Denver wins bid for 16th NWSL team thanks to historic $110M expansion fee

The GIST: Per Sportico, Denver beat out competing NWSL cities Cincinnati and Cleveland to secure the league’s 16th franchise yesterday. Investors reportedly paid an expansion fee of $110M, which more than doubles the previous NWSL record and marks the biggest expansion fee in U.S. women’s sports history. Another mountain climbed.

The details: The team is set to hit the field in 2026 as the NWSL’s final expansion team for the moment, an exclusivity which may have driven Denver’s price mile high. The bid was led by IMA Financial Group CEO Robert Cohen, who is putting up a significant portion of the financial backing and is expected to be the team’s principal owner.

The landscape: This may be the first major pro women’s sports team to set foot in Denver, but there’s been surging demand for women’s sports in the city. Colorado’s capital was on the shortlist for a WNBA expansion team, will play host to a PWHL game this season, and hosted 19K fans for a USWNT friendly against South Korea in June.

The WNBA comparison: In the WNBA, the Golden State Valkyries and Toronto Tempo each paid $50M in expansion fees, while Portland forked over a record $125M. There’s another key component of the purported $110M price tag: The Denver bid is expected to invest an additional amount to launch the team, like Tempo owner Larry Tanenbaum did when he pledged $115M total.

The soccer comparison: Angel City FC and the San Diego Wave both paid about $2M to join the NWSL, but by 2023, the price of expansion for franchises in the Bay Area and Boston rose to $53M. Denver’s fee essentially doubles this, representing a 55x increase in NWSL expansion fees since 2020.

• This is comparable to the 50x increase in MLS expansion fees between 2007 and 2023, when they rose from $10M for Toronto to San Diego’s record $500M. This exponential growth mirrors the ROI soccer investors are expecting, with numbers scaling even more quickly in the women’s game. Heading up the trend.