Denver was named the winner of a new women’s pro soccer franchise last month, in part because it plans to build one of the first stadiums exclusively for the league. WSJ’s Rachel Bachman explains the seismic shift in women’s sports - and the big money that is coming with it. Further Reading: -The Force in Women’s Sports That’s Even More Powerful Than Caitlin Clark -No One Wanted to Finance Their Stadium. Now Every Game Is a Sellout. Further Listening: -Can the WNBA Cash in on the Caitlin Clark Effect? -The Kiss Rocking Women’s Soccer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is Denver's new NWSL team significant?
I have the great honor of officially granting the 16th NWSL team to the city of Denver.
Last month, a group from Denver won a competitive race to get a new team for the National Women's Soccer League. It paid $110 million to start a new team, a record amount for women's soccer and for all of women's sports. But something else about Denver's bid stood out to our sports reporter, Rachel Bachman.
Chapter 2: What does building a dedicated women's stadium mean for the sport?
Perhaps most important, they pledged to build a practice facility and a stadium solely for this team. What's notable about that? About a year ago, women's professional stadiums essentially didn't exist really in the world. In the world? In the world. There might have been a playing field somewhere, but there was not a stadium for women really anywhere professionally.
Rachel says building a stadium signals a new level of investment coming for women's sports.
Owners are willing to spend sums of money in ways that they had never been willing before. That's a huge change. It's hard to overstate what a big change that is. In the past, when people invested in professional women's sports, it was typically very short-term.
Chapter 3: How has the investment landscape changed for women's soccer?
So the fact that owners are now saying, we think these leagues are going to grow to the point that even though we're investing hundreds of millions of dollars, we are going to get our money back. A new era. It is a new era. I would say it is an unprecedented era of investor confidence in women's professional team sports.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Monday, February 10th. Coming up on the show, how big money is making its way into women's soccer.
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When the National Women's Soccer League launched in 2013, its success was uncertain. Two previous attempts to start women's soccer leagues had failed. This time, the NWSL was starting with eight teams and not a lot of money.
What was the business model? The business model was a shoestring. It was, let's invest enough to keep this team going till the next year, and then see if we can keep doing it again the following year. The wages, aside from maybe a couple of stars, were very low.
And oftentimes players dressed in, you know, borrowed locker rooms or even porta potties or trailers next to the field because the entire setup was just simply not for them. They were add-ons to men's stadiums or college stadiums, whatever stadium they could find. They were renters. Why couldn't they have their own? They didn't have the money. Not anywhere near enough money.
And they didn't have owners who were willing to invest because, remember, these two previous leagues had each folded. So who in their right mind would build a stadium for a team that might be gone in three years?
What is the downside of being a renter, of playing at other people's stadiums? Oh, there's so many.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Kansas City face in building a women's soccer stadium?
And they are the Golden Girls, the champions of the world, the United States.
Nobody. The tournament was huge, and the win cemented the U.S. team as a powerhouse of global women's soccer. Millions watched the final on TV. And in the stands, soaking up the excitement, was a couple from Kansas City, Missouri.
So Chris and Angie Long are a married couple who work in investment. And they were blown away at the fervor for that event, at the fandom of the U.S. women's soccer team. And they just saw limitless potential in this league, the National Women's Soccer League, that was quite young at the time. In fact, that many people had never even heard of. And they said, this is a business opportunity.
In 2020, the Longs bought an NWSL team in Utah and relocated it to Kansas City. And they wanted to go beyond that shoestring business model. They wanted to make a big investment, to do something no other women's professional sports team had done before, build their team its own stadium. But first, they needed a bank to finance it. How did that go?
40?
40 banks. On what grounds? The bankers looked at their financial projections and were just very skeptical. They said, we don't think you can do this. We don't think this is going to pencil out. And we're not going to finance your stadium. The one bank that said yes was J.P. Morgan, where both of the Longs had previously worked. But still, this had never happened before.
No banks could look at other cities and say, well, it worked here, it worked there, so let's take a chance on this. No, there was no blueprint for this. The Longs created it.
The new Kansas City Stadium opened last March. It cost $140 million and has an 11,500-seat capacity. which is about half the size of a men's soccer stadium in the U.S.
So it's small. It's pretty intimate. But they knew they wanted it to be packed with fans and raucous and the place to be. And so they wanted to right-size it for this young team. And that's what they opened. History made. It's 2024, but if someone's going to do it, I'm glad it's Kansas City. Kansas City is officially home to the first stadium ever built for a women's professional team.
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Chapter 5: Is there increasing spectator and investor interest in women's soccer?
We think we've got a really good bid, and it's baking right now, and we're very optimistic about the future.
There was Cincinnati. But the excitement around this situation here in Cincinnati is palpable. And there was Denver.
When it comes to footy foundation, can any other state boast the type of talent that we cultivate?
Each bid offered something different. The Cincinnati group had a celebrity backer, one from a different sport. Basketball sensation Kaitlyn Clark had signed up to be part owner of the team.
Kaitlyn getting involved is just, I think, another level of excitement.
What she's doing in the WNBA, like every game she's playing at is a sellout right now. And just to have that type of star power and excitement.
What is she doing on a bid for a women's soccer team in Ohio?
Great question. She played soccer very well in high school, and she also has an interest in running teams, even owning teams, when she retires from basketball. And so she told Cincinnati's owners that she wanted to be an owner because she wanted to learn the business and what it was like to own and run a team.
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Chapter 6: How competitive was the bidding for a new NWSL team?
What's in it for the NWSL to have Kaitlyn Clark be a part owner of a new team.
She has a very high profile. And the fact that she wanted to spend time on the business, I think would have helped the soccer league. It would have brought more attention to the league.
Denver had a different plan. Inspired by the success of Kansas City's team, Denver was promising something Cincinnati wasn't, to build a stadium. Rob Cohen is the biggest investor in Denver's bid.
So spend a fair amount of time in Kansas City and see that stadium. And I think it's significant. When we saw that, we said that's part of our vision. And, you know, it's just the nature. There are no new ideas out there in the world. But then how can you add to it and make it additive and make it better for the league?
And so that's kind of what we looked at and said, you know, how do we take what they do and do something that is authentic to Denver and that will help elevate the league and other teams?
Rob has done a lot of thinking about sports investment. He was in an investor group bidding for the city's NFL team, and he helped put together Denver's bid to host the 2034 Winter Olympic Games. They lost to Salt Lake City. Lately, Rob's been eyeing women's sports teams.
Women's sports are just as entertaining, just as competitive, have all the elements that men's sports have. They just haven't been put on the same platform and stage.
And not that we're in it for the financial side of it, but if you just look at it and say the women's teams of today are valued at one-tenth of the men's team, you obviously realize there's incredible opportunity as a business person, but also to do something unique and different.
When you saw that Caitlin Clark was affiliated with the bid from Cincinnati, were you like, oh, God, this is game over?
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