Five weeks after Boston Legacy FC and Denver Summit FC first took the field as the National Women’s Soccer League’s 15th and 16th teams—and five months after Atlanta was granted the rights to become the 17th—the league is expanding again.

On Tuesday, commissioner Jessica Berman announced that the NWSL was awarding a franchise to Columbus, Ohio, with the club expected to make its debut alongside Atlanta in 2028. The ownership group will be led by Haslam Sports Group, the holding company of billionaires Jimmy and Dee Haslam, which already controls MLS’s Columbus Crew and the NFL’s Cleveland Browns and has a minority stake in the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks. Other investors include insurance giant Nationwide and Drs. Christine and Pete Edwards, who purchased a piece of the Crew with the Haslams in 2019.

“We’re really excited about adding more women’s sports into our portfolio,” says Haslam Sports Group managing partner Whitney Haslam Johnson, the daughter of Jimmy and Dee, noting that the group invested in the WNBA at the league level in 2022. “We have a lot of work to do—these businesses are somewhat like startup businesses—but 2028 can’t get here soon enough, and we can’t wait to watch these incredible athletes play.”

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but a person familiar with the deal tells Forbes that the new owners will pay a $205 million expansion fee, capping a spectacular run-up in the league’s entry price. Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC are believed to have paid roughly $2 million in 2021, with the fee jumping to $53 million in 2023 for Boston Legacy FC and the San Francisco area’s Bay FC, $110 million in January 2025 for Denver Summit FC and finally to $165 million in November for Atlanta.

Factoring in spending on facilities and other startup costs, the Columbus group’s total investment is expected to be upwards of $300 million, according to a person familiar with the plans.

“If you look at [the rise in expansion fees] through a ‘first principles’ business lens, it shouldn’t be surprising—our revenue has grown significantly in the last four years, and we are only in our first real media rights deal,” Berman says. “On a more personal level, I try to take a step back and say, ‘Wow, this really has been an incredible chapter of growth,’ but there’s not much time to reflect back because the expectations of seismic growth are actually in front of us and people like the Haslams are investing because they believe that our best days are ahead.”

As the United States’ 32nd-largest metropolitan area, with a population the U.S. Census Bureau estimates at 2.2 million, Columbus wasn’t necessarily the most obvious candidate for expansion, especially considering the NWSL still hasn’t entered........

© Forbes