Haslam Sports Group is paying $205 million for the NWSL's 18th franchise, awarded Monday to Columbus, Ohio, with play beginning in 2028. The expansion fee is the highest in league history and more than doubles the $100 million Denver and Boston each paid to enter this season.
The Haslams—who control the Cleveland Browns, Columbus Crew, and Milwaukee Bucks—are leading the ownership structure. The league declined to name additional investors. The team will play at a venue to be announced; the Crew's Lower.com Field seats 20,011, which exceeds NWSL attendance averages but may complicate scheduling around MLS fixtures. The Columbus market ranks 32nd in U.S. metro population but already supports the Crew, NHL's Blue Jackets, and draws well for Ohio State women's sports.
The $205 million fee establishes a new reference point for NWSL franchise valuation at a moment when broadcast rights are up for renewal in 2027. Boston and Denver paid $100 million each in late 2024; Utah paid $2 million in 2017. That 10,150% increase in seven years reflects the league's media upside more than current economics—2024 regular-season attendance averaged 11,250 per match, and the current CBS/Amazon/ESPN package runs through 2027 at undisclosed terms widely estimated below $30 million annually. The league has not released audited revenue figures.
For Haslam Sports Group, the play is structural. The family office already owns the real estate around Lower.com Field and controls the only NFL franchise in Ohio. Adding the NWSL team positions the group to bundle Columbus sponsorships across three properties and negotiate joint media rights if MLS and NWSL ever explore package deals. The Crew drew 20,484 per match in 2024; an NWSL tenant could fill midweek inventory and justify expanded premium hospitality. The Haslams paid $1 billion for the Browns in 2012 and bought the Crew for $230 million in 2018.
The 2028 start date gives Columbus more than two years to secure a stadium solution, hire front-office staff, and build out academy infrastructure. NWSL teams have increasingly recruited from college programs; Ohio State women's soccer has produced 14 NWSL draft picks since 2013 and draws 1,800 per match. The franchise will compete for local sponsorship against the Crew, Blue Jackets, and Ohio State's multimedia rights deals.
The $205 million fee also recalibrates financial expectations for the two remaining expansion slots the league has discussed for arrival by 2030. Phoenix, Cleveland, and Nashville have all been mentioned in trade reporting as under evaluation. Cleveland would create an in-state rivalry with Columbus and give the Haslams a second NWSL asset; Phoenix offers a warm-weather market with no MLS competition. The league has not confirmed timelines for those awards.
Meanwhile, Denver Summit FC and Boston Legacy FC are five weeks into inaugural seasons with thin rosters and expansion-team results. Denver is 1-4-0, Boston 2-2-1. Both clubs paid the prior $100 million record fee and are playing in temporary venues while permanent stadiums are finalized. Their early attendance has been mixed—Denver averaged 8,031 through three home matches, Boston 9,214—but both teams secured local broadcast deals and jersey sponsors before kickoff.
The Columbus announcement positions the Haslams as the NWSL's most diversified ownership group by asset count and the first to control both an MLS and NWSL franchise in the same city. Commissioner Jessica Berman has repeatedly stated the league's goal is 18-20 teams by decade's end. Columbus is number 18. The next fee negotiation will test whether $205 million was market or outlier.
The takeaway
Columbus's $205M expansion fee doubles prior NWSL records and resets valuation ahead of 2027 media negotiations.
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 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.