NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman has big visions for club valuations in professional women’s soccer.
“There is no reason that this asset couldn’t be as valuable as an NFL team,” Berman told Front Office Sports at Super Bowl LIX’s Radio Row in New Orleans on Friday.
The NWSL has been attracting high profile investors and breaking its own team valuation records in recent seasons. Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, journalist Willow Bay, made Angel City FC the world’s highest-valued women’s sports team at $250 million when they agreed to purchase the club in July. That validation shattered the $120 million record set by the San Diego Wave in March.
Though NFL valuations are an imprecise science, the last team to be sold (the Commanders) went for $6.05 billion in 2023, and most mainstream estimates have the least valuable team, the Bengals, valued in the $4 billion to $5 billion range.
NWSL expansion fees have also risen enormously. In 2022, the expansion fee for the Wave was $2 million. Owners of the Boston and Bay Area teams each paid a $53 million expansion fee (with total commitments to the California club reaching $125 million). And just last Thursday, the league announced Denver as its 16th franchise, with a reported $110 million expansion fee.
“World-renowned, respected business people see it, want to invest in it, because even at $110 million, they see it as an undervalued asset class,” Berman said.
It’s a long way for the NWSL to make it to the 10 figures, but Berman thinks the league is on the right trajectory. She said she thinks the NWSL could have a similar convention center-style media frenzy at the NWSL’s title game like the NFL’s Radio Row in five to 10 years, and that the overlap between the NFL and NWSL when it comes to ownership, media partners, and sponsors “should tell you where we’re heading.”
“The game’s always been amazing, what’s different is the investment,” Berman said. “And once the investment comes, and you have real business people who have skin in the game and incentive alignment around growth, it will grow.”
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