The National Women's Soccer League awarded its fourteenth franchise to Columbus on Tuesday, with the Haslam family paying an expansion fee of $205 million—the highest entry price in the league's history and more than double the $100 million Boston paid eighteen months ago. The team will begin play in the 2026 season at a renovated downtown stadium site not yet named publicly.
The Haslam Sports Group, controlled by Dee and Jimmy Haslam, already owns the NFL's Cleveland Browns and a stake in the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks. The Columbus franchise will be operated by their daughter Whitney Haslam Johnson, who previously ran retail operations for Pilot Flying J, the family's truck-stop chain sold to Berkshire Hathaway in 2023 for $8.2 billion in enterprise value. The franchise is the NWSL's second awarded in Ohio, following Cincinnati's planned 2025 entry at a $150 million fee disclosed last year. Neither Cincinnati nor Columbus has announced jersey sponsors.
The fee structure matters because it sets the valuation floor for existing clubs and signals the league's negotiating position with media buyers. Angel City FC, launched in Los Angeles in 2022 at a $100 million expansion cost, was reportedly valued at $250 million in secondary-market conversations last fall, according to a family-office source who passed on the allocation. If Columbus enters at $205 million, rational owners assume their stakes now trade at $300 million or higher, which changes the return threshold for sponsors and the equity-for-kit math for apparel deals. The Washington Spirit, sold to Y. Michele Kang in 2022 for $35 million, looks repriced.
Atlanta's expansion franchise was announced separately the same day for 2026 entry, but the league declined to disclose the fee. Market participants expect a number within $10 million of Columbus, given both franchises were negotiated concurrently. Atlanta United's MLS ownership group is not involved; the women's team will play in a different venue and is backed by a private-equity consortium not yet named. The timing—two expansion announcements on the same day—suggests the league wanted a media event rather than sequential rollout, which is unusual. The NWSL has historically staggered expansions to maintain deal-flow narrative.
The league now has fourteen franchises entering by 2026, up from ten in 2021. Commissioner Jessica Berman has said publicly the target is sixteen, which leaves two more expansion cycles before the next media-rights negotiation in 2027. The current media deal with CBS, ESPN, and Prime Video runs through 2027 and pays roughly $60 million annually, according to league filings. Comparable leagues—MLS at launch, WNBA in its growth phase—saw rights fees triple when franchise count crossed fifteen and average attendance passed 10,000. The NWSL averaged 9,144 per match in 2024.
The Columbus franchise will compete directly with the Columbus Crew in the city's soccer market, but the overlap is less dangerous than it appears. The Crew draws 20,000 per match in a purpose-built facility; the women's team is expected to renovate a smaller downtown venue seating 12,000 to 15,000, which keeps ticket inventory tight and secondary pricing rational. The real risk is sponsor collision. Nationwide, the Columbus-based insurer, already sponsors the Crew's stadium. If they pass on the women's team, it signals caution; if they double in, it sets a pricing precedent for the league's next kit negotiation with Nike, which expires in 2027.
Whitney Haslam Johnson's operational role is worth watching. She has no public track record in sports management, but the family's NFL and NBA stakes give her access to league-office networks and shared-services infrastructure. The Browns' sponsorship team can cross-sell; the Bucks' analytics staff can loan personnel. Whether she uses that leverage or builds a separate front office will indicate how seriously the Haslams treat the asset versus how seriously they treat the tax position.
The next expansion franchise will likely be awarded in early 2025 for a 2027 or 2028 start, based on the league's historical cadence. Phoenix, Detroit, and a second Texas market are rumored in circulation, though no formal bids have been acknowledged. The price will almost certainly clear $220 million if Columbus and Atlanta perform in year one.
The takeaway
NWSL expansion fees doubled in eighteen months; Columbus at **$205M** resets franchise valuations and tightens the 2027 media-rights negotiation.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
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.