The National Women’s Soccer League welcomed its 16th team on Thursday, Jan 30. Denver is the newest franchise, and though they don’t yet have an official name, they are the first women’s professional team from a major league to call the Mile High City home.
Team owner Rob Cohen and his group paid a league-high $110 million expansion fee to join the NWSL. That’s almost double than what the last two expansion franchises paid. That’s the result of a growing market for women’s sports, says Mellody Hobson, part of the ownership group.
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“It’s one-tenth of the most valuable men’s team in sports in America, so that says a lot about the value that can still be created,” Hobson said. “We are convinced a decade, two decades from now, we’re going to look back and say we are so glad we own these teams, and this will seem like the best bargain price that you could possibly imagine.”
The team will begin play in the 2026 season. Cohen says the plan is to build both a soccer-specific stadium and training facility in the near future.
“This ownership group is willing to make the largest investment in professional women’s sports in history,” Cohen said. “It takes that, in terms of what we want to do and how we want to create that because we believe what this team can do is it can be impactful, and it can be transformative in the community.”
Denver’s attempt to land a team began in 2023. The Cohen group beat out competing bids from investment groups in Cleveland and Cincinnati. NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman talked about why the city came out on top.
“It was really the holistic picture as it relates to Denver’s bid that made it clear that they should be chosen as team 16 –– it is a competitive process, it was a competitive process,” Berman said. “We had higher demand than we had supply, and the interest in women’s sports, and in the NWSL in particular, has never been higher.”
The area’s men’s team, the Colorado Rapids, are founding members of Major League Soccer. They play at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in nearby Commerce City. The stadium has been mentioned as a potential temporary home for the new NWSL team.
