The NWSL awarded an expansion franchise to Columbus, Ohio, and an ownership consortium led by the Haslam Sports Group. The new Columbus-based team will begin play in 2028.
An NWSL spokesperson told ESPN that the group will pay a $205 million expansion fee for the team.
The new Columbus franchise will join the league alongside a team in Atlanta, which also begins play in 2028, to bring the NWSL to 18 teams.
“Columbus in particular, their love for and historical connection to soccer, is something that we’re really excited to bring into the women’s game,” NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman told ESPN moments after landing at the John Glenn Columbus International Airport for the announcement on Tuesday.
The NWSL Columbus team will play at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field downtown, where the Columbus Crew of MLS play. The Haslam Sports Group HSG also owns the Crew, the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, has a controlling interest in the Milwaukee Bucks, and has invested in the WNBA.
ScottsMiracle-Gro Field will be renovated ahead of the 2028 season to add a custom locker room for the NWSL team, HSG managing partner Whitney Haslam Johnson told ESPN.
“It’s a great opportunity and the timing was right to invest further,” Haslam Johnson, who will be the team’s governor on the NWSL board, told ESPN.
She said that the team’s name and branding is still a work in progress.
A major piece of the Columbus expansion bid centers on the plan to build a bespoke training facility for the NWSL team on the southwest side of the city. The ownership group is expected to invest around $300 million initially between the expansion fee and the infrastructure.
That is in addition to $50 million in government money for the infrastructure — $25 million from the city and $25 million from Franklin County.
Columbus City Council approved the city’s $25 million funding in a split vote Monday night after a contentious public meeting, and the county followed with approval on Tuesday. The NWSL team’s training site will be at a park that had previously been tabbed by the city to be renovated for adaptive use in an underserved neighborhood.
As part of that tradeoff, the Haslam Sports Group will contribute $3 million to the city’s effort to find a replacement location for the park.
“Public-private partnerships are really important. We are one of 18 teams in the NWSL and that’s a highly competitive process,” Haslam Johnson said when asked why the $50 million was necessary as opposed to private funding. “And it’s really important that the public supports these teams. It really is a key differentiator in being able to win the team and being able to have support from all the various stakeholders.”
Berman said that “the evidence of public support is a really important litmus test and proxy” in awarding an expansion team. She pointed also out that government funding has rarely been afforded to women’s sports teams.
“I think it’s worth noting as we think about public-private partnership that it has been for decades that communities and the public have invested in men’s teams,” Berman said. “We believe that that is an important piece, if you look back at history, of what has made men’s teams successful in this country.
“Our interest is to ensure that there is appropriate consideration from communities and from public sector to set these teams up for success. We do view them as community assets. We do believe it is our responsibility to show up for the community, and that’s a bilateral relationship.”
The NWSL has expanded rapidly in recent years, from 10 teams in 2021 to 18 by 2028.
Over the same time period, expansion fees have exploded from $2 million to the $205 million paid by the Columbus ownership group. Atlanta, which was awarded team No. 17 in late 2025, paid $165 million, which was a record at the time.
The Columbus ownership group includes the family of Dr. Pete Edwards — who has a minority stake in the Crew and recently acquired more shares from HSG — as well as Columbus-based insurance company Nationwide.
ESPN reported last month that the Columbus group was seriously exploring an NWSL expansion franchise.
Columbus is only the 35th largest TV market in the U.S., but has a strong history of local support for the Crew and for United States national team games.
“When we look at a market, we of course care about how it will perform on a national and a local level,” Berman said. “And actually, the analysis around national media, it starts with performance at a local level. When fans turn on their TV, we want them to see full buildings. We want them to experience some of the energy and excitement that is happening in the building.”
The NWSL recently switched to a “rolling expansion” process to accept prospective teams when it feels the time is right rather than creating deadlines for bids as it did in the past.
Boston Legacy FC and Denver Summit FC just played their inaugural matches last month, opening the NWSL’s 16-team era.
Boston and Denver are each playing in temporary venues this year while they await renovation and construction, respectively, of their long-term stadiums.
“We felt that for teams 17 and 18, the appropriate decision was to balance that with teams that had ready-to-use infrastructure for us from a stadium perspective,” Berman said.
ESPN reported last week that the NWSL Board of Governors is expected to vote later this month on whether to switch to a fall-to-spring calendar.
Adding Columbus, a cold-weather market, “doesn’t in any way change the analysis” of that decision, Berman said. She declined to comment further on the future of the league’s calendar.
