NWSL Attendance Is Down—Except for Its Best Teams

The NWSL saw a 5% decline in attendance following the league’s record-high season in 2024. The overall average attendance was 10,669, dipping from 11,250 fans per match last year. 

But four of the league’s 14 teams continued moving up and to the right. The Washington Spirit, Gotham FC, North Carolina Courage, and Orlando Pride all set new attendance records despite the rest of the league experiencing a decline. The Spirit, Gotham, and Pride will compete this weekend in the NWSL semifinals.

The Spirit have experienced one of the most dramatic attendance transformations over the past three seasons. In 2021 the team was averaging just over 5,000 fans per game. This season they have the third-highest average in the league with 15,259 fans per game. 

Saturday’s semifinals match against the Portland Thorns will be the club’s fourth consecutive home playoff sellout. Eight of the club’s 15 highest attended matches ever came this season. (The Thorns led the league in attendance, but saw a slight dip from last year.)

“It’s Michele [Kang] investing in the business side,” Spirit CEO Kim Stone told Front Office Sports. “There has been demand for this team, but when I first arrived [in 2024] there were 10 people in community relations and only four in ticketing. I told her then, ‘we need to spend the first year pivoting to a revenue focused mindset.’” 

The Spirit saw a 38% increase in revenue year-over-year during the regular season and a 4% increase through the first two weeks of the NWSL playoffs. 

The Spirit’s ticket sales department has since grown to a staff of 16. In 2023, the team moved all of their home games to Audi Field, which has a max capacity of 20,000. That year they averaged about half of its full capacity with 10,724 fans per game. 

The Courage saw a 20.8% increase in attendance year over year—the largest in the NWSL—going from 6,362 fans in 2024 to 7,684 in 2025. The Pride were second, with a 15.4% increase, while Gotham’s attendance rose by 2%. Gotham executives say their biggest challenge is getting a foothold in a jam-packed New York sports market. (The team plays in Harrison, N.J., just west of Manhattan.)

“We cannot boil the ocean,” Gotham chief business officer Ryan Dillon told FOS. “To reach 20 million people is tough. We’ve been focused on identifying our core consumer, where in the market are they and prioritizing our markets accordingly.” 

Gotham plays the Orlando Pride in a semifinal match on Sunday.

The Portland Thorns led the NWSL in average attendance, topping last year’s leader Angel City with 18,173 fans per game; that still marked a 2.9% drop. Racing Louisville FC was last in the league with an average of 5,521 fans per home game, just 18 fewer than the Chicago Stars.

Next year, the stars are moving from suburban Bridgeview, Ill. to Evanston, where they’ll play at Northwestern’s soccer stadium. Though the capacity will dip from 20,000 to 12,000, team executives are hopeful that the new location will be more accessible to fans through Chicago’s public transit.