Laura Ricketts and her fellow Chicago Red Stars investors are trying to figure out where and how they can build a dedicated training facility and stadium somewhere within Chicago city limits -- ideally, anyway.
Chicago's ownership group, led by Ricketts, purchased the team for $35.5 million last August and promised another $25.5 million in immediate investments for the historically underfunded team. The money that they are willing to pour into the Red Stars will easily add up to another nine figures if a new stadium is built.
"We knew right from the beginning -- like, rewind back almost a year and a half ago when we started considering acquiring the Red Stars -- we knew that the current [stadium] situation was not the ultimate long-term solution," Ricketts told ESPN last week. "And really, the key to unlocking the door for this organization would be to solve that."
The Red Stars' drastic turn of fortune from one of the NWSL's most troubled franchises is a microcosm for the league: there's more money fueling the league than ever before and, while it won't solve the NWSL's problems overnight, there's new hope that no challenge is insurmountable.
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Almost every team in the NWSL has new ownership or major investors who joined in the past four years, leading to an influx of billionaire ownership groups with major-league experience and deeper pockets than the league has ever had access to before. With this new billionaire class of owners, the league is undergoing a transformation -- at least, that's the plan.
From the Chicago Cubs to the NY Giants, new-look NWSL owners arrive
The NWSL is no longer the lean operation it was when it launched in 2013. To achieve its goals of being the best women's league in the world and a leading U.S. sports property, it has needed the deeper level of investment that has been arriving only recently.
"We are not sitting here today saying, 'Is this thing still gonna be around a year from now?' which I think is a very different mindset maybe than the past," NJ/NY Gotham FC lead owner and league board governor Carolyn Tisch Blodgett recently told ESPN.
If the Ricketts and Tisch family names sound familiar to sports fans, they should. The Ricketts family, including Laura, owns the Chicago Cubs. Tisch Blodgett, who bought into Gotham last year ahead of the team's first NWSL championship, is of the Tisch family that owns the New York Giants.
The Cubs and the Giants are each valued in the billions, and each of those families has the necessary sports experience and local relationships to get things done -- like building a stadium, for example -- in a way that even the average millionaire might not.
Over the past four years, all but one team -- the North Carolina Courage -- has turned over majority ownership or joined the league as a new team. In just about every case, they have been splashy, high-profile additions.
"From when we joined the league and even the conversations before, to now, the mindset around desire to invest, desire to see growth, how to achieve excellence, it's wildly different," said Kansas City Current co-owner Chris Long, who sits on the NWSL's expansion committee and co-founded the Current in late 2020 with his wife, Angie, and Brittany Mahomes.
"There has been a sea change, and it's exciting," he added. "There's a lot of well-intentioned, well-capitalized people that have gotten involved of late over our four seasons, and then secondarily, a lot more people at the door."
Those people "at the door" are a dozen prospective ownership groups vying for the rights to the league's 16th franchise.
The Longs -- who founded Palmer Square Capital, a company that says it manages over $29 billion in investments -- built the NWSL's first purpose-built stadium for the Kansas City Current, a roughly $120 million investment that was mostly privately funded. Last week, the Current announced plans with Palmer Square Capital for $800 million in redevelopment of the downtown riverfront area around the team's new stadium.
This NWSL season brought the arrival of expansion side Bay FC, backed by private equity firm Sixth Street, which says it manages over $75 billion in assets, and CEO Alan Waxman. San Diego Wave FC, which joined the NWSL for around $2 million ahead of its 2022 expansion season, is in the middle of a sale process to the Levine Leichtman family (also billionaires) that values the club between $113 million and $120 million.
As recently as a few years ago, all of this -- the wealthy investors, purpose-built stadiums, massive demand for expansion spots -- was a ludicrous pipe dream for the NWSL. Kansas City lost its first NWSL team in late 2017 amid mismanagement and cash shortages. A few months later, the Boston Breakers folded, and the league contracted to nine teams. Gotham, formerly Sky Blue FC, drew global headlines in 2018 for having players take ice baths in trash cans, among other transgressions.
Commissioner Jessica Berman made it a point in her season-opening news conference to praise the owners that got the NWSL to where it is now. Many of them did the necessary work to build the foundation for the league while losing millions of dollars. Their efforts were not fruitless: they've created the type of thriving league they dreamed about over a decade ago, even if most are no longer directly involved.
More money doesn't mean the NWSL won't have new problems going forward, but the progress the league is making via its billionaire owners is beneficial on two levels. First, new owners investing in individual teams will better position them in their local markets, but then collectively it creates a more ambitious league board room that is ultimately deciding everything the NWSL does.
"It's about understanding where the league fits in as well," said Orlando Pride owner and chairman Mark Wilf, whose family purchased the Pride and MLS' Orlando City in July 2021. "And growing a league sometimes means knowing how to balance your club and the league together to make the whole is greater than any individual part. I think that's the kind of culture that you're seeing at the NWSL. We have some very strong clubs -- all clubs are growing but we ultimately grow to the maximum amount when the league is thriving."
The NWSL: The smart new investment for billionaires?
The Wilf family brings its own big league experience to the NWSL as owners of the NFL's Minnesota Vikings for nearly 20 years. They've invested money in technological upgrades that have improved the Orlando Pride game-day experience, which in turn contributed to the Pride's paid attendance rising 64% year over year. Berman praised Wilf for a hands-on approach to the NWSL despite his many obligations. (Wilf spoke to ESPN in between his Vikings duties at the NFL draft last week.)
Wilf said that his direct involvement with the Pride is a testament to the growth state of the league, something he has experienced before in sports and other business. It is a common thread to the NWSL's new wave of investors: They have emerged not solely out of their love for the game but because the NWSL now looks like a smart, early-stage investment that could yield long-term profits.