Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther says he desires to see the town pursue an NWSL workforce “aggressively.”
On Feb. 27, Jimmy and Dee Haslam, majority homeowners of the MLS’ Columbus Crew, shared that they had been about bringing ladies’s skilled soccer to ScottsMiracle-Gro Area in Columbus.
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At an occasion March 4, forward of two worldwide ladies’s soccer video games on the stadium, Ginther stated he supposed to make use of his bully pulpit to make that occur.
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther discusses his initiative to make the town “the nation’s capital for girls’s sports activities” at ScottsMiracle-Gro Area on March 4, 2026.
“No one owes us this,” he stated. “We have got to struggle for this.”
He pointed to, not solely ScottsMiracle-Gro Area, but in addition the Crew’s follow facility on the Ohio Well being Efficiency Heart, Historic Crew Stadium and the soon-to-open in Westerville. He argued all of them show the kind of wholesome collaboration that might be essential to subject an NWSL workforce.
“We’ll should proceed to lean in and step up,” he stated. “However the Columbus method on this neighborhood could be very particular, and we have to proceed to … convey the private and non-private sector collectively to place the neighborhood first.”
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Linda Logan, CEO and President of the Higher Sports activities Fee, stated her group has a supporting function as properly.
“I believe that is thrilling,” she stated. “We’ve these superb amenities; we have now a confirmed monitor document; our neighborhood exhibits up; we purchase tickets – all of the issues that I believe that they might be in search of, whether or not it is from the grassroots degree to the boardroom, we have now the proper stuff.”
Late final yr, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman instructed the Sports activities Enterprise Journal that they had been reviewing possession proposals as they had been submitted, and there have been “” potential possession teams that had expressed an curiosity.
Cincinnati, Cleveland and Denver to turn into the NWSL’s sixteenth workforce when the league expanded in January 2025, with Denver profitable out. In November 2025, the NWSL introduced Atlanta can be their seventeenth franchise. Atlanta begins play in 2028.
Finally, Berman has instructed, the NWSL may embody 32 groups.