Haslam Sports Group is paying $205 million to bring the National Women's Soccer League's 18th franchise to Columbus, more than double the $100 million Denver and Boston each paid for slots awarded in 2023. The Haslams, who own the NFL's Cleveland Browns and a stake in the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, close the deal in time for a 2025 launch.
The fee sets a new floor for NWSL expansion at a moment when the league is moving from startup financing to institutional capital. Commissioner Jessica Berman confirmed last summer the league was in late-stage talks with private equity bidders; the $205 million Columbus number suggests those conversations are reshaping how ownership groups value entry. For context, MLS expansion fees topped out at $500 million for Charlotte FC in 2019, but that league had 30 years of infrastructure and a media deal worth $2.5 billion over eight years. NWSL's current media rights, split between CBS and Amazon, run through 2027 at an estimated $60 million annually—about 4% of MLS's per-year haul.
The jump from $100 million to $205 million in 18 months tracks with two shifts in the league's operating reality. First, attendance is holding above the break-even line most operators need: the league averaged 11,250 fans per match in 2024, up from 8,900 in 2022. Second, the Haslams are not buying a lottery ticket. Columbus already proved women's soccer works in the market when the Columbus Crew drew crossover crowds for exhibition matches featuring USWNT players, and Ohio State women's sports pull consistent five-figure attendance. The Haslams are underwriting a known quantity, not hoping for one.
What the fee does is create a new comp for the league's next media negotiation, which opens in 2026. If expansion franchises are changing hands at $205 million, the implicit enterprise value of the league as a whole is now above $3.5 billion—roughly 200 times the current annual media take. That multiple only makes sense if buyers believe the next rights deal will triple or quadruple. CBS and Amazon have right of first refusal, but ESPN has been circling women's sports inventory since losing Big Ten rights, and Warner Bros. Discovery needs live programming to justify its Max bundle. The NWSL will auction rights into a market where scarcity matters more than historical ratings, and Columbus just made the opening bid more expensive.
Haslam Sports Group did not disclose stadium plans, but the Columbus Crew's Lower.com Field seats 20,371 and is downtown. Sharing infrastructure with an MLS side lowers fixed costs and raises sponsor appeal—jersey patches can cross-sell, and local TV windows stack without conflict. The Crew's ownership, the Haslam family's in-state peers, supported the bid publicly, which matters in markets where civic leadership can slow or accelerate permitting and tax increment financing.
The league now has two expansion slots spoken for through 2026: Columbus in 2025, and Cincinnati, which paid an undisclosed fee earlier this year, expected in 2026. Commissioner Berman said in October the league would pause at 18 teams to let operations catch up, but that was before the $205 million Columbus close. If private equity arrives with committed capital and the next media deal clears $200 million annually, the pause may shorten. Markets still in the mix include Philadelphia, Austin, and a second Los Angeles franchise, though Austin's economics hinge on Q2 Stadium availability and Philadelphia's bid group has not yet named lead investors.
The Haslams will need to hire a general manager and technical staff within the next four months to meet the league's roster-build deadlines for 2025. Most recent expansion teams hired from within the league's existing front-office pool, which is thin. Bay FC, one of the 2024 expansion clubs, named Albertin Montoya head coach this week after a search that took seven months. Columbus has more money and more urgency, but the same small hiring market.
The takeaway
**$205M** Columbus fee is **2x** last year's expansion price, forcing NWSL media negotiations to justify a **$3.5B+** implied league valuation.
Two hundred brands. Eight months on the desk. $0.003 an impression.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — imprinting on real authorized stock for Nike, YETI, Patagonia, The North Face, Carhartt, Stanley, Peter Millar, TUMI, Montblanc, Moleskine, Waterford, and 190 more. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign: The Stash Edge, Markets Edge, Sports Edge, Voyage Edge, Black's Edge, House Edge, the Article Engine, Ramen, and Fending.
$0.003per impression · vs ~$0.007 digital CPM
8 monthson the desk · vs 0.8s for a digital ad
200+authorized brands · Nike · YETI · Patagonia
9 deskspublishing daily · since 1997
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.