The NWSL officially awarded Atlanta with an expansion team on Tuesday, with the league’s 17th franchise scheduled to begin play in 2028 and set to stage home matches at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of MLS’ Atlanta United and the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons.
Atlanta’s NWSL expansion team is backed by AMB Sports and Entertainment, the organization that also owns United and the Falcons and is led by Home Depot co-founder Arthur Blank. AMBSE also owns Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which opened in 2017 as a multipurpose venue. While the venue seats 71,000 for NFL games and can expand to 75,000, Mercedes-Benz Stadium usually holds 42,500 for United matches. For the incoming NWSL team, the stadium will use its modification techniques for an expected capacity of around 28,000.
The NWSL will reportedly collect an expansion fee of $165 million for the Atlanta franchise, according to The Athletic, the largest in the league’s history. The ownership group behind the Denver Summit, which begin play next year, reportedly paid a $110 million entry fee earlier this year, while fellow 2026 expansion side Boston Legacy and 2024 entrant Bay FC reportedly paid around $53 million each.
Blank’s investment will include staff dedicated specifically to the NWSL team, as well as their own training ground. NWSL-specific training grounds are quickly becoming an area of focus for NWSL ownership groups, with the Kansas City Current and Angel City amongst the teams with their own facilities. Additionally, The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation will provide seed funding to launch the NWSL Foundation, which will be focused on advancing research and innovation in women’s sports and have a specific emphasis on female athlete performance and health.
The NWSL’s new expansion chapter
Atlanta is the first market to be awarded with an NWSL expansion team since the league moved to a “rolling process,” as commissioner Jessica Berman has described it. Since Berman assumed her role in 2022, the league has overseen two expansion rounds with a fixed deadline for bids but made the switch after becoming familiar enough with the process of welcoming four new teams.
“We made the decision to shift to a rolling process mostly because we’ve been through [these] two rounds and so we pretty much know the universe of people who are interested,” Berman said in September. “There’s more than a dozen of them. These conversations are ongoing and each of them have a different perspective on how much time they need to launch, the investments they need to make in order to be successful, including potentially around infrastructure and we want to not force a square peg into a round hole. We want to be more flexible so that we can get the best possible result for the next round.”
Atlanta fits the NWSL’s recent expansion strategy in more ways than one. Blank now has a well-documented investment in soccer with United and his $50 million commitment to U.S. Soccer’s National Training Center in the suburb of Fayetteville, which is expected to open in 2026 and will bear the businessman’s name. The city was also once the home of the Atlanta Beat, which played in the Women’s United Soccer Association and Women’s Professional Soccer before those leagues folded. The appetite for women’s soccer does not end there – Mercedes-Benz Stadium set the U.S. women’s national team’s attendance record for a friendly on home soil when 50,000 filled the venue for a 2-1 win over Japan in April 2024.
The NWSL has also favored major media markets in recent expansion endeavors. From 2022 to 2028, they will have added teams in four of the U.S.’ top 10 media markets – the LA-based Angel City, Bay FC, Boston Legacy and the Atlanta team. As for Denver, home of the Summit, the city ranks inside the top 20 and has the perk of an international airport.
Atlanta, though, will be the first NWSL expansion team despite the intent of playing on artificial turf rather than artificial grass. Mercedes-Benz Stadium would not be the first NWSL stadium with artificial turf – the Portland Thorns and the Seattle Reign, two of the league’s original teams, play on artificial turf at Providence Park and Lumen Field, respectively. Boston Legacy, meanwhile, will play their inaugural season at Gillette Stadium, which is primarily an NFL venue, like Mercedes-Benz Arena and Lumen Field.
