Haslam Sports Group will pay $205 million for an NWSL expansion franchise in Columbus, Ohio, scheduled to begin play in 2028. The fee is the highest in league history and 15 times the $2 million Portland paid to join in 2013. Boston and Denver both paid $53 million five months ago for slots that started play in March.
The Columbus ownership group includes the Haslams—who control the Cleveland Browns and own stakes in the Milwaukee Bucks and Columbus Crew—and the Edwards family, operators of Nashville SC. The Edwards connection matters: Nashville's MLS expansion fee was $150 million in 2017; Columbus's NWSL number now exceeds that by $55 million. The league announced the award Monday but declined to disclose financial terms. Three people with direct knowledge confirmed the $205 million figure.
The expansion timeline is the secondary story. Boston and Denver are currently playing their inaugural seasons, but Columbus won't kick off until 2028—two years after those clubs. The gap reflects NWSL's sequencing problem: the league wants to maintain scarcity while absorbing new inventory. Boston Legacy FC is averaging 7,200 fans through six home matches; Denver Summit FC is at 6,800. Neither franchise has announced a primary kit sponsor. The league has 18 clubs committed through 2028 but hasn't named a broadcast deal beyond Apple's current $60 million annual pact, which expires after 2027.
Columbus becomes the second NWSL market to share a metro with an MLS club owned by the same group. The Haslams acquired the Columbus Crew in 2023 for an estimated $230 million after a protracted relocation fight. The Crew plays at Lower.com Field, a $315 million downtown stadium that opened in 2021 with 20,371 seats. The NWSL club is expected to share the venue initially, though the Haslams have discussed a smaller soccer-specific build if demand justifies it. The Orlando Pride—owned by the Wilf family, who also own the NFL's Vikings—operate separately from Orlando City SC but train at the same facility. The crossover model is rare; most NWSL ownership runs independent of men's soccer despite shared metros.
The $205 million fee establishes a new floor for future expansion talks. The league has informal interest from Nashville, Philadelphia, and Miami, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Commissioner Jessica Berman has said publicly the league will consider applications beyond 18 teams but hasn't committed to a cap. The valuation math is straightforward: if Columbus is worth $205 million before playing a match, the established clubs—Angel City, which raised equity at a $180 million valuation in 2022, and the Washington Spirit, sold for $35 million in 2020—are tracking upward. One investor in a West Coast club said privately his franchise is now marked internally at $220 million. He added the number is "not for sale, just for the family office."
The 2028 start date gives Columbus 26 months to hire front-office staff, finalize stadium arrangements, and complete a name-and-crest process. The Haslams have not named a team president. The Edwards family has operational control of Nashville SC's front office but will take a passive role in Columbus, per one person with knowledge of the structure. The NWSL's collective bargaining agreement expires in January 2027; minimum salary is currently $35,000, and the players' association is expected to push for increases that will affect Columbus's inaugural payroll.
The next near-term event is the league's broadcast negotiation. Apple's current deal runs through 2027. The $60 million annual payment works out to $3.75 million per club at 16 teams, or $3.33 million at 18. The league has held informal talks with ESPN, CBS, and Amazon about a successor package, according to two media executives briefed on the conversations. One noted that Columbus's $205 million fee—higher than the $150 million MLS charged Nashville—will be cited as evidence of women's soccer's valuation momentum. The other said the league's attendance and ratings numbers "don't yet support the expansion multiples." Boston is averaging 311,000 viewers on Apple; Denver is at 289,000. For comparison, MLS's most recent national window averaged 368,000 on the same platform.
Columbus will enter a league with 18 clubs, zero available expansion slots, and a calendar that runs February through November. The club has 26 months to hire a general manager.
The takeaway
Haslam Sports pays **15x** the league's 2013 entry fee for a 2028 slot, resetting NWSL's valuation floor while broadcast talks lag behind expansion math.
nwslexpansionhaslamcolumbusvaluationbroadcast
Brand your brand — for real
70,000 products · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · imprinted since 1997
Two hundred brands. Eight months on the desk. $0.003 an impression.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — imprinting on real authorized stock for Nike, YETI, Patagonia, The North Face, Carhartt, Stanley, Peter Millar, TUMI, Montblanc, Moleskine, Waterford, and 190 more. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign: The Stash Edge, Markets Edge, Sports Edge, Voyage Edge, Black's Edge, House Edge, the Article Engine, Ramen, and Fending.
$0.003per impression · vs ~$0.007 digital CPM
8 monthson the desk · vs 0.8s for a digital ad
200+authorized brands · Nike · YETI · Patagonia
9 deskspublishing daily · since 1997
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori Press · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.