NWSL confirms 2024 Bay Area expansion

After a fourteen-year absence, division 1 women's soccer is returning to Northern California.

The National Women's Soccer League (NSWL) announced Tuesday morning that the Bay Area would be home to the league's fourteenth franchise. The as-yet unnamed team will play its first game on the opening day of the 2024 season.

Women's soccer has deep roots in the Bay, from the top-notch college program at Santa Clara to the epic last-to-champions run of the now-defunct FC Gold Pride. Four passionate local legends--Aly Wagner, Leslie Osbourne, Danielle Slaton and Brandi Chastain--led this NSWL bid, bringing their experiences as players to the team's Board of Advisors. Sixth Street Partners investor Alan Waxman and former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg will join them.

"It gives me chills," Wagner told the Athletic as the bid was approved. "It makes me know we're on the brink of something incredibly special, and being able to provide that is more than any individual achievements that I've ever had in my career. This is different."

For Waxman and Sixth Street Partners, though, the investment is more straightforward.

"Completely unemotional," Waxman said of his investment. "I don't know the history. As an investor, if you extrapolate the history, you're never going to be a good investor. You've got to think about the future, and you've got to think about structural changes."

Fans of women's soccer across America might wince at that statement--well-funded investors have dabbled in the sport without understanding its history before, with largely disastrous results. But Waxman believes this opportunity will be different.

"The reason why we're making the single largest investment ever in global women's sports and definitely global women's soccer--we're investing $125 million of new money into the team--is because we think this is massively, structurally undervalued," he said. "In five years, it [$125 million] is going to look like small potatoes. So that's how we got involved. That's the thesis."

The Bay Area franchise will be the follow the Salt Lake City-based Utah Royals into the league in 2024. With the current 12 franchises seeing record attendances and the Women's World Cup scheduled to take place in July, there are plenty of opportunities for new fans to dive into the sport--and this Bay Area franchise will bring its own flavor to the party.

"There's this beautiful collision of the art and the grace and the glory and the rhythm of the game that goes along with the hard work and the determination of the start-up culture that lives here," Chastain said. "We have the best of all those worlds, and that's why we'll back up easily what we're saying."