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Saturday Edition

November 22, 2025

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The NWSL will crown its next champion in San Jose on Saturday—but it’s already looking far beyond 2025. By next season, the league, which launched in 2013, will have doubled in size with the additions of Denver Summit FC and Boston Legacy FC. As it forges ahead on expansion, the NWSL faces at least one major threat. Plus, my colleague Colin Salao [[link removed]] previews ESPN’s F1 finale.

— Annie Costabile [[link removed]]

The NWSL Is Growing at Breakneck Pace. Can It Keep Surging? [[link removed]]

Mike Watters-Imagn Images

The NWSL could one day be as big—and as valuable—as the NFL. Or at least that’s what league commissioner Jessica Berman believes [[link removed]].

After launching in 2013 with only eight teams, the league has expanded to Kansas City, Louisville, San Diego, Los Angeles, Utah, and San Francisco. Next year, when Denver Summit FC [[link removed]]and Boston Legacy FC [[link removed]] begin their inaugural seasons, the league will have doubled in size.

In November, the NWSL took another big step, announcing Atlanta will be home to the 17th franchise after Arthur Blank—whose sports empire includes the Falcons and Atlanta United—agreed to pay a reportedly record-breaking $165 million expansion fee [[link removed]].

Although Atlanta will not make its debut until 2028, the league is pushing even more expansion. Berman said during a media call in September that league expansion had shifted to a rolling process to allow for the more than a dozen conversations that were ongoing to continue without an end date.

“Each of them have a different perspective on time they need to launch, investments needed particularly around infrastructure,” Berman said. “We want to be more flexible. Our expansion process is ongoing, officially open. What that means is we will communicate decisions as we make them.”

The NWSL is looking to a future where the U.S. is stacked with teams—and soon. It is in many ways in a position of strength, especially as institutional capital [[link removed]] and celebrity financing [[link removed]] are rushing into teams. Viewership has surged [[link removed]]. Yet behind the scenes, the NWSL is also facing challenges forcing it to adjust.

Most urgently, it is dealing with departing talent.

Up until 2022, the U.S. Soccer Federation paid USWNT players’ NWSL salaries. The decision by the USSF and USWNT to end that allocation gave way to more career freedom for the U.S.’s biggest stars, who have in recent years opted to pursue opportunities abroad—notably in the Women’s Super League [[link removed]], the highest level of women’s soccer in England.

This year began with Chelsea’s announcement that it had acquired USWNT defender Naomi Girma from San Diego Wave FC for a reported $1.1 million transfer fee [[link removed]]. By September, Chelsea had acquired another USWNT star in forward Angel City FC’s Alyssa Thompson, this time paying $1.3 million [[link removed]]. Before the end of the year, the NWSL could lose an even bigger name: global superstar Trinity Rodman, a Washington Spirit forward.

Rodman—whose contract expires in December—is reportedly fielding significant interest from international clubs. She also received an offer [[link removed]] from DC Power in the Gainbridge Super League, a figure that is reportedly more than what any NWSL team could counter with due to the league’s salary-cap constraints.

“Once we get this championship, then I can start making decisions and figuring out what next year looks like for me,” she told reporters after the Spirit’s 2–0 semifinals win over the Portland Thorns.

Emily Faith Morgan-Imagn Images

If players go international, the money Rodman and other NWSL stars stand to make is significant. European clubs are not beholden to the same strict salary-cap constraints in the NWSL. The NWSL and its players’ association ratified a new collective bargaining agreement [[link removed]] last August, which did away with maximum annual salaries, but it still enforces a salary cap. The current cap is set at $3.3 million, and it will increase to $5.1 million by 2030.

Addressing the media Thursday, Berman—who signed a multiyear contract extension with the NWSL this week—emphasized the league’s efforts to keep Rodman Stateside. “We want Trinity in the NWSL,” she said. “We’re going to fight to keep Trinity in the NWSL. She is representative or a proxy of our broader point, which is that we want top players to play here. We believe we’re already doing that and can continue to attract those players.”

Still, there’s unease among league executives about its ability to keep its best players under the current system: NWSL general managers cited the salary cap as a major concern in an anonymous survey conducted by ESPN [[link removed]].

Player movement is not only a worry because the biggest stars are leaving for record pay packets. It’s also because the league needs as many good players as it can get. As the NWSL rapidly adds teams, it both needs to fill out rosters as well as maintain top talent to keep the level of play high—especially to compete with alluring overseas offers.

