The Haslam Sports Group paid $205 million for expansion rights to operate the National Women's Soccer League's fifteenth franchise in Columbus, Ohio. The fee is the highest in women's professional soccer history and more than doubles the $90 million Cincinnati ownership group paid for its expansion slot in 2024.
The Haslams—Jimmy and Dee, owners of the NFL's Cleveland Browns and MLS's Columbus Crew—will place the team in Lower.com Field, the $314 million soccer-specific stadium that opened in 2021. The venue seats 20,011 for soccer, already hosts the Crew's men's side, and gives the NWSL franchise immediate infrastructure most expansion bids spend two years assembling. The team begins play in the 2027 season. League commissioner Jessica Berman announced the award Monday afternoon without naming alternate bidders.
The $205 million check matters for three reasons. First, it resets the floor for the next expansion cycle. The NWSL has publicly committed to reaching sixteen teams by 2028, meaning one more slot remains open. Boston, Philadelphia, Nashville, and a second Los Angeles group have all made preliminary contact with league offices in the past eighteen months. The prior comp—Cincinnati at $90 million—is now obsolete. Any serious bid will need to clear $200 million or articulate why it shouldn't.
Second, the fee implies a franchise valuation band league operators can now cite in sponsor renewals and media negotiations. If an expansion slot trades at $205 million, existing franchises with established fanbases, player contracts, and sponsor books carry higher implied enterprise value. That matters when the league's national media rights deal expires in December 2027. CBS, ESPN, and Amazon all hold current streaming windows. The $205 million data point gives the league's media consultants a argument that wasn't available twelve months ago when franchise values were assumed, not transacted.
Third, the Haslams bring cross-sport operating leverage most NWSL ownership groups lack. The Browns generate $560 million in annual revenue, per Forbes' latest NFL valuations. The Columbus Crew, acquired in 2018 for a reported $150 million, now operates a purpose-built stadium with established corporate hospitality infrastructure, a ticketing database covering 600,000 Ohio emails, and a grounds crew already managing a soccer pitch to FIFA standards. The NWSL team inherits stadium operations, doesn't need to negotiate venue rental, and can cross-sell sponsorship inventory across two leagues. Dee Haslam will chair the NWSL franchise. She has attended Crew matches regularly since the 2018 acquisition and sat in the owners' suite for the MLS Cup final in December.
The deal also creates the NWSL's first two-team major metro overlap in Ohio. FC Cincinnati's NWSL side plays 110 miles southwest in Cincinnati. The Columbus franchise will compete for the same statewide corporate sponsor budgets—Nationwide, Huntington Bank, American Electric Power—and the same Ohio State University female athlete endorsement pool. Both teams will recruit from the same youth academies in Dayton, Akron, and Toledo. The league tested this dynamic in California, where the Bay Area and Los Angeles each support two teams, but Ohio's corporate base is narrower.
The Haslams financed the purchase without disclosed outside equity partners. Jimmy Haslam's net worth sits at $6.4 billion, per Forbes, derived primarily from Pilot Flying J, the truck-stop chain his family sold to Berkshire Hathaway in 2023 for $8.2 billion. The NWSL does not require ownership groups to disclose capital structure, so whether the $205 million came from cash, credit lines, or cross-collateralized against other Haslam Sports Group assets remains private.
Commissioner Berman said the league will announce its sixteenth and final planned expansion market by the end of 2025. Boston remains the favorite, with a local ownership group that includes New Balance executives and private equity allocators who have toured Gillette Stadium and White Stadium in Franklin Park. The $205 million Columbus precedent means that group now knows the entry price.
The Columbus franchise will hire a general manager before the end of June and must submit its first roster by the 2026 NWSL expansion draft, scheduled for December. The Haslams have not yet named the team or announced kit sponsors. Nationwide Insurance, headquartered in Columbus and the naming-rights partner for the Browns' stadium until 2022, has already fielded inquiries about whether it would consider a founding partnership. Those conversations are ongoing.