April 9 – Jessica Berman, National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) commissioner, speaking at the SheBelieves Summit, said that the US women’s league could expand to 32 teams.
Currently there are 14 clubs playing in the league. With new franchises in Boston and Denver beginning play next season, the league will grow to 16.
While the women’s game is well established in the US, the women’s professional game has had a fractured growth record, until recently and triggered to a large degree by the US women’s win at the 2019 World Cup in France.
With the interest in the professional game growing rapidly – Denver sold more than 10,000 season ticket deposits in two months following their franchise announcement – and franchises now trading at around the $100 million mark, Berman says there is still a demand from investors as well as commercial and broadcast partners to be part of the growth.
She also makes the point that the talent pool, infrastructure, and population of the US, are big enough to accommodate league expansion.
With the US nailed on to host the 2031 Women’s World Cup as the only nation left in the bidding, the conditions look ripe for further rapid expansion.
“We have very ambitious plans for expansion. Our board believes that we can be the size of the NFL,there is nothing that stands in the way of us doing that, other than having access to top talent,” said Berman.
“There’s certainly not a problem with the supply, given the size of our country and the level of talent that exists, we just need to figure out how to develop them strategically and intentionally.”
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