Berman believes the depth of talent can support the rate at which the league is expanding, but it’s still the NWSL’s responsibility to invest in development, including for coaches and support staff. The league is working with the U.S. Soccer Federation on a number of initiatives to help with those efforts.

U.S. soccer began an initiative called “Behind the Badge” a year ago on both the men’s and women’s sides, which gives clubs and coaches the opportunity to observe the environment at the youth and senior team levels, ask questions, and share best practices. In addition to programs the federation is actively developing, USWNT coach Emma Hayes has made NWSL club visits a common practice throughout the past 12 to 18 months.

“In particular around coach education and development we know that being the governing body we need to do a lot more to get ourselves scaled up to deliver the size and scale of coach education in general,” U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker tells FOS. “But what [Hayes] has made sure we do is that we are much clearer on what that looks like from a female perspective and how that has to be bespoke. The needs of a coach in the NWSL is very different to the needs of someone in the MLS or the USL Championship.”

Most significant of the league’s efforts to expand the player pool is its push for a Division II league. The NWSL submitted a proposal to the USSF in the spring to create a developmental league with the goal of launching in 2026.

If these developmental initiatives succeed, the entire NWSL will benefit. Yet expansion has highlighted operational gaps among individual franchises.

“It’s good for the business to add more jobs, add more competition, and to see more investment come into the league, but I’m concerned about operational competence,” NWSLPA executive director Meghann Burke tells Front Office Sports. “And ensuring the minimum standards we have fought for are upheld top to bottom.”

Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

Similar to the WNBA, the NWSL has seen some of its legacy franchises fail to grow with the league [[link removed]]. In the WNBA, only four teams have dedicated practice facilities: the Las Vegas Aces, Phoenix Mercury, Seattle Storm, and Golden State Valkyries, though many others are building them. Other teams’ facilities vary. The New York Liberty practice at Barclays Center, but they are developing a new $80 million facility in Brooklyn. The Chicago Sky practice out of a public rec center in Deerfield, and they are building a $38 million facility in Chicago’s south suburb of Bedford Park.

The gap between the NWSL’s haves and haves-nots is similar—and vast.

On one side is the Kansas City Current, which is co-owned by Chris and Angie Long as well as Patrick and Brittany Mahomes. They invested $140 million into a women’s soccer–specific venue in 2021. CPKC Stadium opened in 2024 with a capacity of 11,500. In 2022, the team opened its training facility, which was the first built specifically for a women’s sports team [[link removed]] in the U.S.

And on the other side, there are the Chicago Stars [[link removed]]. In 2023, principal owner Laura Ricketts led a group of investors in the $60 million purchase of the team. But in the two years since, the Stars have failed to solidify a plan for a practice facility. Next year, the team will play all of its home matches at Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium, but it will continue to practice 30 miles south at the training field adjacent to SeatGeek Stadium, which was the team’s home stadium since 2016. Stars president Karen Leetzow has been adamant that the team is actively pursuing plans to build a dedicated training facility, but those plans have not materialized.

Other franchises are at various stages along the spectrum. Angel City has dedicated facilities similar to the K.C. Current, while Bay FC and the Portland Thorns have announced plans for their own and are in different phases of the building process. Both 2026 expansion teams are building dedicated facilities set to open ahead of next season. Atlanta has also committed to developing a dedicated training facility by 2028.

“Athletes in a lot of ways influence the operational standards,” Denver Summit FC president Jen Millet tells FOS. “When we went out into market and started having these conversations, the first things players asked were, ‘Are we training on grass or artificial turf?’ and ‘Will we have our own facility?’ Ownership groups across the NWSL and the league itself recognizes the importance of those two things in terms of attracting talent.”

For now, the league’s focus is locked on the NWSL championship in San Jose, which could be Rodman’s last game in the league. But soon after the winner is crowned, all eyes will be back on the future of the NWSL.

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F1 Returns to Vegas for Its Final U.S. Race on ESPN [[link removed]]

Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images

Entering its third year, the Las Vegas Grand Prix is still the youngest race on the Formula One calendar. This year, it serves as a pseudo-goodbye to ESPN as the network airs its final U.S. race.

Formula One is moving to Apple TV [[link removed]] next year after seven years on ESPN. Apple announced the deal—which last month Puck reported is worth $700 million over five years—ahead of the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin.

