Hello, it is Meg Linahan. Welcome to full-time presented by Amazon Business.

It is just me this week because we are waiting for Tamara Griffin to make

her way back to the United States from Portugal. But don't worry. When she's back to stayside,

we're going to have all the Tamara we can handle here on Wednesdays as part of the new expanded full-time.

But this week, following the opening weekend action of the NWSL, we want to take a step back

and look at the big picture. Now, I'm sure you have heard all of the usual sayings. Women's sports are a rocket ship. It's a movement, not the moment, and the inflection point, right? We always hear about the inflection point. If that's been said, you've heard it. Women's sports are booming, but where does the NWSL fit in to this landscape? Is it leading the way

or is it falling behind? With the help of my two expert guests today, I'm going to dig into the

state of the NWSL in 2025. We're going to talk about the league's audience, politics, values,

commercial ambitions and strategy, the players and the play on the pitch, and how all of these

things interact with each other. So to help do all of that, staff writer at Just Women's Sports,

Claire Watkins, will be joining the show to unpack some of this history of the NWSL, what we've

seen in recent years, what she has learned from covering other sports like basketball.

Then the Athletics WNBA staff writer Ben Pickman

will hop on the chat about how the two leagues compare. Ben is also a part of the Athletics

Women's Basketball podcast, No Offseason, along with Zena Keta, Chentel Jennings, and Sabrina

Merchant. You should absolutely go listen, just relaunch this past week, all the podcasts and analysis you need between the ending of unrivaled.

Very sad about my lunar owls and the fast approaching start of March Madness.

All right, let's get into the state of the NWSL.

Okay. All right. We are now joined by staff writer at Just Women's Sports, Claire Watkins. Claire, how are you? How are you doing? Are you surviving? I mean, March Madness hasn't really started yet, but I feel like you're going through it already, probably, right? Yeah, it's crunch time for sure. But no,

doing well. I mean, this is, it's a busy schedule, but also the best time of the year. I love

sort of that spring turnaround where you're getting soccer games again, but also just

basketball every minute of the day. Yeah. no, it's definitely peak sports, especially

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