After three years of playing games in the Detroit market, the PWHL is finally ready to commit to the city. The league announced yesterday that it’s expanding to Detroit, MI, after hosting four games there.

Over the weekend, both Sportico and CNBC shared their estimated valuations for all WNBA teams. While both outlets came to the same conclusion — the Golden State Valkyries are the highest-valued team — they ended up with different calculations, likely because CNBC included the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire and Sportico did not. Let’s crunch the numbers.

In March, we interviewed Courage COO Ralph Vuono about winning fans in an atomized regional culture, and how the club plans to further energize Courage Country — and prospective sponsors.

Two new leagues — the World Fencing League (WFL) and International Dance League (IDL) — are gearing up to serve avid fandoms for niche sports. But are they really that niche? Maybe not, and brands are counting on that wide appeal. Let’s boogie.

The PWHL is getting bigger and better each year and has the data to prove it. This week, the league shared metrics from its third regular season that illustrate a continued rise in fan demand. And that interest is driving more and more sponsorships, with new categories constantly joining the fold.

FIFA men’s World Cup tickets are expensive: Fans know it, Gotham FC knows it, and NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani knows it. So in an initiative to make local soccer more affordable, the NWSL club teamed up with Mamdani to sell 1K tickets for its May 9th home game for $5 each, and they sold out in under an hour — and Gotham’s working to offer another 500 more at this price.

Edmonton, Alberta, is a unique place. At roughly 1.2M residents, it’s dwarfed by larger Canadian cities like Toronto and Metro Vancouver — and though it doesn’t have its own professional women’s sports team, it’s become a hot spot for major women’s sporting events. That’s largely thanks to its tourism board, Explore Edmonton, which sees the economic and social value in these events. We spoke with sport and culture events director Cindy Medynski about why this strategy serves Edmonton and what other cities can learn. Small but mighty.

On Tuesday, the NWSL awarded its 18th franchise to Columbus, Ohio for a record $205M expansion fee, up from Atlanta’s $165M fee in 2025. NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman cited the region’s affinity for soccer as a key factor, but so was the money the ownership group put down: $300M between the expansion fee and a new bespoke training facility.