It’s a fitting finale for ESPN and the Las Vegas Grand Prix, given their roles in the dramatic rise of Formula One in the country.

ESPN took over F1’s domestic broadcasting rights from NBC in 2018, and it was a beneficiary of the racing series’ popularity boom rooted in the success of Netflix’s docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survive, which launched in March 2019.

F1 races drew an average of about 555,000 viewers in 2018, which was about the same number as the viewership on NBC a year earlier. The number grew by 21% to 670,000 viewers the following season, which started two weeks after the launch of the Netflix docuseries. By 2022, F1 races were drawing 1.2 million viewers on ESPN networks, a 120% jump in five years.

The popularity growth led to aggressive investment in F1 in the U.S.

In March 2022, F1 announced it would return to Las Vegas [[link removed]] for the first time since 1982, when an unsuccessful two-year stint for the Caesars Palace Grand Prix ended.

The Las Vegas GP joining the calendar in 2023 meant that the U.S. would be the only country to host three races in one season. The Miami GP joined the F1 schedule in 2022, while the U.S. GP in Austin had been a fixture on the F1 calendar for more than a decade.

A few months after the announcement of the Las Vegas GP [[link removed]], ESPN and F1 agreed to a new domestic broadcasting-rights deal reportedly worth $75 million to $90 million over three years. The deal was at most a 600% increase over its previous deal, which was a reportedly three-year, $15 million contract.

F1’s viewership plateaued in 2023 and 2024 as the Netflix series’ viewership steadily declined in later seasons [[link removed]]. Red Bull and star driver Max Verstappen also parlayed a dominant 2022 into a 2023 season that was one of the most lopsided in F1 history.

Similarly, the Las Vegas Grand Prix saw less fanfare in its second edition—though it was perhaps expected, given the lost novelty, and even by design. F1 chief commercial officer Emily Prazer told Front Office Sports [[link removed]] last year that she expected the second race to be “calmer.”

Several drivers complained [[link removed]] throughout the 2023 race weekend, including Verstappen, who called it “99% show and 1% sport.”

F1 reported 306,000 attendees last year, a slight drop from 315,000 in its first year despite significant ticket-price reductions [[link removed]].

But this year’s edition could be another step in the right direction for F1 in Vegas, whether due to the in-person experience or for viewership numbers in its final broadcast on ESPN.

Earlier Start Time

The Las Vegas GP is pushing up its race start time by two hours, to 8 p.m. PT from 10 p.m. the last two years. The first practice start is also moving to 4:30 p.m. PT from 6:30 p.m.

This cuts the risk of another delayed practice or qualifying session. In 2023, Carlos Sainz, then a driver for Ferrari, was penalized after running over a loose drain cover on the track. The incident pushed the second practice session to 2:30 a.m. local time, which left fans in Las Vegas frustrated [[link removed]].

This also opens the door for fans around the country to catch the race at a reasonable hour. The last two races started at 1 a.m. ET, virtually eliminating the audiences on Eastern and Central time. Prazer told FOS that it was designed to target F1’s core audiences in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, but she’s changed her tune this year.

“We listened, we adjusted it, and we hope that this year, it means that everybody is understanding that we are really trying to make that change,” Prazer said on the Unlapped podcast [[link removed]] last month.

Prazer said at a conference in September that ticket sales for the 2025 race were 50% higher than at the same point last year [[link removed]]. The Athletic reported that as of last week, the Grand Prix is projected to sell out [[link removed]].

Las Vegas seems to be satisfied with the changes. Talks have already started for an extension of F1’s race contract, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal [[link removed]]. F1 and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority have a deal until 2027, but a new deal reportedly could lock in the Las Vegas GP for 5–10 more years after that.

A Real Championship Battle

The 2025 race is the first Las Vegas GP to have true championship implications.

McLaren driver Lando Norris has a 24-point lead over teammate Oscar Piastri, who was the championship leader for most of the season. Verstappen is still mathematically in the running, but the winner of the last four drivers’ championships could be officially eliminated if Norris scores at least 9 points more than him in Las Vegas.

In 2023, Verstappen had already secured the title before F1 arrived in Las Vegas, which was then the second-to-last race on the calendar. It was moved to the third-to-last race last year, and Verstappen was so far ahead that he clinched the championship in Las Vegas despite finishing fifth.

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