The Haslam family is paying $205 million for an NWSL expansion franchise in Columbus that begins play in 2028, the league announced Tuesday at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field. The fee is 24% higher than Atlanta's $165 million entry last November and establishes a new floor for valuations as the league enters its next media-rights cycle.
Dee and Jimmy Haslam, who control the NFL's Cleveland Browns and MLS's Columbus Crew, are adding the NWSL's 18th team to a portfolio that already includes majority stakes in the Milwaukee Bucks' practice facility and minority positions in the Crew's real estate ventures. The Columbus franchise will share infrastructure with the Crew, including ScottsMiracle-Gro Field and the $315 million training complex opened in 2023. The MLS club averages 20,187 fans per match, fourth-highest in the league, and the Haslams are banking on shared services to compress startup costs below the $50 million to $70 million range most recent NWSL expansion teams have required.
The $40 million premium over Atlanta matters because NWSL is negotiating domestic media rights that expire after the 2027 season. CBS, ESPN, and Amazon currently pay a combined $60 million annually under a deal signed in 2023. League executives have told prospective bidders they expect the next package to exceed $150 million per year, citing attendance growth of 48% since 2022 and an average franchise valuation that Sportico pegged at $145 million before the Columbus announcement. The Haslams' willingness to pay $205 million for a team that does not play for two years is a data point CBS Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery will reference when NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman enters formal negotiations this fall.
The structure of the Columbus deal also signals the league's preference for operators with adjacent assets. Of the six franchises added since 2021, five are controlled by ownership groups that also hold MLS, NBA, or MLB stakes. The Haslams' Crew connection means Columbus can avoid stadium construction costs and negotiate kit sponsors who already have Midwest soccer exposure. Adidas, which has supplied the Crew since 2021 under a deal worth approximately $3 million per season, is expected to extend terms to the NWSL team before the 2028 launch.
Two details complicate the rollout. The Haslams are currently defending a lawsuit filed by minority Browns investors who allege financial mismanagement related to the team's $1.2 billion Brookpark stadium proposal. Discovery in that case is ongoing, and deposition schedules overlap with the NWSL's expected timeline for Columbus to hire a president and general manager. Separately, the league has not announced which team will be the 19th franchise, though groups in Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Denver have submitted preliminary bids. League sources expect that announcement before the 2026 NWSL Championship in November, with a fee exceeding $210 million.
The Columbus team does not yet have a name, crest, or coaching staff. The Haslams are expected to name a club president by August and open a general manager search in the fourth quarter. That timeline positions the franchise to participate in the 2027 NWSL College Draft, where expansion teams typically receive priority picks, and to announce jersey sponsors before the league's 2028 preseason begins in February.
The $205 million fee is also a reference point for private equity firms circling the league. NWSL voted in January to allow institutional investors to acquire up to 15% stakes in individual clubs, and at least three funds—including Sixth Street Partners and The Raine Group—have held preliminary talks with existing owners. The Columbus valuation implies an enterprise value above $225 million when accounting for working capital, which is higher than the range most PE models assumed six months ago. The Haslams are not expected to sell any portion of the Columbus team before it begins play.
The takeaway
**$205M** Columbus fee resets NWSL expansion floor as league enters media talks expecting **$150M+** annual rights.
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.