NWSL eyes expansion: Can be ‘size of the NFL’

LOS ANGELES — National Women’s Soccer League commissioner Jessica Berman said Friday that she believes the league could grow as big as the NFL, which has 32 teams.

“We have very ambitious plans for expansion,” Berman said on stage at U.S. Soccer’s SheBelieves Summit.

“Our board believes that we can be the size of the NFL, there is nothing that stands in the way of us doing that, other than having access to top talent. There’s certainly not a problem with the supply, given the size of our country and the level of talent that exists, we just need to figure out how to develop them strategically and intentionally.”

Berman said in January that she saw “no reason” why the NWSL could not eventually become a 30-team league. There are currently 14 teams in the league, with teams from Boston and Denver set to begin play in 2026 to bring the league to 16 clubs.

In a separate interview with ESPN on Friday, Berman said her vision is “a product of the size of our country and how many cities we believe could support a successful NWSL team.”

The league is not actively running an expansion process now but has “continued active conversations with interested groups,” she told ESPN. Berman said there is not currently a timeline for the next round of expansion beyond 16 teams.

Boston was approved to enter the league in 2023 for a $53 million expansion fee. Denver was officially announced in January for a $110 million expansion fee. They will be the first expansion teams to join the NWSL since the league’s new collective bargaining agreement eliminated all drafts, including expansion drafts.

Several NWSL sources ranging from technical staff executives to team owners have expressed concerns to ESPN about the NWSL expanding too rapidly. Only one out of 14 general managers surveyed anonymously by ESPN last year felt that 30 teams was a good number for the league to eventually reach. Nine of 14 felt the league should stick to 24 teams or fewer.

Among the concerns expressed by various league sources are the thinning out of the available player pool as well as available coaches and technical staff support.

Berman told ESPN on Friday that she thinks the depth of the player pool “is the right question to ask,” but she does not view it as a concern.

“The reason I think it shouldn’t rise to the level of concern is that there is no country in the world that has the access to the number, the sheer volume of actual and potential players that we have in this country,” Berman said.

“The challenge and the opportunity that we have, which needs to be part of the strategy of future expansion, is how we’re going to cultivate that pool of players in a wider base than has historically been the case because there hasn’t been a need for it — because the league was 10 teams.”