Canada's new women's pro soccer league is selling a chance to get in on the ground floor
Rising team values in U.S.-based NWSL could help attract investors
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Canadian national-team star Christine Sinclair and her former teammate Diana Matheson announced last night on CBC's The National that they're fronting a proposed new professional women's soccer league that will operate entirely within Canada.
Matheson, who's launching the unnamed league with business partner Thomas Gilbert under the banner Project 8 Sports, said the plan is to kick off in the spring 2025 with eight teams — "four in the East, four in the West." Two of those locations appear settled after the Vancouver Whitecaps FC and the Calgary Foothills Soccer Club announced they're joining.
Matheson said the goal is for each team to feature at least one player from the Canadian women's national team. The league will also aim to repatriate "about half" of the 110-odd women currently playing professional soccer abroad (mostly in the United States and Europe), Matheson said. With Air Canada and CIBC on board as corporate sponsors, the league believes it can offer competitive salaries to those players.
"The whole idea behind this is to aim high," said Sinclair, the longtime Canadian captain and soccer's all-time international goals leader who's on board as an advisor with the new league. "So let's go out from the get-go and compete with the best leagues in the world and bring in the top talent."
WATCH | Diana Matheson reveals new Canadian women's pro league set for 2025:
The cost of a franchise is expected to be between $8-10 million, which Matheson is presenting as a sound investment given what some clubs in the 12-team, U.S.-based National Women's Soccer League have recently been valued at. According to a recent story in the Sports Business Journal, the NWSL's team in the New York City area, called NJ/NY Gotham FC, had a $40-million US valuation when former NFL quarterback Eli Manning and WNBA icon Sue Bird bought minority stakes in July. Back in February, the NWSL's Los Angeles expansion team, Angel City FC, was valued at an eye-popping $100 million in a funding round that attracted more celebrity investors to an ownership group that already included Serena Williams, Natalie Portman and Eva Longoria. When health-care tech company founder Y. Michele Kang purchased a majority stake in the Washington Spirit last March, the franchise was valued at $35 million — 10 times what Seattle Reign FC was worth when it sold only three years ago.
Those are some dizzying numbers when you consider that the expansion fee for Racing Louisville FC, which began play last year, was reportedly between $1-2 million. And, according to the Sports Business Journal, none of the other 2021 or 2022 expansion franchises (a group that includes the glitzy L.A. team) paid more than $3 million. The average NWSL team reportedly loses money, so investors were apparently attracted to these new franchises at least in part for their growth potential — similar to what we saw in the tech industry over the past decade and a half before rising interest rates crashed that supposed rocket ship.
A chance to get in on the ground floor in more ways than just financially is a big part of the new Canadian league's pitch. Matheson and Sinclair are touting their league's potential to spark growth and change in the country's entire women's sports structure and to help create a safer and more inclusive environment for athletes. The NWSL is coming off a season in which several coaches and executives resigned following reports of abuse and/or misconduct. "[It's] unfortunate just how women are treated and taken advantage of," said Sinclair, whose Portland Thorns saw CEO Merrit Paulson step down in October and coach Rhian Wilkinson resign last week after disclosing a relationship with one of her players (Wilkinson was cleared by the league of any misconduct). "That's why we need women owners. We need female executives." Read more about the new Canadian women's pro soccer league here.
