The National Women's Soccer League awarded its 18th expansion franchise to Columbus, Ohio, Friday, making the city the league's second addition in three months and its fifth announced since January 2024. The club will begin play in 2026, joining Boston—announced in September—as part of a deliberate buildout ahead of the league's broadcast-rights renewal window that opens in early 2026.
The Columbus franchise brings NWSL to 18 teams across North America, up from 12 at the start of 2023. The league has added Denver, Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and now Columbus in the past twenty-two months, a 50 percent headcount increase designed to create inventory pressure on media buyers. NWSL's current deal with CBS, ESPN, and Amazon runs through the 2027 season but includes a negotiation window beginning January 2026. League officials believe 18-plus markets puts them in range of MLS's $250 million annual average from Apple, signed in 2022 when MLS carried 29 clubs.
Columbus already supports Major League Soccer's Crew, which draws 20,487 per match—sixth in MLS—and sold out all seventeen home games in 2024. The NWSL franchise will share Lower.com Field, a 20,000-seat downtown venue opened in 2021 with a grass surface and a $314 million public-private construction cost. The Crew's ownership group, led by the Haslam and Edwards families, is not involved; the NWSL franchise is separately owned by a local investment group whose names the league has not disclosed. That structure mirrors Cincinnati, where the NWSL club and MLS's FC Cincinnati operate under different ownership but share TQL Stadium.
The timing matters because the league's player-allocation and expansion-draft calendar now runs on a two-year cycle. Columbus and Boston will conduct a joint expansion draft in November 2025, selecting from rosters frozen after the 2025 season. That means both clubs enter free agency in early 2026 with full rosters, playing their first matches that spring while the league negotiates its next broadcast deal. NWSL has staged this before: the 2024 additions—Bay FC and Utah Royals—played their first seasons during the league's last round of one-year extensions with CBS and ESPN, demonstrating live inventory before locking long-term rates.
Columbus becomes the league's second Ohio market after Cincinnati, continuing a Midwest buildout that also includes Chicago, Kansas City, and soon Cleveland (confirmed for 2026 in August). The concentration is sponsor-friendly. Nationwide, headquartered in Columbus, already sponsors the Crew's stadium naming rights and has $312 billion in assets under management. Procter & Gamble, based ninety miles south in Cincinnati, sponsors both the Crew and FC Cincinnati and has increased women's-sports allocations by 340 percent since 2021, according to its latest sustainability report. NWSL president Amanda Duffy has said publicly the league seeks a national kit sponsor paying $8-12 million annually; three Midwest markets with Fortune 500 headquarters make that pitch easier.
The league has not announced a deadline for further expansion, but it has active discussions in at least four additional markets, including Nashville and Philadelphia, according to two club executives familiar with the process. NWSL has said it wants to reach 20 clubs before the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, giving it two more slots. Most expect one announcement in the next six months—likely before the 2025 season begins in March—and a final club confirmed by late 2026, timed to enter play in 2028 alongside Olympic momentum.
Columbus now joins a league that sold 11,000 tickets per match in 2024, up 36 percent from 2022, and posted a combined club revenue of $172 million, according to league financials reviewed by three institutional investors. The franchise fee has not been disclosed, but Boston's group paid $55 million in September, and Denver paid $30 million in early 2024, suggesting Columbus falls between those marks given market size and stadium quality.
Watch the ownership announcement in the next thirty days, likely tied to a jersey sponsor or stadium naming-rights extension. The league will also finalize its 2026 schedule format by March 2025, determining whether 18 clubs play a balanced schedule or shift to a conference structure, which affects travel budgets and, therefore, sponsor requirements. Nationwide's current Crew deal runs through 2027.
The takeaway
Columbus is the league's 18th club, joining just ahead of the 2026 broadcast renewal and creating Midwest sponsor density.
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