authenticity

Angel City and “Ted Lasso” both came to life in the summer of 2020 when the rest of the world was preoccupied with something far more serious, the global COVID-19 pandemic.

In those dark times, the series about kindness, grace, optimism — and soccer — became the show we didn’t know we needed, but suddenly couldn’t do without.

Angel City, meanwhile, would play its first NWSL game two years later, by which time “Lasso” and Jason Sudeikis, the title character of the Apple TV series about a fictional Premier League team and its manager, had already won multiple Emmys.

Hollywood is a small town, so it wasn’t long before Sudeikis reached out to Kara Nortman, a venture capitalist who co-founded Angel City in 2020, and asked to talk about women’s soccer.

Angel City co-founders Natalie Portman, left, Kara Nortman and Julie Uhrman speak during the team’s equity summit in Australia during the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

(Hanna Lassen / Getty Images)

“And I was like, ‘You had me at hello,’” Nortman said.

What was supposed to be an hour-long phone call turned into four-hour meeting in person, Nortman said.

“The most fun conversation I’ve had in a long time,” she remembered last month. “It really started as a shared passion and interest in women’s sports and building communities and new leadership models and all the things that ‘Ted Lasso’ is about that are far beyond football.”

What the conversation led to was the foundation for the just-completed fourth season of “Ted Lasso,” which focused on the unique challenges faced by women’s soccer teams and players — challenges Nortman knows only too well as the co-owner of a team. That’s why she was credited as a consultant on the series.

And the collaboration comes at a time when the soccer team and the soccer TV series are both at the top of their game, with “Lasso” drawing record audience numbers this summer and Angel City advancing to this weekend’s NWSL playoff quarterfinals after the most successful season in its history.

“They could have continued writing about the men’s team,” Nortman said. “They chose to write about women’s football.

“I’m super proud that we were part of what helped them really understand how to write a beautiful script that was really representative of a lot of challenges we went through.”

The challenges go beyond just salaries, media attention and funding to things as serious as child care and the rash of ACL injuries in the women’s game and as frustrating as hand-me-down uniforms and locker rooms. In “Ted Lasso,” the women’s team Sudeikis coaches — a man coaching women? That topic is addressed, too — uses a dressing room abandoned by a men’s team, one with urinals but without enough working showers.

Angel City captain Sarah Gorden dribbles the ball in front of Boston Legacy’s Sarah Schupansky at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday.

(Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)

One player nearly misses a game because she can’t find a babysitter, something that really happened to Angel City captain Sarah Gorden. Another player is recognized by a fan while working for a food-delivery company to supplement her tiny soccer salary, something that really happened to English star Lucy Bronze in her early playing days.

For many viewers, the “Ted Lasso” plot lines were their introduction to those real-life issues.

“The vibe of authenticity,” Nortman calls it.

“They got right the ACLs, they got right the locker-room dynamic, they got right the training facility,” she said. “I think they got all those things right.”

Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt, the creative geniuses behind “Ted Lasso,” declined to be interviewed for this story, as did everyone involved with the series. But Sudeikis has long denied the show is about soccer.

“This show is as much about soccer as ‘Rocky’ is about boxing,” said Sudeikis, who described the eponymous title character as a cross between John Wooden and Mister Rogers.

Actors Jason Sudeikis, center, and Tanya Reynolds, right, lead a professional women’s soccer team through authentic challenges during the fourth season of “Ted Lasso.”

(Colin Hutton / Apple TV)

But the series has always had soccer in it. So it was natural that Sudeikis and Hunt, who both have long supported women’s sports, would turn their massive spotlight on women’s soccer and bring attention to the glaring inequalities that had slowed the development of the game.

And Nortman wasn’t the only one from NWSL to join that cause. The “Lasso” season opener, shot largely in Kansas City, Mo., was a paean to that city’s women’s soccer team, the Current, and its stadium, where the team has sold out every game over the last three seasons and is unbeaten in its last 32 matches there. (Angel City opens the playoffs in Kansas City on Saturday.)

The synergy helped both sides, with “Lasso” shattering viewership records, trailing only Amazon Prime Video’s “Reacher” as the most-streamed series overall in September, while NWSL’s viewership numbers through the first half of the season jumped 61% on ABC and ESPN. The average season attendance of 11,032 was the second-highest in history.

“Once we knew that Jason and the cast were going to feature a season about women’s soccer and start that season at one of our stadiums with one of our teams, the authenticity with that just lent itself to doing an integration,” said Jennifer Levine, the league’s vice president for public relations and communications.

Kansas City Current fans cheer during the team’s first match at CPKC Stadium in 2024. It is the first stadium built solely for a pro women’s soccer team and was featured in the latest season of “Ted Lasso.”

(Jamie Squire / Getty Images)

“There was a lot of crossover between what they were doing and what we’re doing. So it kind of created a perfect storm for us. Being a part of the cultural conversation as part of ‘Ted Lasso’ will only add to the excitement around the NWSL.”

But will it solve the problems and level the inequities that continue to plague women’s soccer?

“I like to hope it helps,” Levine said. “They have been honest. … I think the writing team and the cast did an incredible job portraying what it’s like to be a women’s footballer.

“Everything that we’re doing at the league with investing in infrastructure and building more purpose-built stadiums and building training facilities, it’s all to improve the experience that viewers are seeing in ‘Ted Lasso.’”

Or as Sudeikis’ character once put it, “doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.”

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.