NWSL Expansion History

Taylor Vincent
Taylor Vincent, Resident NWSL ExpertOctober 03, 2024
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The NWSL currently sits at 14 active teams. Boston has secured its place as the 15th team—expected to begin playing in 2026—and NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman is expected to announce the 16th team soon based on a previous statement that it would be awarded at "the beginning of Q4".

Previous Expansions - A tumultuous past

When the NWSL had its inaugural season in 2013, it comprised of eight teams: Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Washington, Boston, Washington, FC Kansas City, and Western New York Flash.

Houston joined the league in year two, and then Orlando was added in 2016 to even up the numbers to ten. In 2017, the Western New York Flash moved to North Carolina. Before the 2018 season was able to kick off, both FC Kansas City and Boston were no longer operating. Utah joined the league in 2018, absorbing all of the FC Kansas City player contracts, draft picks, and player related rights. The Boston players were then placed in a Dispersal Draft to be picked by the remaining nine teams and said players would not count against the teams’ salary cap. 

In December of 2020—just under two years after joining the league—the Utah Royals were disbanded and sold back to Kansas City, along with the player contracts. Under the agreement, Utah left the door open for the franchise to re-enter the league after 2023 at a lower expansion fee. Also entering the NWSL for the 2021 season was Racing Louisville—entering on a reported $1-2 million expansion fee—getting the league back up to ten teams. 

2022 saw the first dual expansion year, with Angel City and San Diego making their entry into the league for a reported $2 million expansion fee. Just two years later, the league would make another dual expansion, with the Utah Royals making their re-entry into the league on a reported $2-5 million fee, and Bay FC — the San Francisco Bay Area based team — paying a $53 million fee, over 25x what was paid just two years prior. 

In September of 2023, the NWSL announced that Boston had won the bid to be the 15th team in the league come 2026, at the expansion fee of $53 million. 

Where is the league going with expansion?

In late 2022, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said, “we are gonna be very intentional about expansion and someone actually asked me the question yesterday about whether we intend to add more teams after these two for 2024. We haven't yet made a decision about that.”

In contrast, last week Berman said in a press conference, “beyond team 16, we’re still determining the pace of how quickly we want to expand. We think that we can be as big as any of the men’s leagues in this country, 30+ teams, how and when we get there are still open questions that we are analyzing.”

Previous years with expansion drafts have caused lots of thrash and chaos for existing teams as the main part of team building for the new teams was the expansion draft—where teams had to protect a subset of the team and the expansion teams would then get to pick players from the unprotected pool of players. With the new CBA, the expansion draft has been eliminated. 

One other thing to note is that the new CBA also has been retooled to potentially align with the traditional European system, running from September to June. This could also have a high impact on expansion as playing soccer in January in places like Boston or Chicago where winter gets to sub-zero temperatures would likely require teams to make additional investments for heated pitches and switches to artificial turf which comes with its own risks for player safety. 

Team 16

In June there was a deadline for groups to submit their preliminary bids to the league for consideration. Some of the groups have confirmed publicly that they submitted a bit, including Cleveland and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Cleveland Soccer Group has since purchased 13.6 acres of land to build a stadium which could hold 12,500 fans with the ability to expand to 20,000 in the future. Unfortunately, Minneapolis/St. Paul, who hosts a very successful community-owned USL W League did announce that they had withdrawn their bid back in August. 

Some of the other rumored groups include bringing a NWSL team to Denver, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Nashville, and Miami. During the last expansion process, Berman did announce the final three finalists ahead of the decision being announced, but it’s up in the air how Team 16’s announcement will come out. The other thing that’s yet to be announced is whether Team 16 will be joining the league under the previous $53 million expansion fee or whether the league will increase it considering the increased valuations being seen via Sportico or the numerous sales which have occurred in the last year. 

 

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