. It also calls for A+E to work with the league to develop a new NWSL.com website and new apps for iOS and Android that will allow livestreaming of games under the umbrella NWSL Media. The joint venture is currently negotiating with potential partners to stream the games not broadcast on Lifetime.

"We're just not about the game of the week, we're invested," Dubuc said. She said this venture is different from Lifetime's broadcasts of the WNBA in that league's inaugural season. With the NWSL deal, "we're equally motivated to make this successful on every platform in whatever way necessary."

The move is a huge step for the 10-team league that formed in December 2012, months after the previous league, Women's Professional Soccer, folded. The WPS, the second attempt at a professional women's soccer league, lasted for three seasons, from 2009 through 2011, until an internal legal battle with Dan Borislaw, the owner of the magicJack team in Florida and other financial issues forced it to shut down. The WPS was preceded by the Women's United Soccer Association, which rode the energy and enthusiasm for women's soccer created by the 1999 Women's World Cup to its launch in April 2001. The WUSA folded in 2003.

Rampone, the Jersey Shore native who began her career with the U.S. national team in 1999 and played on every World Cup team from 1999 through 2015, said the investment by A+E Networks "shows that they believe in us as players."

"Getting into this fifth year, it's a process," Rampone said, noting that the NWSL has worked hard to apply the lessons learned in the previous leagues' failures. Every step has been approached carefully, she said, and without undue haste. "The connection today is showing that we are doing the right things," she said.

Dubuc, a former college athlete, said bringing the women's soccer league to the network is more than about broadcasting games.

"I'm looking forward to the partnership not only to promote soccer and the NWSL but to show girls and women around the world how to think about themselves and their place in this world differently," she said.

"Sports are great dramatic stories," Dubuc said. "If those sports stories are served up in an entertaining and relatable way, a passionate way, women crave those authentic stories of aspiration, of competition, of drive and determination, of agony and defeat."

"I also think, in the narrative of empowering women, it's important. To be the CEO of a company, you have to have strength, you have to have determination, and you have to compete," Dubuc said, and the games provide that avenue to tell the stories of women doing just that, she said. "I think that is an incredibly important message for girls and women today."

"It's a story of possibility," Plush said.

"I think this is a really proud moment for sports and for soccer, said Sunil Gulati, president of the U.S. Soccer Federation. "Today is great news for the women's sports movement generally ... especially given all the things happening lately."

"We are committed to growing the league," Dubuc said. "Growing a business doesn't happen overnight; it happens in years. Ultimately what we wnt is for these women to be household names and to be a much more powerful sport in their own right."

"It is a starting base but we're here and we're in for the long haul," Rampone said. "I'm really excited to get this started."

In addition to Sky Blue, the NWSL includes the Portland Thorns, the Seattle Reign, the Boston Breakers, the Houston Dash, the Orlando Pride, the Washington Spirit, the Chicago Red Stars, Kansas City FC and the Western New York Flash, which the league said is relocating this year and will become the North Carolina Courage.

With reporting by Colin Miner, Patch Staff. Photo of Christie Rampone speaking courtesy of the NWSL