The National Women's Soccer League awarded its 18th franchise to Columbus on Tuesday for an expansion fee of $205 million, paid by an ownership group led by Haslam Sports Group. The team begins play in 2028. The fee is 2.3 times the $90 million Denver Summit FC paid to enter the league in 2024, and doubles the previous record of $113 million set by Boston in the same expansion round.
Haslam Sports Group controls the NFL's Cleveland Browns and MLS's Columbus Crew. The NWSL franchise will share Lower.com Field with the Crew, a 20,371-seat downtown stadium opened in 2021. Columbus becomes the league's third co-tenanted MLS market after Seattle and Portland. The ownership structure was not disclosed, but Haslam entities have historically kept majority control and brought in minority financial partners on stadium-adjacent plays.
The $205 million figure matters because it prices women's soccer expansion above recent MLS deals. Charlotte FC paid $325 million to join MLS in 2022, but that included a 30-year stadium lease and youth academy infrastructure. St. Louis City SC paid $200 million in 2019. Columbus is paying $205 million for a league with zero broadcast rights fees flowing to teams before 2026, when the CBS and Amazon deals deliver first checks. The gap between men's and women's expansion pricing just compressed to a stadium lease and a broadcast cycle.
This is the NWSL's second expansion window in 18 months. The league added Bay FC, Boston, and Denver in 2024 for a combined $293 million. Columbus brings the total to $498 million since mid-2023. Commissioner Jessica Berman has said publicly the league will pause at 18 teams through 2028, which means the Haslams paid a premium to lock the last available seat. The NWSL has collected more expansion capital in two years than it raised in venture funding across its entire first decade.
Team presidents in other NWSL markets are now recalculating franchise valuations. If Columbus is worth $205 million before hiring a coach or signing a player, the operating teams with revenues, academies, and local broadcast deals are worth more. Angel City FC last raised at a $250 million post-money valuation in 2022. Portland Thorns revenue exceeded $20 million in 2023. The Haslam number implies those franchises are trading closer to $300 million in private conversations, which moves them into the range where family offices and sovereign wealth funds size positions.
The 2028 start date is deliberate. The league's current broadcast deals with CBS, Amazon, and ESPN expire after the 2027 season. The NWSL will negotiate its next media package in late 2026, likely for five years starting in 2028. Columbus will enter the league the same year those checks begin clearing. The Haslams are paying $205 million today to avoid paying $300 million in 2029 after the broadcast number prints.
Haslam Sports Group has run the Columbus Crew since buying it from Anthony Precourt in 2018 for $150 million. The MLS team is now valued at $680 million by Forbes, a 4.5x return in six years. The NWSL play assumes similar yield curves, which requires the league's next broadcast deal to land above $100 million annually—roughly triple the current $36 million total from CBS and Amazon. That is achievable if women's soccer continues pulling 1 million+ viewers on broadcast windows, but it is not bankable.
The franchise will be the NWSL's second in Ohio after a prior Columbus attempt folded in 2010. The state has proven difficult for women's professional soccer. The Haslams are betting that Lower.com Field and the Crew's 15,000-average attendance base provide infrastructure the 2010 version lacked. They are also betting that the NWSL's 2024 attendance average of 11,250 per match continues climbing, which requires the product to hold casual fans beyond the World Cup bump.
Three more NWSL ownership groups are now sitting on spreadsheets comparing their $50 million to $90 million entry fees to Columbus's $205 million exit price. The Haslams just made everyone who bought in before 2024 look patient. Family offices watching from the sideline now have a reference price: if you want a women's soccer team in a top-20 U.S. metro with a ready-made stadium, the number starts at $200 million. Two years ago that sentence would have read like science fiction.
The NWSL will formally introduce the Columbus ownership group and announce branding timelines in the next 30 days. Haslam Sports Group has not yet named a team president or indicated whether it will hire from within the Crew front office or recruit from another NWSL club. The league's next competitive decision is whether to grant Columbus a favorable expansion draft structure or make them build through standard allocation—Portland and Seattle got advantages in 2013; Bay FC did not in 2024. That ruling will arrive by summer 2027, one year before kickoff.
The takeaway
Columbus paid $205M for an NWSL team that plays in 2028—double Denver's 2024 fee and proof institutional buyers now price women's soccer like men's leagues.
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