playJosh WeinfussOct 7, 2026, 11:33 AM ETCloseJosh Weinfuss is a staff writer who covers the Arizona Cardinals and the NFL at ESPN. Josh has covered the Cardinals since 2012, joining ESPN in 2013. He is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America and a graduate of Indiana University.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsJUNO TEMPLE HARDLY let the question breathe before answering it.It was posed to her, Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham and Jeremy Swift, who star in the hit Apple TV show “Ted Lasso” — Temple as model-turned-businesswoman Keeley Jones, Waddingham as fictional AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Welton and Swift as director of communications and football operations Leslie Higgins.Why does women’s football work in “Ted Lasso” at this moment?”Why wouldn’t it?” Temple said.She beat Waddingham to it.”Yeah, why wouldn’t it?” Waddingham jumped in. “Why wouldn’t it?”Women’s soccer in the United States and around the world has never been so popular.The sport has been on an upward trajectory for more than a decade and doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon.
According to a report by Nielsen in 2025, women’s soccer is set to become one of the world’s top five sports by 2030 with a global fan base of 800 million with about 60% of those fans projected to be women.In the NWSL, the growth has been constant since it was established in 2013 with eight teams. It had 16 teams during the 2026 season with two more to be added by 2028. In the past five years, the entry fee for a franchise has skyrocketed from $2 million in 2021 to $205 million in 2026. But, wait, there’s more.
The entry fee grew $40 million between the 17th team and the 18th team. Salaries have also grown from $6,000 a year in 2013 to a league-record $2 million, which went to Trinity Rodman of the Washington Spirit in January. Viewership, attendance and retail sales were all up at the midway point of the 2026 season, with leaguewide retail sales jumping 72% from last year.”Everything is just progressing in the upward direction and it’s growing and we’re expanding the league,” Angel City midfielder Nealy Martin told ESPN. “And, yeah, I think it’s a great time to invest in women’s sports, even in the entertainment space.”According to veteran Gotham FC midfielder Meredith Speck, the league is unrecognizable from where it was when she joined the league in 2016.When Speck heard that the hit Apple show was going to return for a fourth season with the beloved fictional football-turned-soccer coach managing a second-division women’s team, she was torn.On one hand, she knew how wholesome, heartwarming and funny the show was in its first three seasons, when Jason Sudeikis’ titular character managed a men’s team.
And she knew having a storyline that was written specifically about her sport would give it even more exposure than it already receives.”I was excited because I do love ‘Ted Lasso,'” Speck told ESPN. “I had faith.”Can a comedy accurately capture the realities of women’s soccer?On the other hand, she was worried how this season would portray women’s soccer.”I was a little nervous about how it was going to be received because I didn’t want it to feel like such a parody,” Speck said. “Now, looking at the league, it is serious and professional and women can. … It’s their livelihood.”So, I was a little nervous.”None of her concerns dissipated as she started watching this season.
After the first two episodes, she noticed that the show was just as wholesome, heartwarming and funny as it was during the first three seasons, but it was also accurate in its depiction of women’s soccer.A little too accurate, in fact.”I’m like, ‘These jokes feel very close to home,'” said Speck.There was the scene in the second episode of this season when Lasso sees the women’s locker room for the first time and notices there’s just one showerhead. Or the scenes from early in the series that highlighted the differences between the men’s and women’s locker rooms. Or when Waddingham’s character drunkenly asks, “Where are you?” to absent supporters of the Lady Greyhounds — which brought Speck back to Megan Rapinoe’s speech after her final NWSL home game, which set an attendance record at the time, when Rapinoe said: “I hope to see all of you at all the home games next year.”Each scene brought back a memory for Speck of the early days of her NWSL career and it got her wondering if the league’s rookies would understand some of the references and jokes in the show.”They’re like, ‘I don’t get it. What is the scene about our locker room having no showers?'” Speck said.
“And I’m like, ‘Well, of course you don’t get that joke. That’s not your reality.'”Early in the season, Speck continued to worry that viewers would think some of those situations were just written for a comedic impact.”I hope that people don’t just laugh this off because it’s not so far from the reality,” said Speck, who attended the red carpet for the show’s premiere in New York.Seven episodes and most of a story arc later and heading into Wednesday’s season finale of “Ted Lasso,” Speck’s concern and nerves about the show are finally gone.”I think, now, having been caught up, I love it and I love that they’ve chosen to highlight women’s soccer,” Speck said. “And I think that they’ve done it in a really thoughtful, careful way, and I’ve been thrilled watching.”Why did the creators decide to pivot to the women’s game for the latest season?MONTHS AFTER THE Season 3 finale aired in May 2023 — open-ended and full of breadcrumbs, leaving fans yearning for more and speculating about where the story of the beloved coach would go next (if it went anywhere) — Sudeikis, the writer and star, and his costars started throwing out potential ideas for the next chapter of the Emmy-winning show.One was spin-offs. Another was Lasso coaching a Major League Soccer team.
And part of that idea was Welton buying MLS side Sporting KC.”These are all things [we thought about],” Brendan Hunt, who plays Lasso’s righthand man, assistant coach Willis Beard, told ESPN. “So, yeah, this was potentially parallel universe and not definitively what we would come back and do if we were going to come back.”And that’s where the future of “Ted Lasso” began to formulate.Yet, through all the ideas, all the possibilities, Sudeikis felt that in order to bring back the immensely popular show, he’d have to have a good reason.”I felt we had done, we all felt, I think, behind the scenes, that we had told that first story as I was hoping we would tell it,” Sudeikis told ESPN. “And, so, it was like, OK, well to come back, it has to be for some other reason.”So what could that be?”Sudeikis kept coming back to one storyline in particular — one that was teed up by Temple’s character, who, in the final minutes of the Season 3 finale, as Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son” plays in the background, hands Waddingham’s character a binder, inside of which is a plan for the AFC Richmond women’s team.Abbie Hern, who plays prolific goal scorer Gemma Jay, doesn’t like to watch series finales. That way the shows never end, she said.
So, it wasn’t until she got the role in “Ted Lasso” that she watched the last episode of Season 3 and when Temple handed Waddingham the binder, Hern knew where she and the other new actors fit in.”We just loved these characters so much and we got to know them so well,” Sudeikis said. “But, it was like, ‘Oh, if, if.’ But I just love the idea. We love the idea of Keeley bringing this to Rebecca.”Sudeikis knew one thing, though, if Ted Lasso were to continue in any way, shape or form: He wanted it to be in the world of women’s soccer.So, when the decision was made to not just write a fourth season but to pivot the entire storyline to women’s soccer, Sudeikis said his costars were quickly and entirely on board.”It was yes by a thousand cuts is the way I’ve been trying to describe it,” Sudeikis said.”F— yeah, quite frankly,” Waddingham said was her reaction. “Yeah, about time, too.”How is ‘Ted Lasso’
Leave a Reply