What a great World Cup! Yeah, yeah, the U.S. lost, but many of the games were awesome. And that's something that usually can't be said about women's World Cup matches.

In Cups past, siege-like offenses battered bunker-style defenses. Oh, sure, there have been the occasional superwomen able to defeat such tactics (Birgit Prinz and Marta come to mind), but this year's tournament was wide open. For the first time, the champion did not finish the tournament undefeated. For the first time, a team that did not win its group won the Cup. And for the first time, teams that weren't considered heavy favorites contested the final.

Sure, no one was shocked that the U.S. found itself in Frankfurt on Sunday, but before the tournament even U.S. commentators made Germany and Brazil the heavy favorites. Japan? Most didn't expect that team to get out of the group stage.

That this Cup was so competitive bodes well for the future of professional women's soccer worldwide. But with most foreign leagues operating at a semi-pro level (almost all players must take second jobs in order to make ends meet) and the higher-salaried Women's Professional Soccer league is struggling mightily. There is a good chance that this league will fold at the end of the 2011 season--if it finishes the season at all. And that's too bad.

The problem is that WPS (and its predecessor, the WUSA) were set up as money-losing leagues, with sponsors expected to kick in to make up the difference. Sports are capitalist enterprises, not experiments in social awareness. Any sports league will survive or fail based on its ability to make money. Yes, most leagues lose money early. Major League Soccer lost a lot of money during its first few years, and two teams folded. But it developed players and benefitted greatly from the sale of some of its young stars to big European leagues.

Of course, since WPS is the only women's soccer league in the world to pay its players true professional salaries, it is in no position to sell players overseas. But maybe it should follow the lead of the Frauen Bundesliga and take a bit more of a semi-pro turn. If paying players less will keep the league in business, perhaps that's a smart way to go.

Even smarter would be televising every game. Every game is taped, so it wouldn't cost that much more to mike up an aspiring announcer to call the games. In this age of YouTube and Hulu and such, there's no need for high production values or even a television contract. Just dispatch a camera, an announcer and a couple producers to cover each game and stream them out over the Internet. Yes, this would cost some money, but if you want a league to succeed, people need to be able to watch the games. And in point of fact, each game is already videotaped, so there's not a lot of extra expense to this idea.

Which brings me to the other point: Ticket prices are too high. A couple of the teams have tickets as low as $13, but most start at $15-20. The last couple of years, my wife and I have taken our boys to a couple Maryland women's soccer matches each season. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for kids. So for $30, we can drive ten minutes and watch ACC women's soccer--which is much closer to WPS's level than the pros would like to admit. The best we could do for a WPS game (back when the Washington Freedom actually existed) were tickets for $20 apiece after driving an hour each way. Let's see…$30 and the boys can be back home not too long after bedtime, or $80 and we get home long after 10 p.m. No brainer there.

Would you rather have 1,500 fans a game (which is about what the WPS is attracting this season) while charging an average of $20 a ticket, or would you rather have 6,000 fans while charging an average of $5 a ticket? Folks, you need to build your fan base. Get as many people to the games (physically or on the web) and then raise prices once they're hooked.

The WPS could be a going concern if teams could get 6,000 fans a game paying an average of $20 a ticket. But it's not there now, and it won't be soon.

My suggestion to the league: Tomorrow morning, announce a league-wide promotion whereby a child gets in free for every adult ticket purchased. If that gins up attendance (and given the publicity from the WWC, it should), then make it a permanent policy or simply slash ticket prices for next season. And get those games on the web!

As for the players, they're simply going to have to make less money. The league cannot survive playing players the way it does now. Would players rather have a league that pays pretty well (though not enough to live on year-round), or do they want to play in the truly semi-pro W-League (where players like Marta or Abby Wambach might make a grand a game, but most make beer money or less)?

I expect the WPS to fold. Which, like I said up top, is too bad. Women's soccer is exciting to watch and, as evidenced by this year's stellar World Cup, improving dramatically in a short period of time. It's the perfect spectator sport for those who don't have the cash to splash on the big name sports (including MLS, which is pretty pricey). If the WPS could operate in the black for a few seasons, attracting fans slowly-but-surely, it would have a fine future. I sure hope it does.

Jon Worley knows sports, not business.