Haslam Sports Group paid $205 million for an NWSL expansion franchise in Columbus, the league confirmed Monday. The team will begin play in 2028, making it the eighteenth club and the highest-priced entry in league history. The Haslam family owns the NFL's Cleveland Browns and majority stakes in the Columbus Crew and Nashville SC. The Edwards family, longtime Crew minority holders, are co-investors.
The $205 million fee is triple what Boston and Denver paid in 2024, when those clubs entered at roughly $70 million each. It is also $105 million above the $100 million fee Atlanta committed in late 2025. The escalation reflects two forces: first, the league's new media deal with ESPN and Amazon, which pays $240 million annually through 2030, up from $1.5 million in 2021; second, a belief among family offices that women's sports assets will reprice as media fragmentation opens inventory for brands locked out of men's leagues. Haslam Sports Group declined to comment on internal return assumptions.
The Columbus market is smaller than Boston or Atlanta but carries specific advantages. The Crew's 20,000-seat Lower.com Field opened in 2021 and was designed to host NWSL matches with minimal reconfiguration. The Haslams already operate the building, removing dual-use negotiation friction. Ohio State's women's soccer program averaged 2,100 fans per match in 2024, fourth in the Big Ten, creating a known audience for technical play. The franchise will share back-office infrastructure with the Crew, including ticketing, sponsorship sales, and analytics staff, which reduces fixed costs relative to standalone expansion clubs.
The 2028 launch date is the longest runway the league has granted. Boston and Denver began play five months ago. Atlanta is scheduled for 2027. The extended timeline suggests the Haslams negotiated time to build a soccer-specific training facility and to secure a naming-rights partner before incurring operating expenses. It also gives the league time to complete a collective bargaining agreement—the current CBA expires after the 2026 season—and to finalize plans for a 20-team league structure, which would require divisional realignment and schedule changes. The NWSL has not confirmed whether Columbus will be the final expansion club before a consolidation phase.
The Haslams' track record in women's sports is thin. The Browns have no WNBA or NWSL ancillary investments, and Jimmy Haslam's public comments on women's leagues have been limited to generic support statements at Crew events. The Edwards family has been more active: Dee Haslam, who runs the Browns' operations alongside her husband, sits on the board of the Women's Sports Foundation, but the family has not previously led a women's team acquisition. The organizational hire to watch is the general manager. If the Haslams recruit from outside the NWSL—say, a European club executive or an MLS analytics director—it signals they intend to compete for playoff positioning immediately. If they hire from within the league's existing front-office pool, it suggests a longer build.
Sponsorship economics will determine whether the $205 million fee pencils. The Crew's jersey sponsor, Lower.com, a Columbus-based real estate platform, pays roughly $4 million annually, according to people familiar with the deal. An NWSL jersey typically commands $1 million to $2 million, but the Haslams can bundle assets: a package covering both clubs, the stadium's naming rights, and local broadcast windows. Procter & Gamble, headquartered 90 miles west in Cincinnati, signed a $10 million annual NWSL league sponsorship in 2024 and has historically activated locally when ownership groups pitch integrated marketing. The first indicator of sponsor appetite will be whether the Haslams announce a founding partner before the end of Q2 2026.
The league office views Columbus as a proof-of-concept for multi-club ownership. Haslam Sports Group now operates three U.S. soccer properties across two leagues, creating cross-league scouting, medical, and data infrastructure that standalone clubs cannot afford. If the Columbus NWSL club reaches profitability faster than Boston or Denver—both of which are burning cash to build brand awareness—it validates the theory that women's sports expansion is cheaper inside existing sports-business ecosystems. The alternative is that the $205 million fee reflects hype, not cash flow, and that the Haslams are paying for optionality that will take a decade to realize.
The next expansion announcement is expected in late 2026 or early 2027. San Diego, Miami, and Detroit have all been reported as finalist cities. The floor price is now $205 million, absent a collapse in league economics.
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