NWSL expansion doesn’t just make money for the league in the form of nine-figure fees for new teams.
A bigger schedule also means the league can sell more games to broadcasters.
The league is currently in the second year of its four-year media-rights deal—valued at $240 million—but there is still money on the table.
Of the league’s 190 games in the 2025 season, 121 are part of the league’s current media-rights deal in partnership with CBS Sports, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, and Scripps Sports. That leaves 69 games that are still available domestically; the league is currently set to produce and air them on NWSL+, where the games are free to watch.
Technically, the league could sell these games to any of their current media partners or shop them to new ones. They will likely have more success selling the new slate of games available as the schedule increases from 190 total games to 248 when the league expands to 16 teams with the addition of teams in Denver and Boston next year. Under the current deal, 121 of the league’s games in 2026 are nationally contracted, leaving 127 games up for grabs.
The league’s current media-rights package—signed in 2023—brings in $60 million annually, meaning each game of their 121 nationally broadcast games is valued at just under half a million dollars. Each media partner places a different production value on their games. Amazon, for example, owns Friday nights in the NWSL while Ion, owned by Scripps, broadcasts the league’s Saturday doubleheader. At the rate they sold the old games at, the NWSL would bank $63 million if it sold all 127 available games; those prices could go higher as interest and investment in women’s sports have increased.
In the first year of the NWSL’s current media-rights deal, the league averaged 175,000 viewers across ESPN, CBS, and Ion. The 2024 NWSL championship was the league’s highest viewed, averaging nearly 1 million viewers.
The NWSL’s current media-rights deal will expire after the 2027 season. By industry standards, negotiations for a new deal would likely begin next year.
The 2026 men’s World Cup, which will be played across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, could influence the NWSL’s next media-rights package because of the opportunity to expand the game’s fan base domestically.
Though several top players have gone to Europe in the last year, the NWSL is still home to many of the world’s best players, who will further grow their profile in the 2027 women’s World Cup, which will be played in Brazil. Capitalizing on the interest from those two World Cups will be critical to the league’s continued viewership growth.
