NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said Thursday the league will add at least two more teams to reach a 20-club roster, citing the need for national geographic coverage to compete with established properties. The league currently operates 16 teams after adding Bay FC and Utah Royals this season. Berman did not specify a timeline but indicated the expansion process is already underway.
"Our vision to be able to compete on a national basis," Berman told reporters. "In order to do that, we need to have a presence across the country." The statement follows a $113 million expansion fee paid by Boston's ownership group last year, the highest in women's sports history. Cincinnati and Cleveland secured clubs for $1 million each in 2019. The markup reflects what allocators are pricing: a 10-year CAGR in franchise values that outpaces MLS growth in comparable early-stage expansion cycles.
The math matters for two groups. First, private equity firms sizing secondary stakes in existing clubs now have a clearer exit window—2028 is when league-wide media rights renew, and a 20-team footprint doubles the number of available local broadcast markets. Sixth Street's stake in the San Diego Wave was structured with exactly this kind of density play in mind. Second, kit sponsors and national brands negotiating against the current $240 million four-year media deal (Prime Video, ESPN, CBS) can now model against a league that will deliver 190 regular-season games instead of 132. That's 44% more inventory before playoff expansion, which Berman has not ruled out.
The geographic holes are obvious. The league has no presence in Arizona, Texas outside of Houston, or the Carolinas. Denver remains in play after a failed 2023 bid. Miami was a finalist last cycle but lost to Boston's deeper group. Conversations with ownership candidates typically begin 18-24 months before announcement, which puts first formal team reveals in mid-2025 if Berman intends to hit a 2027 or 2028 launch. Expansion drafts for Boston and the Bay Area stripped rosters thin; front offices around the league are already modeling which veterans become unprotectable if two more clubs enter.
Berman's public framing—"national presence"—is the same language MLS used before its 2020s expansion wave, when it jumped from 20 to 30 teams in under a decade. The NWSL is not MLS, but the playbook is identical: sell the scarcity, lock in the fee, then use the capital to backstop player salary growth and avoid the work-stoppage risk that nearly collapsed the league in 2022. The current CBA runs through 2030, but the players' association has already signaled it will reopen negotiations if league revenues exceed projections. Two more expansion fees at or above $100 million give Berman room to move.
Watch for formal RFPs by mid-2025 and ownership group announcements by Q1 2026. Cincinnati's expansion kit launch moved $4.2 million in first-week sales; new-market operators will want similar windows before their inaugural seasons. If Berman telegraphs Arizona or Miami, expect adjacent real estate plays—training complexes double as youth academies, and local governments treat them as public works. The Wave's ownership built a $65 million facility in North County before the team played a match.
The next call that matters is between Berman and the league's broadcast partners. The current deal expires after 2027, and a 20-team league with 190 games reprices the entire package. Prime Video paid $4.2 million per game in the current cycle. MLS gets $11 million per game from Apple. The gap is the business case.
The takeaway
NWSL's push to 20 teams by 2028 sets up a media rights renewal with 44% more inventory just as expansion fees top $100M.
Editorial & Disclosure Notice: This article was written with artificial intelligence from public sources and is published without individual human review. Artificial intelligence and other digital tools are also used for research, analysis, editing, formatting, and production. Errors, omissions, outdated information, or inaccuracies may occur. References to companies, brands, products, services, organizations, or individuals are for informational and editorial purposes and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, affiliation, partnership, or approval unless expressly stated. All trademarks and other intellectual property remain the property of their respective owners. Opinions, analysis, estimates, and commentary are informational only and should not be construed as financial, investment, legal, tax, medical, procurement, or other professional advice. Information may be corrected, clarified, or updated after publication. Corrections or removal requests: jenny@pops4.com.
Want the 60-second program for your specific event?
Enter your event and email — we build it and send the branded proposal before lunch. No obligation.
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 heritage press through approved vendors · 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.