The NWSL is within the closing levels of including Denver because the league’s sixteenth group, a supply briefed on the main points of the negotiations confirmed Tuesday. Sportico was first to report the information.
The supply mentioned that the enlargement payment is within the vary of $105 to $120 million, which was additionally reported by Sportico. That’s double the $53 million enlargement payment that Bay FC and BOS Nation FC paid because the 14th and fifteenth NWSL groups, respectively.
The NWSL has been within the closing levels of saying the sixteenth group, set to affix the league in 2026 alongside Boston, for the ultimate a part of the yr. Cleveland and Cincinnati have been the 2 different markets on the league’s shortlist.
A spokesperson for the NWSL declined to touch upon the standing of enlargement Tuesday afternoon.
Former girls’s skilled participant Jordan Angeli has been concerned with Denver’s bid because the starting, forming the For Denver FC group in July of 2023, which introduced its intent to convey knowledgeable girls’s group to Denver. At the time, the group was open to each the NWSL and the USL Super League.
The group now additionally contains Robert Cohen, chair and CEO of IMA Financial Group, who was additionally concerned in a possible Denver WNBA enlargement bid.
The possession group has indicated it plans to construct its personal stadium and coaching facility however would count on to start play in a brief venue.
Denver has an intensive historical past of manufacturing elite girls’s soccer expertise, together with present U.S. girls’s nationwide group gamers Mallory Swanson, Lindsey Horan and Sophia Smith. The USWNT has additionally performed a number of matches in Colorado through the years, with sturdy attendance numbers to indicate for it. Most just lately, the group performed its first match beneath Emma Hayes at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City in entrance of 19,010 followers (following an exhibition sport that includes the U.S. girls’s deaf nationwide group, the primary doubleheader of its sort).
For the NWSL, deciding on Denver as the subsequent enlargement market means they’ll have the ability to faucet into this regional hotbed and add a Western group in proximity to Utah Royals FC without having to oversaturate the West Coast after the addition of three California groups.
While the paperwork just isn’t but full and there’s no official timeline for an announcement, Tuesday’s information eases issues over the delay within the final main piece of stories for the NWSL for 2024.
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(Photo: Nick Tre. Smith / USA Today)
